Singing Palestrina & Learning to Teach

There are many aspects of learning about teaching which I love; one of these is the relatedness of life experiences and teaching. An example: in choral ensemble this fall, we learned a piece by Palestrina called Cantabo Domino. It's an absolutely beautiful piece when it comes together, but it was written back in the days before time signatures were a big deal, so it's quite challenging to sing. During practice, it wasn't uncommon for us to be completely off track in within just a few measures of starting the piece. When this happened, I expected our conductor to stop us and have us return to the beginning to find our notes, but he didn't. He kept conducting a mostly silent choir! I tried to come back in, "in vita mea-" no, wait, I wasn't in time with the sopranos. I listened anxiously for someone to give me a prominant phrase so I could find my place in the intertwining melodies of the piece.  Then there it was, the 2nd sopranos singing "delectabor in Domino" - I was back in. And I even got to feel a little bit useful: after the piece was done, one of the other 1st altos beside me thanked me for helping her find her part when she was off track.

Of particular note in this practice was our conductor's unwillingness to give up, even when we had no idea where we were. The atmosphere in the alto section was much less hopeful - we were all ready to throw in the towel. But our conductor just wasn't willing to give up on us; no matter how off track our singing was, he knew that if we took a moment to listen to the singers around us, we would find our way back into the music, and he was right.

I think teaching is very much like singing Palestrina. It is beautiful and thrilling when it comes together, but it is also very challenging to do well. And much like our conductor, teaching does not stop when we make mistakes. I will always be learning how to teach: making mistakes, reflecting on them, and trying to teach better. And though I want so much to be a perfect teacher - always inspiring all my students - I'm not, and those mistakes are part of the process. Bad teaching days aren't fun, but they are no reason to give up - just reason to reflect, listen to feedback from others like a singer does, and come back in.

I feel an invisible pressure (mostly from myself) that every lesson must go off without a hitch, which is heightened through being "that physics pedagogy researcher" in my department. Needless to say, my teaching this semester didn't meet these invisible standards of perfection.  For example, during one of our weekly quizzes, a student asked me about the quiz problem and I second guessed myself. In a non-flustered state after the quiz, I double checked the problem, and it turned out that my physics had been fine, but I felt really silly in the moment floundering and not sure how to respond. In another lesson, I wanted to talk to my students about mental illness in such a way as to normalize it and share some ways to care for themselves and their friends. It went okay, but really not as well as I'd hoped. My voice sounded funny because I have a cold, and something about the atmosphere of the room was distancing them from me. They were courteous, but I don't think I had them really buying in. This was one of the most important lessons of the year to me, and I was very sad to have taught it poorly. When these sorts of classes happen - when I'm not the teacher I want to be - it's hard not to feel very discouraged.

Yet last week, we sang the Palestrina in our concert, and it went so well. As an alto (the most fun part to sing), I got to be right in the middle of six different melodies intertwining, related but distinct, rising and falling together, but separately. Everything came together, and it was a great experience to sing such a difficult piece well.

This semester has contained those sorts of moments in teaching as well. There have been classes when the students were asking great questions, and classes when I was able to ask them guiding questions and see their eyes light up when they suddenly got it - I love that moment! Last week, I got to teach a few lectures, and they went so well - the participation level was high, with the majority of the time spent in peer instruction during which the students talked with each other to make sense of the physics concepts in specific practical applications. We were learning about rotational dynamics - really tough topics like "what is the moment of inertia?", "when can I think about an object as a point mass, and when can't I?", etc. It was exciting to teach, since these ideas were new to nearly everyone but were still relevant to their everyday experiences. It was very encouraging to see good attendance and participation in the lectures (Though this might have just been for the "special guests": Dr. Suess and Darth Vader, not for me). The students' positive responses really boosted my confidence that I'm on the right track to being an ever-improving teacher. But not every lesson is like that, and that's alright. Even the lessons gone wrong are part of this process of becoming a better teacher - a path that I'll always be on.

It's an interesting journey in that there is no end destination, but there is still a defined path of improvement. That paradoxical nature of learning to teach is challenging in that I will never be the perfect teacher I want to be, but also exciting in that I will always be getting better and learning more.