Teaching

The Joy and the Fear of Learning

How to Run an Undergraduate Research Course Using Inquiry

Ambiguity and Nuance — Even in Mathematics

Mathematics is often seen as the epitome of a study of hard facts: answers are either…

What do we really need to be better teachers?

Compare and contrast: (1) students leaping out of their seats with blazing eyes and changing their lives in the movie “Dead Poets Society,” and (2) the bored, inward gazes or sleeping heads of students that many of us see in classrooms across the…

Them, Me and Us

The quality education that we need isn’t about what other people have done. It’s about what current students will do.

Having just listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast on the topic, let’s take Elizabeth Thompson as one extraordinary example. She painted The Roll Call in…

The culture of learning: Excellence without competition

Have you ever noticed that there are different kinds of Labrador retrievers? I don’t mean the black, yellow, and chocolate kinds, I mean differences in attitude. Among the wide variation of the breed, there are some that are smaller…

7.4 Billion

I tend to believe, perhaps a bit naively, that everyone has more or less the same goals for Planet Earth. Most people, I think, want to see a peaceful world. They want to be able to live comfortably and happily. They want to live without fear of hunger, thirst, or sickness. And, of course, they want to…