On high school vs. university teaching
After launching VISST I have had the opportunity to reflect on the experience of teaching at the high school level vs. teaching at a university, which was my previous vocation. Some of the differences were expected, such as smaller class sizes (going from 100-200 to 10-30, I can get to know students and adapt to their needs, though sometimes I miss the big audience), younger students (I appreciate teenagers’ openness to the world but need to recalibrate to their developing organizational skills), more instructional hours (high school teachers have much more class time, see also On finding great teachers), and a lack of teaching assistants (grading is a lot of work, though with the silver lining that I learn a lot about exactly where my students might be struggling). Other differences, though, were more surprising! In this post I’ll share some of these (to me) unexpected and more nuanced differences.
1. New stakeholders: enter parents. When teaching at a university, the educational relationship is between teacher and student. High school education, on the other hand, is a 3-party partnership between student, school, and parent(s). I have already come to cherish working with parents towards the development – academically and otherwise – of our students. It feels great to collaborate with parents towards common goals. The 3-party relationship comes with challenges as well. For example, parents are a crucial stakeholder but are rarely physically present at school. To help them stay informed, my role is expanded to include documentation and communication of what we do. What should I communicate with parents? How often? By what medium? Should certain communications be to parents only, not students? These are important questions. At VISST, we signal our strong commitment to parents at the top of our website, where we share our commitment statements to students, parents, teachers, and society.
2. Connections and applications of the content. At UBC I taught machine learning and data science. As these techniques are ubiquitous in our world, real-world applications abound. For example, we used data sets pulled from Twitter or the Government of Canada or elsewhere, and extracted real insights from them. This is exciting and motivating for students. In high school, the material is often more foundational and thus further removed from its ultimate application. And yet, one of VISST’s core values is to bring students on board with the value of what they’re learning. This is a challenge but also an exciting opportunity. We bridge this gap through a combination of appropriate real-world projects (e.g. designing and building furniture with the students) and emphasizing connections in more foundational subjects (e.g. connecting surface area and volume to how your fingers feel wearing mittens vs. gloves, or the geometry of your small intestine).
3. Stakes and consequences of failure. In a large university class with 150+ students, even the most caring teacher must come to terms with the fact that not all students will fully digest the material. This is partly a numbers game due to the large classes, but there’s more to it than that: if a student doesn’t digest my 3rd year machine learning content, that is a setback for them (and perhaps for the taxpayer, who is partially funding UBC) but they (and we) can most likely move on from it unscathed. Teaching math in high school on the other hand, I feel a huge responsibility for every VISSTer to learn the material well. If a student doesn’t understand percentages or graphs, this gap will almost surely cause difficulties down the line. I understand that there will always be challenging circumstances beyond my or anyone’s control but, to whatever extent I can, I feel a deep responsibility to make sure every student understands foundational mathematics. The stakes are high. This is a big responsibility, but it is also meaningful and fulfilling to feel the importance of our work at VISST.
4. What is high school for? At UBC my job was to communicate, to the best of my abilities, a certain slice of computer science or data science. There is still a huge space of approaches one could take in this task, and many opportunities to work hard and excel; but ultimately, my role as instructor was neatly defined to teaching that material (and inspiring excitement and curiosity!). In high school, my mandate is broader: it is both to teach something, but also to help each student grow as a person. My big picture goal is for VISST students to be the best version of their 18 year-old selves that they can possibly be upon graduation. This includes organizational and time-management skills, communication skills, compassion, humility, interpersonal relationship skills, self-care skills, awareness of life’s “gotchas” and perhaps recommended “life hacks”. Although I was aware of this difference in scope – and indeed it was part of the appeal of starting a high school in the first place – the day-to-day moments still surprise me. Am I modeling compassion? Healthy habits? Can I ask the students to tidy up when my own desk is a mess? I do my best! Overall, teaching high school feels like a huge opportunity – and an honour and privilege – for large-scale impact on the lives of my students. And, I cherish the moments in math class where I can stop and say, “Hey, we need to talk about humility.”
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