Reflections on MIT’s Kaufman Teaching Certificate

(Note: this post was largely written by Bethany Fowler, as described below)

Many WHOI students and postdocs are interested in obtaining training and experience in teaching. One possible avenue is through the Kaufman Teaching Certificate program. JP student Bethany Fowler recently completed this program and has generously agreed to share her experiences:

Why did I do it?

I applied to the Kaufman Teaching Certificate program because I think good teaching is both incredibly valuable and rare. I wanted to learn more about how I could become a better teacher and also gain a sense for whether I would enjoy teaching if it were a major component of my career. I gave these reasons when Mike [co-advisor Mike Neubert] asked why I wanted to take the course, and he was happy that “to make me more employable” wasn’t among them. The Kaufman Teaching Certificate program forced me to think critically about what it means to learn and how an instructor can help all different people do so. I did also get a certificate, which may or may not be useful later on.

What did we do?

The program covered a variety of topics–from how to structure an individual lesson, to how to create a supportive atmosphere for students. We read literature about motivation, information retention, stereotype threat, and most controversially, the pitfalls of lecturing. I’ve been lucky enough to have some professors who incorporate learning research into their teaching methods, but in case anyone hasn’t, the Kaufman course itself can serve as an example. In class, we completed activities, discussed readings, and provided feedback to peers. In this case, the exercises were doubly valuable: they helped us learn the material and gave us ideas to use in our own classrooms.

Would I recommend it? To whom?

The course is open to students and post-docs across all MIT departments, and in my class at least, there was a diversity of teaching experience among the participants. I think everyone benefited from the discussions and reflection, but it is hard to know how much any individual’s teaching will improve. I don’t think the course is meant to immediately make anyone a great teacher, but it gave me the tools I’ll need to keep moving in the right direction.

One concrete outcome is that I’ve now written a statement of my Teaching Philosophy and received feedback on it from multiple people. For this reason, I’d especially recommend the course to graduate students and post-docs who find that task daunting. After the program, it was really easy to pick out ideas about teaching that I genuinely value and want to emphasize in my career.