My teaching philosophy is best expressed through three anecdotes that demonstrate my core principles.
My second-grade teacher, Ms. Morris, allowed students who arrived at school before the first bell to come in early and play quietly. She had several stations set up and I gravitated towards the math area. She had a set of polyhedral dice. I would later learn to call them by their proper names, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. I spent the entire fall rolling these dice repeatedly and recording the results. I wanted to see if the dice were 'fair'. My teacher observed my play and posed a question to me, "How can you prove they are fair?". This single question opened the world for me. I would go on to learn about histograms, statistics, and even a couple probability distributions. But the biggest lesson was that by careful observation a teacher can identify the right moment to ask the right question. And that moment can make a huge positive impact on a student.
One day my class was working on our expository essays and we were sent to the school library to learn about our topics. When we got to the library the school librarian let us loose and as it turned out most of my classmates could not find what they needed. However, I knew how to find the materials simply because my mother is a librarian. A friend asked me to help find a book for them, so I did. Then their friend asked me to help find a book for them, so I did. I think you can see where this is going. By the end of the hour the rest of the class had their resources and I had nothing. I learned two lessons that day but did not realize it until much later. The first was that I needed to take care of myself first because I have a natural inclination to help others. The second was that I was very good at teaching others. I did not just get the books for them. I had taught everyone in the class how to use the library. My methods of teaching, using observation and empathy to inform my coaching works in many places, not just the library.
After years and years of research in the field of particle physics, work that I contributed to made the front page of the New York Times. That was exciting, and certainly yielded the most seminal publication of my career. But the feeling I got was strange. My father asked me how it felt to get that result published and my response was, “I’m actually far prouder of smaller papers along the way where my students, the ones I trained up, were first author”. What drives me is the success of my students. For me the joy of research doesn’t come from publishing a result. It comes from helping my students level up. That is how we ensure the future.