I’m going to come right out and say that I don’t know if I’m a good teacher.  I’m a passionate teacher, I like to see students learning and growing, but I don’t know if I’m a good one.  And honestly, in my position I don’t know if I can be a good one.

I’m a researcher at a major research institution.  One of the first rungs of the “science-as-a-career” ladder is usually for students to join a lab as unpaid volunteers, either for course credit or just for fun.  They will get trained and learn to help out with some of the duties performed by the lab, they may even do some actual science.  Eventually they may move into a semi-paid position in which their work in the lab pays for some of their tuition, before finally moving to a paid position around their graduation.  From there, the scientific world is their oyster.  But this first rung, with untrained students, is to me the hardest.  Nobody really knows what work in a lab is like until they do it, I know when I was a kid I had a picture in my mind that scientists spent all their time sitting and thinking.  But it’s actually a job that requires moving, doing, skillful techniques, and a lot of hand-eye coordination.  These are all skills that a student needs to learn to progress as a researcher, and I don’t know if I’m doing good as a teacher.

When I work with these students, the biggest issue is imparting on them the necessary knowledge.  This starts with “what is the work we are doing and why,” student may have just learned about DNA replication for instance, but that doesn’t necessary give them the background necessary to understand why DNA-intercalating-molecules are known carcinogens.  And it definitely doesn’t give them the knowledge of all the previous research that has been done in this field that brought us to that conclusion.  So you need to get them up to speed on some of the facts of the field, “here’s what these molecules are, this is why they’re important, this is how we are studying them.”  

Furthermore, a lab is nothing like a classroom, there is no textbook filled with the One Holy Truth that they can study, textbooks only get written about the settled science that is decades old.  Instead there are papers and literature of all kinds that they need to read, scattered throughout many areas and each focusing on a different area.  These scattered papers don’t even make a coherent story unless you know how to read and understand them and draw your own conclusions.  So additionally we must teach them the skills necessary for them to gain knowledge on their own.

Finally, there’s teaching them the things we actually do in lab.  The techniques, the protocols, and even the proper methods for safety and cleaning, teaching them all there is to know about working and being in a lab is probably the most important part of keeping them safe, but it’s also difficult to teach this in any way but by rote.  You just tell them what to do and tell them to keep trying until they do it right, I don’t really have the skills necessary to teach physical activities in any way but that.

So with all that said, there’s a lot of teaching that needs to go on between senior lab members and junior lab members, and personally I don’t know if I’m up to the task.  I try to help them learn on their own, but I seem to always just give them the answer when they can’t figure it out.  I try to help them do things in lab, but only by doing it myself and letting them watch how I do it.  I just don’t know if what I’m doing is the best or most helpful way to teach them, but teaching is just such a small part of my job that I don’t have the headspace to “get good” at it either.  I hope I’m teaching them and I hope they can leave this lab with good memories of their time here, but I just don’t know.