When you walk into your classroom, the students can tell right away whether you really want to be there, whether you have something interesting to tell them, whether you respect them as people. If they sense instead that you are merely slogging through this dreary duty, just writing the theorems and proofs on the blackboard, refusing to answer questions for lack of time, then they will react to you in a correspondingly lackluster manner." - Steven G. Krantz
One of my best friends, Jonathan, was the recipient of several academic awards during his graduation from our alma mater of Lee University, and yet he still found himself unable to finish graduate school. As the isolation during the widespread COVID-19 pandemic began to worsen, I got a message from Jonathan telling me he just didn't know what to do anymore. This message shocked me, as it came from someone whose Facebook feed was full of physics articles and arXiv papers I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around as he butted heads and debated with some of the highest minds in his comment sections. But in his messages it was clear that no one in his graduate department cared if he succeeded or failed. Even as someone who cared more to dissect scientific inquiries than to tend to his emotional state, Jonathan could not get past the feeling that he was not welcome in the community. So he left. It was as simple as that.
As a teacher at this university I want to provide students with the tools for success and care for them along the way. This story tells me that it is our role as instructors to do more than just give information; we must care for them as well. One of my student evaluations reads, "He truly cares about his students that he has, both about the success in this class and about their life in general, outside of this class. ... He got to know us, and that was something irregular of a lecture-style course." Just like how mathematics is the course material for my students, my students are the course material for me. It is my job to study what works for them and I am tested daily on whether my preparations line up with what my students need. A saying I find myself repeating often is, "They don't care what you know until they know that you care," so my first order of business is always to set aside the energy to provide for my students in ways that relate to their coursework.
One way to provide for students in this day and age is to utilize video technology to bolster their learning. At my current university, engineering calculus meets for five hours a week, while the students I teach only need to meet in class for three hours a week. It was no wonder to me that my students were not doing well: I could not give my students the information and examples they needed in the time I had available! As a result I began making Youtube videos for my students to watch after each lecture. Each week I would shoot about two hours' worth of extra examples that my students could watch me work while doing their homework exercises. I would then give a ten-minute iClicker quiz at the beginning of the next class period just to see if my students had watched the videos the night before. The student response was astounding: ``The outside videos were a great resource to have. What I did not understand in class, I understood by watching the videos.... I am not one to excel in math, I struggle to even get a C, but Professor Weeks really offered an abundance of materials that helped me a lot." As someone who has been pioneering this semi-flipped classroom at my graduate program, I think that technology is key to keeping students interested when their attention span for the subject seems to be at an all-time low.
I wish I could keep sharing with you all the other feedback I have received from students - things like "he asked questions to help the learner get to the correct answer, which aided in learning, rather than simply giving the answer," or "I loved his true compassion for teaching this course and being so engaged with each and every one of us. This kind of professor is worth gold," or "I literally have never had a professor or teacher through my entire life that was as welcoming to my questions and was that invested in whether or not I grasped the material," or even as I taught during the pandemic, "he was extremely understanding of the whole pandemic situation and cared about our well being," but there is just not enough space for it all. The truth is, I love teaching, and I am more than thrilled for the opportunity to teach at your institution.