A Reason to Teach

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been interested in teaching. I’ve done countless mentorship programs, varying from after school tutoring to disability workshops to just teaching chess on my own time with kids ranging from ages 5 to 18. I enjoy teaching not only because I like sharing knowledge and skills with others but also because it gives me a chance to connect with my students. I’ve found throughout my experiences that the most effective way to get students to respect you is to show them that you are not superior to them as a person and can connect with them at their level. As I am quite a silly person by nature, this came rather naturally for me.

The advantage of connecting to the student is twofold. First, they are more likely to listen to you if they respect you. Second and perhaps even more rewarding as a teacher, it gives students a motivation to learn. I’ve always found that in general, teaching becomes easier as you graduate into higher education but successfully teaching the younger population was more rewarding. Reflecting back, I think this has a lot to do with motivation. While older kids have a better grasp on why education is important, for their future, for their success, these concepts are more abstract for young children to comprehend. As a result, most children have no inherent desire to learn, which makes it all the more satisfying seeing their eyes light up when they finally “get it”. By connecting to your students, you give them an additional motivation to learn. I’ve often found that when I have a teacher I like, I will work harder to impress since I value their feelings towards me more. Similarly, one could argue that teachers with more influence also should generate more motivation to learn, which is definitely true in medical school.

The bottom line is learning is governed by motivation and a truly good teacher should provide an inherent motivation in the student to achieve their best. Dr. Cavalcanti cited a study done previously with monkeys that attempted to understand how they learn in a social setting. The experimenters kept several monkeys in a cage and taught one monkey how to access a fruit in a box through a certain mechanism. Then they observed the monkeys to see how they learned. Essentially, they found that eventually all monkeys gained access to the box. However, it wasn’t that the original monkey taught them the mechanism. Rather, the original monkey showed them that there was a fruit present and then the rest of the group figured it out on their own. While we cannot defend the primate as a superior mentor, it is interesting to note that it was the one that provided the motivation.

In registering for this selective, I wanted to gain some additional insight into what it means to be a good medical teacher. Medical students encounter a variety of settings through which they learn and it would be interesting to see what effective techniques are used. Thus far, I’ve been to several rounds and have been taught by two different tutors, Dr. Panisko and Dr. Ho Ping Kong. All of these experiences have been fantastic and throughout the rest of the selective, I will try to tease out the methods they use to not only teach but also motivate and hopefully apply them in my field of radiology. I definitely feel there is a lot of untapped potential for teaching in that domain but that will be discussed in a future post. More to come…

-DW