Born a Teacher — MATH VALUES

By Lew Ludwig

My father died when I was five, and mom decided to make a go of the small hobby farm we had started and to raise my brother and me on her own. Growing up in a single-parent household, my mother played a large part in my upbringing. She taught grades 4-6 for twelve years in the Cincinnati school system before leaving her teaching career to raise me.

I recall conversations with my mom, always the consummate teacher, more as lessons or lectures, unlike my friends' discussions with their parents. And education played a significant role in our lives: mom was a teacher, dad was a teacher, maternal grandmother was a teacher, and I ultimately married a teacher. I can still hear her saying, “Louie, teachers are born, not made.” From a very young age, I understood and accepted this as fact. Either you could teach or you couldn’t – there was no middle ground.

As my career unfolded, her words continued to ring true for me. Mine was a winding path to teaching, but I found my initial teaching experience in grad school successful and rewarding. Why not? I was a born teacher. I was genetically disposed. As is often the case, I should have noticed some of my background or training that led me to this point. In fact, by my early teens, I’d gotten over my fear of speaking in front of a group by daily hawking fresh produce from our family farm six days a week at open-air markets. The quicker we sold out, the faster we got home. I did this for ten years. I regularly tutored other students for ten-plus hours a week in college and worked in our computer center, where I instructed patrons on how to use Multi-Mate and Lotus 1-2-3. And, of course, I got certified to teach high school mathematics, with a semester of student teaching, before even teaching my first college-level math class.

Fast forward to 2014, when I first heard about the growth mindset. As we now know, a growth mindset “means that you believe your intelligence and talents can be developed over time. A fixed mindset means that you believe intelligence is fixed—so if you’re not good at something, you might believe you’ll never be good at it” (Smith, 2020). People often say, “I just can’t do math” – a fixed-mindset approach. As a mathematician, I strongly disagree with this sentiment. I have made a career of helping students realize they can do math with effort, perseverance, and the proper support.

But wasn’t my childhood belief of teachers being born, not made, an example of embracing a fixed mindset? Wasn’t I a natural-born teacher, as mom said? Of course not! While I did not achieve the 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, I did have a rich array of life experiences that prepared me well for my first college-level teaching experience in 1993. That I was a white male who projected well did not hurt either.

After reading McMurtrie’s Chronicle article, The damaging myth of the natural teacher, all of this became clearer. She explains how some teachers seem “like natural instructors.” These instructors have “it” – brilliance, charisma, empathy – while other, lesser instructors don’t. They can hold students’ attention with engaging, maybe even entertaining, presentations. While participants of such presentations feel like they understood and learned a lot, studies show that such entertaining presentations do little for student learning. I can confirm this from experience. I have given entertaining lectures about the different sizes of infinity that fully engaged my audience to the point of an emotional response. But when I tested them a week later, they retained very little. Just because you perceive someone as a great instructor doesn’t mean their performance will lead to student learning.

Now I break up my entertaining lectures: I get students talking with each other, struggling with the material. Do my students learn and retain more by working with the material? Yes.

McMurtrie’s article states, “The mark of a good teacher … isn’t being liked in the moment. It isn’t charm or brilliance or even empathy. It comes about with practice and research, and it’s ultimately about giving students the tools, the space, and the guidance they need to learn — even when they are no longer in your classroom.”

Would you like to develop your teaching? Consider opportunities to improve your teaching by starting locally. Does your department have a group that discusses teaching matters? Or does your institution have a teaching center? While the center may not be run by mathematicians, they can provide advice that will help anyone’s teaching, no matter the discipline. You can also look beyond your institution; the MAA has many resources, including the Instructional Practices Guide and monthly columns (NEED A REFERENCE). Consider attending regional or national MAA conferences. These always have a wealth of teaching ideas.

Sorry, mom. While you were right on more occasions than I can count (the stove is hot, that’s going to make you sick, she’s not the one…), on this one, you were wrong. Good teachers are not born; teaching requires constant reflection and engagement to move our students beyond where we found them.

Upside

My students demonstratively have a better understanding of the material.

Downside

My classes aren’t as entertaining.

Lew Ludwig is a professor of mathematics and the Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching at Denison University. An active member of the MAA, he recently served on the project team for the MAA Instructional Practices Guide and was the creator and senior editor of the MAA’s former Teaching Tidbits blog.