A few years ago, my friend Ben came to my room to ask a question about prime numbers. We talked for a moment, and then the bell rang for my class to start. The student nearest to me asked what had just happened. I said, "Every year, he gets fascinated by one math thing. Last year was Mobius strips; this year is prime numbers." The student replied, "But he teaches Latin." Since I have a good relationship with this student, I replied sarcastically, "Yeah, when we start teaching, they make us pick one thing. We're not allowed to like anything else." The student realized how silly that was and, I hope, came to view his teachers as actual human beings.
I am interested in . . . almost everything. Seriously, I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example of something I don't find at least a little interesting. I don't like sports, but I appreciate their physics. There are genres of books I don't read, but that doesn't mean I don't find my students' interest in them worth talking about. I'm sure if I knew anything about it, I could find something in the Punic Wars to be fascinated by. There's a way to find almost everything interesting. I want my students to know that. I want them to understand that choosing a career does not mean being that thing. To that end, I try to communicate with them about many things.
My classroom is decorated with a variety of things. Of course, much of it is science, but not all of it science that I teach. One section of a wall is covered with materials about blood donation. One day, a student said, "When do we learn about blood in this class." I said, "We don't. You'll learn about it in Biology next year." He asked why I had so much stuff about blood on the wall, and I told him about blood donation and why it was important to me. I have an entire wall of National Parks, not because I will ever teach earth science, but because I love National Parks. I have bobbleheads, not only of Newton, Einstein, and Fauci but also of Michael and Dwight, Sheldon and Lenoard, and various other pop culture characters. I have artwork of former students as well as some professional artists that I admire. I want my room to tell my students that it is okay to love more than one thing. Fortunately, my school has a high percentage of students who read for pleasure. I love that and want to encourage it in all of them. When one of them is reading something I loved, I make sure to comment on it.
Why does it matter that students view their teachers as three dimensional people with a variety of interests? For one thing, it would be difficult to form relationships with all students if the only thing I was capable of talking about was physics. It shows them that being excited about learning, all learning, is an enjoyable part of life. It shows them that they can be people with a variety of interests as well. Part of education is becoming a fuller person, so they shouldn't see the educated people in their lives as less full.
John and Hank Green of Crash Course are good examples of passionate learners in many areas. Hank is known more for science and John for history, but if you follow them at all, you know they are also just generally nerds for knowledge. In one of their Vlogbrothers videos, John describes how much he loved sitting in the theater during the lead up to one of the Harry Potter movies and watching excited people enter the theater. He said, "Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'."
Let's teach our students to be nerds, not because we think academia is the only thing there is, but because we want them to be enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.
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