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James Roberts, the professor of mathematics who won this year’s Amoco Teaching Award, offers the following advice for those who want to teach any subject well: “Steal from others.”
Stated more diplomatically, that translates to, “Find out what other people are doing and use what they do that works,” he said.
Actually, he has other tips as well, but that one heads the list. It’s a bit of hard-won insight that has come from 34 years of teaching “just shy of 30”different math courses at USC, the only subject, he says, that comes with a phobia by students that is generally referred to as “math anxiety.”
“Even if you’re teaching students in the upper levels of math, the very things that create that phobia—that sense that if you make a mistake and slip up in any one little place you’re doomed forever—is still there,” Roberts said.
That’s unfortunate, because math is fun, he said, often appealing to people who like to solve puzzles or read murder mysteries. “Those people are really mathematicians,” he said.
Apart from trying to make math fun, Roberts believes a good math or any other kind of teacher has to inject something into each lecture that is human that students can relate to. A two- or three-minute story that is interesting or intriguing to introduce and personalize the subject matter often works well, he said.
“Eventually some math falls out of the story and leads exactly to the thing that you’re really wanting to get at,” said Roberts, adding that he uses the story-telling technique in every class he teaches, including those at the upper level.
When he first began teaching, Roberts used to spend hours preparing for his lectures, and then refined the lectures, knowing that “math is innately very interesting stuff, and a big part of having students enjoy what is going on is just making it understandable.”
But he has also since learned that good lectures alone aren’t enough to be a truly effective teacher. He believes his classes can be even more effective if he assigns homework every day and returns it to students at the very next class, provides review sessions 48 hours before exams, gives practice exams with a solution sheet so students can grade their own performance, meets personally with students who are having difficulty in a course to help them find the cause of their problem, and helps students develop exam strategies.
It’s a close, watchful, and caring approach to his students’ learning that relates to the true nature of problem-solving itself, which Roberts said boils down to the dictum that “all problems aren’t solved by a one-dimensional approach. It’s usually a variety of approaches using all the tools in the bag. You have to use all the tools, not just one or two.”
Roberts knows how to read student body language in the classroom, especially if students aren’t getting the material. And he likes feedback from students, particularly from those who raise their hands to declare something along the lines of, “I just don’t understand how you got from here to there.”
“I’ve come to realize that questions like that are the ones everyone in the class wants to know the answer to,” he said. “You really need to have somebody asking the questions that will bring me to the level of the class. There are no dumb questions, no matter what anybody asks. It’s really important to get students into a dialogue. I get nervous if I have a class that sits there and looks engaged, but isn’t asking questions.”
When he learned that he had won the Amoco Teaching Award, Roberts said the only thing he noticed immediately was that “I was walking about a foot higher afterwards,” and then added, “I was absolutely elated,” describing the award as “the thrill of a lifetime.”
In a nod to many of his “talented, hard-working faculty colleagues who are also deserving of recognition for their extraordinary dedication and efforts,” Roberts said he is aware of a massive number of other people who are doing quality teaching at a level where any one of them could receive the Amoco Teaching Award.
“I think there is a certain amount of luck in receiving the Amoco Teaching Award,” he said. “The Amoco Committee has a hard choice. I could name up to 100 people I know that if I heard of any one of them had won the Amoco Award, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
6/05
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