Similar simmering

A decade ago, when I was teaching at UW-Bothell, my department chair said something to me that has stayed with me ever since.

“You know,” he said, “I feel like a course tends to go well the fifth time I teach it.”

This was not part of a formal mentoring session, just a lighthearted remark in the hallway, but the meaning was clear enough: one might need several passes through a course to make it good, and that’s OK.

I appreciated that sentiment, though I privately wondered whether, for me, even five attempts was enough.

When I moved to Everett Community College and started teaching Human Anatomy for the first time, here were the iterations of that course that eventually got me to a state of reasonable satisfaction: Spring of 2018; Winter, Spring, and Fall of 2019; Winter, Spring, and Fall of 2020; Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall of 2021; and Winter, Spring, and Fall of 2022. That’s 14 iterations in all.

Upon hearing this, you might wonder whether I’m a perfectionist. Well, yes and no. I can be a perfectionist, but my class really was less than stellar even on the 5th or 6th time.

Alternatively, you might wonder whether I might just not be that smart. Shouldn’t a normal person be able to get a course into shape way, way faster than that?

Yes, probably — but I can’t help but believe that my super-slow process yields some dividends that other people might never get to. That, by taking a course apart and rebuilding it, over and over, I eventually create something of unique value.

In trying to describe this process a couple of years ago, I used the analogy of a simmering crockpot:

…At the very least, though, [mathematician June] Huh provides a vivid example of what’s possible when ideas have lots of extra time to simmer — perhaps due to choice, or perhaps due to the limitations of the brains we were issued.

If you read that post carefully, you may sense me wrestling with self-doubt. Deep down, I know I do good work, but why oh why does it take me so long to do it?!?

In that post, I sought validation in the example of a Fields Medal-winning math professor, but it was a stretch. The fact that some guy does brilliant math very slowly proves very little about me doing biology education very slowly.

Just last week, however, I noticed another bit of validation: a 2019 essay arguing that painfully long periods of teaching development might not only be common for achieving mastery, but necessary. Author Linda Costanzo, a veteran teacher of medical students, even used the word “simmering”! Here is what she said:

…There is a necessary period of self-absorption that lasts several years. We may subscribe to the principles of good teaching (how can we not?), but we cannot live those principles without an initial period of intense self-absorption. During this time, we are…still simmering in our period of growth, still learning the technical aspects of the trade. This period, the adolescence of our teaching, is by its nature self-conscious. It must be, in order for us to do the inside work that needs doing. And, in my opinion, we cannot choose to skip it, since we are growing the confidence to eventually turn outward, toward our students.

Then one day, with a reasonable set of skills and partially executed teaching plans under our belts, we enter the lecture hall and look out at our students. For the first time we see them, really see them…The transformed teacher is tethered to her students. No matter what happens from here on, the focus is clear and the tether will hold.

This passage stunned me. It was the most eloquent, most stirring explanation of my slow, weird, self-indulgent process that I could have imagined.

In general, I don’t need a lot of professional validation these days. I enjoy the work, and that plus an occasional word of praise or thanks will get me through the month. Yet Costanzo’s essay brought me to tears. I guess it’s always powerful to read the words of someone who really gets you, whether they know you or not.