John Martin, a doctoral student in the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering, completed the CTL’s COID 516 course this past fall. In his end-of-course reflection, he highlighted his journey to becoming a more self-aware instructor and contemplated the purpose and practice of teaching influenced by his experience in COID 516. We received permission from John to publish excerpts from his reflection and hope his words inspire you, as much as they inspired us, to start the semester by reflecting on what teaching is.
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I wonder if I’ve taught for the last time. It’s a thought that lingers in the background. I know that I won’t be teaching again for the remainder of my PhD, and it’s strange to think that something so central to my life for the past several years could quietly end without ceremony. […] The skills I’ve developed as a teacher – communicating complex ideas, reading a room, and facilitating difficult discussions – are skills that transfer far beyond the classroom. I remember my first day of teaching vividly. I’d over-prepared to a near absurd degree. Notes, outlines, even backup plans for if the backup plans failed. My heart was pounding like it was ready to burst. But it’s funny to think about that version of me now. […] Each of those experiences left an imprint on me, broadening my sense of what it means to “teach.”
But if I’m honest, I’m not sure I’ve always been as reflective about teaching as I should have been. This 516 course has offered me a mirror I didn’t know I needed. It’s not always easy to look into that mirror. I’ve realized that I like talking too much, not just in casual conversation but in the classroom too. I’ve seen this tendency in myself and in others. [I] have a shared flaw: [dominating] conversations, especially with students. We’re drawn to the sound of our own ideas and the thrill of explaining them. There’s comfort in it, but I’m learning that comfort isn’t always a sign of growth. [Listening] is the hardest and most essential practice of all. Listening is not the passive act it’s often mistaken to be. It’s active, deliberate, and requires a suspension of self. Too often, I find myself caught in the orbit of my own thoughts, preparing a response before the other person has even finished speaking. In teaching, this tendency is even stronger. The desire to provide answers can eclipse the more subtle work of holding space for students to discover their own.
[…] If I’ve learned anything from this journey, it’s that teaching and learning are mirrors of one another. The teacher is always a learner, and the learner is always teaching something in return. It’s a relationship of reciprocity. It’s tempting to think of teaching as a performance of expertise, but I’m beginning to understand that it’s more like a practice of attention. It’s about being present, about noticing what’s emerging in the room, not just the ideas on the board, but the unspoken hesitations, the moments when a student’s eyes light up with understanding. The best teachers I’ve observed for this course seem to be attuned to these subtleties. They aren’t trying to “control” the class. They’re trying to be in conversation with it.
So I guess I’ve learned that control is a hollow pursuit. You can control deadlines, grading rubrics, and class schedules, but you cannot control curiosity. You cannot control the moment a student truly begins to wonder. And that’s the heart of it, isn’t it? If teaching has a purpose beyond information transfer, it’s to cultivate wonder, to make space for it, to protect it, to honor it. Wonder isn’t efficient. It’s unruly, nonlinear, and resistant to control. But it’s also the root of every meaningful question a student will ever ask.
This semester has been a reminder that growth often looks like letting go, of control, of certainty, of tidy definitions. The classroom isn’t a stage where I’m meant to perform. It’s a space for becoming. For students, yes, but for me too. To teach is to be in a constant state of becoming. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for every moment I’ve spent standing in front of a classroom, heart pounding, ideas spilling out faster than I can catch them. And I’m grateful for the quieter moments too, the pauses, the silences, the spaces where something unspoken hangs in the air, waiting to be named.
If I’ve taught for the last time, I’ll carry these lessons with me into whatever comes next. I’ll carry the humility of not-knowing, the patience of listening, and the courage to relinquish control. Teaching, after all, was never about control. It was always about presence. About being fully there, with others, as we all try to figure things out together. And that’s a kind of learning that never really ends. At least I hope so.