Great Teachers

   “A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”
― Albert Einstein

 “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” -- Ken Robinson

Some of the questions I’ve pondered for much of my adult life are “What makes a teacher great?”  and “How do we educate ourselves and our children?”  I love movies like the Ron Clark Story, Freedom Writers,  Stand and Deliver, and The Ben Carson Story .  I think there are important lessons and insights in these movies that apply not only to disadvantaged youth, but to all children. 

I recently heard a Colorado legislator arguing for a reduction in money for K-12 citing studies showing that throwing more money at education does not yield commensurate benefits. He continued his argument by stating that college level courses often had very large classrooms (lecture halls?) yet were successful in educating their students. What is required to properly educate our students, particularly the young?

I think many scientists would say that they had a great teacher that inspired them, that started them on their journey of exploration, a teacher that they admired. I think these teachers have a number of characteristics that define great teachers:

 A great teacher is, first, a great student.  A great teacher learns as much from his students—maybe more-- than they give back.  In all the movies above, the teachers carefully observed their students-- learned about the personal lives and motivations, the impediments to learning, and the life passions of their students—and adapted their teaching methods to connect to their students.  This theme of connection resonates through my blogs, and it is seminal to education.  A great teacher can connect to the mass audience in a large lecture hall, with universal themes in stories and parables that touch our emotions as well as our intellect.   

What is missed in these large lecture halls is the intimate connection that comes from the interaction of student and teacher, and this can be incredibly powerful.  An example comes to mind of a great teacher I had in college (University of Colorado, Boulder) in a class on the biology of the bi-lipid membrane.  The professor was L. Andrew Staehelin, now a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado.  Towards the end of the course, we were required to write a research paper on a topic we chose.  Dr. Staehelin did something that was unique in my university experience.  He sat down with each and every student and went through their manuscripts line by line.

Obviously, this cannot be done in a large lecture hall classroom.   His intent was not only to teach by pointing to shortcomings in the manuscript, he also solicited additional information from the student by asking questions.  He got to a section in my paper that cited an experiment, where he admitted he didn’t understand what I was trying to communicate.  I had to confess to him that I really did not understand the paper I cited.   What Dr. Staehelin told me (see Einstein above) was that if I didn’t understand the paper, the authors of the paper did not understand the experiment well enough to communicate to me effectively. 

Now, imagine my surprise from having a highly regarded scientist at the top of his field telling me—an undergraduate—to trust my own instincts, to trust myself:  That the fault did not lay in me; that I had not failed; that my inability to understand was not due to my stupidity.  That what we had here was a failure to communicate.  How empowering!  I have never forgotten that lesson, and it is a lesson that I pass on to my children, co-workers and employees.  This is the kind of student/teacher interaction that can and should take place in every classroom every day.  Yet this is kind of interaction is not possible or occurs infrequently in large classrooms.

Another trait that I have observed in good teachers is a passion—not only for teaching—but for their subject matter.  I visited my daughter’s classroom in 5^th grade, where I was able to observe a science lesson.  The lesson consisted of writing vocabulary words on the blackboard and querying the students for concepts in the lesson.  What I did not see was the passion, the mystery and wonder of events, the flights of imagination... the creativity! I love to play what I call the “caveman” game with my kids.  How did that first person come up with a way to measure time?  Distance?  What tools in nature could that person employ to solve a problem? 

I watched a TED talk video ( www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html) by Sir Ken Robinson, a creativity expert.  He is an incredible communicator, and very funny, but he has a serious message:  There are different forms of intelligence, yet we try to put all students in the same box in school.  We de-emphasize the creative arts and don’t encourage our students to develop their creativity.  Liz Coleman (www.ted.com/talks/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education.html) talks about rethinking our educational strategy.  We drive our students to become experts in a narrow field.  Our students learn more and more about less and less.  And because of this, we begin to lose our ability to communicate—to connect with each other.  Ironically, the scientists that I most admire--and the ones that I hire--are the creative individuals who are interested in the whole world around them.  I find that I can talk with them about everything—from the origin of the universe, to politics, to quantum physics, to diet and exercise, to global warming, to evolution, to anything and everything--in the world around us.

Finally, a good teacher gives her students permission to fail.  I struggled with this concept at first.  My business education taught me that good management does not reward effort, but rather success.  And that’s what we do in school now.  If you get an A, I will give you an extra recess or a slice of pizza.  It does take effort to get an A—but if you fail you don’t get rewarded.  Of course the unintended consequence of this strategy is that we develop children (or employees) who don’t take risks because there is no reward for failure. 

I think a better strategy is to encourage an internal, rather than external, reward.  Better to reward our children for exercising their imaginations.  To find motivation from the joy of discovery.  To revel in our curiosity about the world around us.  And if we fail, to realize that there is no failure if we learn.  There is no better teacher than failure, if that failure is a result of daring greatly--of attempting to do something that lies in the very limits of our ability.  I once heard that chess great Bobby Fisher remarked that he never learned anything from winning a chess match.  Yet the hallmark of Bobby Fisher's chess was the imagination, boldness and fearlessness of his game in spite of the risks.

I marvel that my children have an incredible ability to find out answers to their questions on the internet.  My greatest challenge is not to have them find the answers, but to ask the questions.  I pray that they get teachers who can inspire them to ask questions.

Ode to the American Farmer

Besides my role as CEO of Avidity, I am Chief Technology Officer for Beacon Biotechnology and Beacon Food Safety where I work on developing rapid tests for food pathogens. I'm mostly focused on testing food just before it reaches the consumer. The first week in April I had the opportunity to see our food production system at the source--the American farm. My wife's cousin Ed is a master farmer near Kalona, Iowa. The importance of agriculture to the area is embodied in the name Kalona, named after a prize winning bull. 

 According to a recent National Public Radio Broadcast (NPR --March 13, 2012) farm income is up 30 % in the last two years, due in part to increases in productivity: ".. modern farmers can work much more land, and get two or three times more grain out of it than their fathers did." Americans have always embraced innovation and technology. You need look no farther than Ed's farm to understand how the American farmer has embraced innovation and technology to feed the world. Ed won a technology award from the Iowa Beef Center at Iowa State University.

It is amazing to me the way in which Ed is able to integrate the latest in science and technology in an integrated, comprehensive vision of his farm. Ed's success starts with hard work. My wife and I would meet up with Ed around 7:30am for breakfast—we were just getting started on our day, but Ed was coming home from his early chores. Ed manages roughly a thousand acres of land with his son-in-law, another full-time worker, and some part-time help. Ed grows soybeans and corn, and raises beef cattle and pigs.

The beauty of Ed's farm is how each of these different pieces works together synergistically. Let's start with corn. I know a lot has been written about how ethanol production has hurt food prices and nets very little net energy in the domestic energy equation. I would like to see the detailed analysis of ethanol production from corn to see if it has incorporated all the "externalities" of ethanol production. One of the by-products of ethanol production is a fibrous, high-gluten waste product that can be blended to provide a nutritious feed for the pigs. Ed buys this inexpensive gluten by-product and blends his own pig feed.

Some of the silage is harvested and blended with hay and other feeds to be used as nutritious cattle feed that Ed can store for extended periods of time by storing the blended silage in a lined, covered pit. The waste from Ed's pig operation is harvested and injected into the soil used to grow soybeans and corn; this process minimizes pig-waste odor and the result is an outstanding fertilizer. The silage also serves as ground cover to conserve the soil.

The pig operation is a marvel of technology. Pig farming receives a lot of bad press for the problems with the pig waste, and for the perception that the pigs are "factory inputs" raised under inhumane conditions--over-crowded and stressed. I can tell you that Ed raises his pig in pens where the pigs run, chase each other, and generally seem content. Attributing human emotions and traits like "happy" to livestock is probably a mistake, but the animals, at least, showed no signs of distress. The pig house automatically lowers sun blinds in the windows when the house begins to get to warm, and turns on fans. The air-flow in the pig house minimizes odor and the smell was not unpleasant. The pigs are automatically given food from an outside storage bin when the weight of the pig feed in their troughs drops to a set-point.

The role of genetics on the modern farm cannot be understated. I would guess the American farmer is a little confused by the uproar around Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's or the clever pejorative Frankenfoods). Let me point out the irony that all of our crops and domestic food animals were "engineered" by farmers selecting for desirable genetic traits over millennia. The randomness of genetic assortment makes this selection a somewhat sloppy hit or miss proposition, but nonetheless it's been very successful. We've gotten better at selecting new traits through molecular biology. There is nothing inherently bad in this faster, cheaper way of doing things, although certainly we can debate the wisdom of loss of diversity and other choices that may or may not increase risk to the farmer and to society in general.

Ed's pigs produce bigger litters, are bred to be lean, and mature quickly. His corn, particularly the high yields, herbicide resistance, and the addition of the amino acid lysine which gives the corn more complete nutrition, are GMO, but he also plans to grow organic soybeans where he can get a premium price. His cattle are Angus and Charlet /Angus hybrids. He artificially inseminates his heifers with bull semen that is thoroughly analyzed and validated for its ability to produce offspring that are lower in birth weight and heavier at the time of harvest. This minimizes the loss of calves at birth, and maximizes Ed's profits when the cattle are sold. Ed took great pride in showing me the cattle chute that to his pen that is based on the left-handed spiral developed by Temple Grandin, the autistic CSU professor who pioneered much of the cattle handling equipment that made cattle ranching both more humane and efficient.

Ed’s equipment is an important key in his ability to maximize his yields. Ed’s combine for harvesting corn is a technical marvel. Ed’s combine calculates and maps both soil moisture content and yields as he is harvesting. This is accomplished by coupling the moisture and yield data to GPS in the cab of the combine. This yield data can be used to identify areas where yields might be improved and insights into yield variables.

The planters, too, are technically advanced. Ed uses no-till planting where the planter scrapes a narrow path through the tillage to expose the dark soil. The dark soil is efficient at capturing sunlight and warming the ground, fostering germination. A blade on the planter cuts a narrow furrow and a seed is placed at the proper depth (taking into account the soil moisture content) and spacing. A wheel follows to seal the furrow.

After Ed’s long day, he checks weather forecasts, global farm prices, commodities prices on the Chicago Board of Exchange, and a wealth of other information that inform all his decisions about corn, soybeans, pigs, and cattle. On top of all this, Ed is familiar and concerned about ecological issues regarding farm runoffs, water, soil conservation, and genetic cross- contamination.

Ed thinks about high agricultural land prices, and more than once lamented the lack of planning and foresight as prime agricultural land is paved and built upon. Ed told me about how a farmer in his area managed to harness methane produced by the pig waste to power machinery, and I know he’s thinking about this. Ed’s ability to provide a high level of care for his animals, his skill at maintaining his farm and equipment, his incredible wealth of information that he uses in his decisions, his knowledge of plant and animal genetics, his soil conservation and enrichment techniques, his awareness of the impact of his farm on the surrounding ecosystems are more than impressive: Ed creates a viable, sustainable farm utilizing all available inputs in the most efficient and compatible way.

Ed--and farmers like him--is the reason the American farmer is the best in the world. Ed embodies all that is good about Americans: Their willingness to innovate, their hard work, their intelligence and their diligence. Ed, you’re my hero.

Question Authority

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.” ― Albert Einstein

“Everyone is born a genius”....R. Buckminster Fuller

In my years in the lab and managing scientists I’ve come to realize that almost every scientist I know resists and/or resents authority. The pervasiveness of this attitude leads me to believe that revulsion of authority is a defining personality trait of scientists. Of course this presents a challenge to anyone trying to manage a team of scientists. This is particularly true when a manager tries a “top down” or bureaucratic management style with scientists.

However, I now believe that the resistance-to-authority trait is a good thing – maybe even a necessary trait—for a scientist to be a good scientist. I am told by a psychologist friend that everyone goes through a stage of development around 2 or 3 years of age (the terrible twos?) where we learn to say “no.” I was told by this friend that while I could bend my child to my will during this period (and what parent doesn’t want their child to obey them?) that it was critical that the child learns to exercise their will by saying No.
As I thought about this, I realize that the scientist must, by the very nature of their task, refuse to accept the current paradigm, to think outside the box, and re-think what is known and accepted—often at a great personal cost and professional risk. I have personally witnessed many examples of scientists who endured personnel and professional attacks by adopting a viewpoint that differed from accepted scientific dogma. Those who persevere and who eventually are shown to be correct may be rewarded, sometimes with a Nobel Prize.
Two of the most famous recent examples of this are Stanley B. Prusiner (1997) for his work with scrapie, and Robin Warren (2005) for his discovery that Helicobacter pylori is a causative agent of duodenal ulcers. Both men endured a lack of support and funding yet persevered long enough to be rewarded with the Nobel Prize.
And so, with a nod to the Boomers:
Question Authority!