Why Engineers Make the Best Teachers

This image has nothing to do with my post. It was just way too awesome to not include somehow.

I know you've all been rocking back and forth in your chairs, waiting in anticipation of this post. I feel it would be cruel and unusual punishment to delay it any further, so I'm going to acquiesce your desires and bring forth my opinion on WHY ENGINEERS MAKE THE BEST TEACHERS.

First a few disclaimers. I have a TON of things to write about today, so this post will solely be focused on its title. Later, I'm going to make a post recapping the numerous events that took place this week, because well, let's face it - a lot of stuff happened.

Also, I can't say that any engineer would make a great teacher. There are a few subset qualifiers within the engineering profession that probably should be added to this post. The title of this post in its true, unadulterated form probably should be something along the lines of WHY ENGINEERS-WHO-HAVE-SERVED-A-MISSION-FOR-THE-CHURCH-OF-JESUS-CHRIST-OF-LATTER-DAY-SAINTS-AND-TAUGHT-MULTIPLE-CHURCH-COURSES-AND-GIVEN-NUMEROUS-TALKS-IN-CHURCH-AND-HAVE-GOOD-PRESENTATION-SKILLS-AND-ARE-ABLE-TO-READ-WHETHER-OR-NOT-SOMEONE-IS-UNDERSTANDING-WHAT-YOU-ARE-EXPLAINING-TO-THEM-AND-CAN-SPEAK-OBJECTIVELY-ABOUT-THEIR-OPINIONS-AND-CAN-WORK-WELL-WITH-OTHERS MAKE THE BEST TEACHERS. Unfortunately, that title was a little long, so I just put the essential parts up there. And lest you are all thinking "Jonathan is only talking about himself with this one", I can think of at least one other engineer who meet these rigorous requirements. So no, I'm not just ranting as to why I will make the best teacher. And especially after this week... opinions may have changed. More on that in my next post.

As any good engineer would do, let's start at the beginning. What is the purpose of a teacher? A teacher is a person who teaches or instructs. Pretty straightforward. In my case, I am "teaching or instructing" Algebra 2 for LA Summer School.

There is an important point that needs to be made here before I continue this discussion, and that is just an extension of my opening argument, which is that any field of engineering is probably the greatest education that a person can receive. The reason why we all choose engineering is because we like to figure stuff out, we like to know how things work, and we're usually pretty good at it. Based on these facts, we can extend this desire to satisfy our lust for comprehension to any field. We may not be able to understand something now, but we have an innate confidence that given adequate time and resources, we will be able to. Except with maybe relationships - rarely are they logically based, and so there is no straightforward sequence of facts that can be followed to discover its fundamental elements. So maybe in that regards, we fail. But other than that, I feel I can freely speak for my profession and confidently assert that we don't know or understand everything, but we can.

Going back to teaching. When I signed up for Teach for America, one of the questions they ask you in your application is what subject do you feel most qualified to teach? I looked at the list - English, History, Music, Chemistry, Biology, Spanish, Physics, Statistics, Math - and I checked all of them. Ok, I didn't check Music, but I did check the rest of them. I speak all of those languages, and I knew that if I didn't remember every detail, I was confident that my engineering background wouldn't let me fail. I could go back and relearn it, because at some point during my Engineering education, I had taken advanced courses in all of those subjects, and it would only be a matter of refreshing to be able to teach it. As Engineers, we take such a diverse course load that it only strengthens our conviction that we can teach ourselves anything.

Evidently there is a shortage of math teachers in this country, and for some TFA felt that I was most qualified to teach math. Which I was totally happy with, because when it came down to it, that was the language I'd need the least refreshment of, with the exception of maybe physics.

Once an engineer knows the subject that they'll be instructing, this is where our education and innate nature really come into play. We look at the fundamentals of what we're going to be teaching - what is the foundation that this subject has been constructed upon. In my case, the question was what are the basic principles of Algebra 2 that my students will need to know in order to pass the class? I can relate this back to the many physics and engineering courses, where we would take a potentially complex situation, - such as a sealed, heated water tank that is being elevated through a vacuum being maintained at a constant temperature while losing water through a hose of varying diameter that is attached 3 feet from the bottom of the tank, and being asked to solve for the rate at which the entropy is increasing in the enclosed space. Sure, it sounds complex, but if we just change the inertial frame, set some boundaries, calculate the biot number of the tank, and have a table to give us a few constants - this becomes child play! A proverbial engineers playground, if you will.

Comparatively, figuring out a high school Algebra 2 course is child's play. Plus, Algebra 2 is a class that most engineers took years ago, so for them, it really was child's play.

Once those basic elements of what they want to accomplish have been discovered, the next question an Engineer will ask themselves is - what steps do I need to take to get from point A, where we are now, to point B - mastery of the fundamental elements of our subject. I can liken this stage of teaching to the many times where our teachers would give us an assignment, such as, say, reduce the lead time of constructing a custom foot orthotic from 2 weeks to thirty minutes. We want results in 6 months. At this point we had the vision of where we wanted to be, and when we wanted to be there. Now we just had to backwards plan, and identify every obstacle that stood between us and our objective.

Such as it is with teaching. We have our ultimate objective - pass the state test that will be administered 9 months from now. At this point, and engineer will sit down and meticulously backwards plan every detail that needs to happen from now until the time we sit down to take the test. Details such as in what logical, sequential order should the material be presented to how many #2 pencils am I going to need in order to administer the final exam?

We pay attention to the details. The next time you get in your car on a hot summer day, look at the air vent, from which the cool, air conditioned air is blowing from. Consider the fact that ever little flap in that vent at some point, was considered by an engineer - how it would connect to the vent housing, to the shape of the vent flap and its drag coefficient, and how the turbulence would vary according to the air speed that is flowing over it, and interfere with the overall cooling of the vehicle. That's not to mention the flow dynamics of the piping to get the air from the compressor (meticulously designed by an engineer) to your face (designed by another type of engineer). The details matter.

Now that we have our subject, and have painstakingly hammered out the details of our class, now we have to teach it to our students. This is where our background as engineers in the LDS church really begin to pay off. Even if we don't consider the fact that we spent 730 days in some foreign land teaching people gospel principles, the odds are that from the time we were able to walk, at some point we were standing in front of a group of people, be it primary or the Elder's quorum, giving a detailed discourse on our assigned topic. Our presentation skills have been refined over years of church service, and we feel comfortable in giving presentations before unknown audiences.

As missionaries, we had to ensure that our audiences well understood the material we were teaching them. They had to understand the immense importance of the covenant they were going to make with God. This requires a certain level of being able to read a person's comprehension of the material. In like manner, as an engineer teaching in front of a room of adolescents, we have to be able to look at our students and gauge how far the material we have broken down for them is sinking into their young minds. The quizzical look that appears on a person's face as a result of misunderstanding has duly been impressed on our minds, and it is quickly apparent as we gaze across our classrooms.

The final point I want to make, is that as a teacher there are many people besides your students you have to interact with. There are parents, principals, and other faculty members who all want to have a say in how things are going in your classroom. As an engineer, we have extensive experience of dealing with the masses, compiling their input, and then extracting the necessary data from it in order to make adjustments to our projects. And not only making adjustments from outside sources, but from within as well. As engineers, we rarely work alone on a project, and almost always in conjunction with a team of engineers. It is important that we learn to listen to the input of our fellow engineers, because we recognize that others have insights and areas of expertise where we are lacking. We know that it is only by working together in a sense of teamwork, where all are contributing their personal backgrounds to the project, that the best results are attained. Such are the things in the classroom. As we work with our administrators and colleagues, we need to be able to value their input and years of experience, and incorporate that into our plans.

My intent has been to convert you to engineering in general, but more specifically if you are looking to go into education. And even if you aren't, like I said earlier, engineering will give you the skills to do, well, whatever you want. Or at the very least, that's what your brain will tell you.

But in all seriousness, I have written this hopefully with enough of a fun, semi-sarcastic/serious tone that you have been able to tell where I mean which. The idea for this really came during my first week here at TFA, where the material we covered for the first 4 days LITERALLY was everything that I have learned as a result of being a member of the Church, and in my engineering courses. The classes I attended talked about backwards planning, setting goals, and effective presentation methods - all things that I had either explicitly taken classes on, or had learned as a result of church service. It was frustrating for me to have to sit through these, but as I sat there, I realized that for probably 95% of the other people there, they didn't have experiences that had bolstered their backgrounds in this area.

So I sat in frustration, but I got through it. While in reality, I hold high regards for the thesis of this document, I truly recognize that there are innumerable other qualities that make a great teacher, and they are not only found in many, many areas outside of engineering, but that there are many areas that engineering really doesn't prepare you for. I want to give a shout-out to all those educators in my family, and friends who are doing likewise - I'm appreciative of the work you do, and know that there aren't enough of us out there. The children of our future could use more fantastic, dedicated minds.

Kudos to all of you who have gotten to the end of this entry. I hadn't intended for this to be so long, but as I got going, I realized I had a lot to say. My next entry will probably be just as long, but after that, I hope to make many more frequent, less extensive entries. This week was just crazy, as you’ll see in the next episode. Coming next - week one.