Name: Max Zinman

Essential Question: How does teaching while learning affect how one learns?

Critical Reflection 1: What I Know vs. What I Don’t Know

There are a couple things I’ve learned in regards to my essential question at this point in the Senior Project experience. Since I started to help teach physics to 10th graders, I have become aware of how thoroughly you need to understand something in order to coherently explain it to others. As a result, I find myself digging deeper into topics I am learning about, such as the science behind forming a laser for my research project or population resettlement caused by dam construction for my sustainable energy class, and doing a mental explanation to see if I can adequately give an explanation before concluding that I know a particular topic. In addition, when trying to explain momentum graphs to the 10th graders I found that starting out with the basics of a subject (e.g. momentum as a relationship between mass and velocity rather than it’s own concept) helps both my understanding and theirs, so I’ve been backtracking in my research of lasers to understand the fundamentals thoroughly as opposed to just going right into how laser cutters cut.

What I don’t know is whether or not this is the limit of the effects of teaching on learning. Does it simply change my standard for understanding material, or will it actually alter my study habits and research strategies? Finding out more about my essential question is important for me partially because I want to be a teacher, so the more I learn about teaching now the more informed and prepared I’ll be if/when I become a teacher later on, but also I really love learning, so I want to know how being a teacher will affect that aspect of my life since I’ll want to continue it. A question that is related to my essential question is “what is it like to teach”, since this is my first real experience with teaching, and I’ve already gotten a significant amount of experience to answer that question for myself, but not enough to thoroughly explain it to someone else.