Article: "I Survived my First Three Years of Teaching, and You Can Too"

Note to self: Do my own post soon. 

ALLISON LINNEA

JAN 2, 2015

Dear New(ish) Teachers:

Laugh. A lot. If you don’t, teaching will eat you alive. Start keeping track of the funny things your students say and do. These will keep you in high(er) spirits during the low times.

Cry. Really, cry as much as you need to. You will cry a lot this year. Cry because your students yell at you. Cry because you don’t make enough money to pay your bills. Cry because your students tell you sad stories. Just cry -- keeping your “teacher emotions” in doesn’t help anyone.

Take a break! I know you think you can do it all, and in many ways you can, but don’t run yourself to exhaustion. Use your personal days. Take a training day to learn a new skill and get out of your building for a day. Stay home when you’re sick. Your students will be just fine without you for a day.

Collaborate with your colleagues. There are so many years of experience in the public schools. Talk to other teachers, share ideas, and have fun together. Invite people out for drinks or coffee, and work hard to create a strong circle of like-minded social justice educators. These people will be your lifeline on difficult days -- well, every day actually.

Speak honestly and openly about your profession. You are going to meet many people who tell you “They couldn’t do this work.” Accept that they are probably right, and value yourself as someone who can and wants to do this work. It’s not for everyone, and many people will not understand why you have chosen difficult, low-paying work.

Do whatever in your power to stay calm. You will have students and situations that make your blood boil. If you work with middle or high school students, you will likely be called a “bitch” and other choice words. Don’t get mad -- at least for long. Help those students learn to express their anger in healthy ways.

Be mindful of the School to Prison Pipeline when you discipline children. Are you or your school criminalizing children? Are you working to end zero tolerance policies? If not, get on it!

Remember that people do not learn from those they do not like. Work every single day to make stronger relationships with your students. This is what matters. It is the relationships and connections that both you and your students will remember for years to come.

Use creative subordination when necessary. You might be asked (told) to teach or do something that you don't agree with. Do your best, but remember, always follow your “teacher gut” when you believe that what you are being asked to do is not serving your students well. It is your duty to do right by your students, even if it means breaking a few “rules” along the way.

Your first year of teaching is like your first year of college—you’ll probably gain twenty pounds and wonder what the hell you’re doing. It’s OK. This is normal. (Remember the laughing part?)

Get to know the people who matter to your students -- their families, mentors, and church leaders. These are the most important people in your student’s lives. Invite parents to your classroom. Set up a meeting to share good news. Call home regularly with updates. Don’t ever leave families “guessing.” Many of them are too busy to deeply engage with their children’s schooling, but that does not mean that they don’t care.

Race matters. Check your White privilege and “whiteness,” and then check it again. You cannot do this work without a critical lens towards race. Study anti-bias work. Teach from a transformative perspective to the best of your ability. Your students want to talk about race. You must facilitate this. You are doing an injustice if you do not.

Your students will be tested a lot. Prepare your students to the best of your ability for these tests, but do not forget to teach this message: You are NOT your test score.

Do your best to make school fun for students. If you want students to be on time for your class, you need to make it fun. Making school fun will take time, but you owe it to yourself and your students to do so.

Understand that you will develop amazing lessons that you think are interesting and engaging. However, your students will still hate many of them. Move on. Teaching is about learning, and you will rarely do anything “right” the first time.

Don’t let people tell you that you have it “easy” because you “get summer off.” Ugh. This is the worst, and it’s not even true -- I can’t think of one teacher who doesn’t do work for their job during the summer. Not.a.single.one. Do not let others devalue you for who you are or the work you are committed to.

You must learn about current pop culture. You’re already a freak to your students because you are “sooo old.” Try not to increase your freakiness by referencing shows from your childhood that your students have never heard of.

Talk about justice and rights. You are a cultural maker, and you have the ability to help young people shape their thoughts. Don’t ever let an insult or a slur go unaddressed. Students look to you to set boundaries and teach them. They may not act like they are watching or listening, but they are. What you do and say matters.

Tell your students that you care about them and that they matter. As you’ll learn, many of your students don’t have the support systems in place that you did. They are “your kids” too. You must take ownership of their well-being and education because not all of your students will have other adults in their life who can, or will, do this.

Learn about your student’s backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. This is essential for your job. Many of your students will have PTSD or severe trauma from war, living in refugee camps, or growing up in homes and communities with violence. You will not be prepared for this, but you must do your best to be a constant for your students.

You will have days where you come home so tired it takes all you have just to put on pajamas and order takeout. It’s OK. Teaching is not your whole life, but it is a huge part of it.

It may not say so in your job description, but you are a nurse, social worker, counselor, cook, parent, mentor, advocate, coach, AND teacher. Try and prepare yourself for all of the various roles you will need, and want, to take on. You won’t always get it right, but if you have good intentions, that is a fine start.

Remember why you became a teacher. You care about people, and even on the hardest days, you will still find good in your students. They are important people who deserve the chance to be healthy and happy. You work for them—do right by them.

Love,

Allison

P.S. Nap when needed.

Article: "Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter"

#2, #3, #4, #7.

Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter.

Updated by Joseph Stromberg on January 16, 2015, 10:15 a.m. ET@josephstromberg joseph@vox.com

The way most students study makes no sense.

That's the conclusion of Washington University in St. Louis psychologists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel — who've spent a combined 80 years studying learning and memory, and recently distilled their findings with novelist Peter Brown in the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.

USING ACTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES IS MOST EFFECTIVE

The majority of students study by re-reading notes and textbooks — but the psychologists' research, both in lab experiments and of actual students in classes, shows this is a terrible way to learn material. Using active learning strategies — like flashcards, diagramming, and quizzing yourself — is much more effective, as is spacing out studying over time and mixing different topics together.

McDaniel spoke with me about the eight key tips he'd share with students and teachers from his body of research.

1) Don't just re-read your notes and readings

Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

"We know from surveys that a majority of students, when they study, they typically re-read assignments and notes. Most students say this is their number one go-to strategy.

WHEN STUDENTS RE-READ A TEXTBOOK CHAPTER, THEY SHOW NO IMPROVEMENT IN LEARNING

"We know, however, from a lot of research, that this kind of repetitive recycling of information is not an especially good way to learn or create more permanent memories. Our studies of Washington University students, for instance, show that when they re-read a textbook chapter, they have absolutely no improvement in learning over those who just read it once.

"On your first reading of something, you extract a lot of understanding. But when you do the second reading, you read with a sense of 'I know this, I know this.' So basically, you're not processing it deeply, or picking more out of it. Often, the re-reading is cursory — and it's insidious, because this gives you the illusion that you know the material very well, when in fact there are gaps."

2) Ask yourself lots of questions

Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe via Getty Images

"One good technique to use instead is to read once, then quiz yourself, either using questions at the back of a textbook chapter, or making up your own questions. Retrieving that information is what actually produces more robust learning and memory.

RETRIEVING INFORMATION IS WHAT PRODUCES MORE ROBUST LEARNING AND MEMORY

"And even when you can't retrieve it — when you get the questions wrong — it gives you an accurate diagnostic on what you don't know, and this tells you what you should go back and study. This helps guide your studying more effectively.

"Asking questions also helps you understand more deeply. Say you're learning about world history, and how ancient Rome and Greece were trading partners. Stop and ask yourself why they became trading partners. Why did they become shipbuilders, and learn to navigate the seas? It doesn't always have to be why — you can ask how, or what.

"In asking these questions, you're trying to explain, and in doing this, you create a better understanding, which leads to better memory and learning. So instead of just reading and skimming, stop and ask yourself things to make yourself understand the material."

3) Connect new information to something you already know

"Another strategy is, during a second reading, to try relating the principles in the text to something you already know about. Relate new information to prior information for better learning.

"One example is if you were learning about how the neuron transmits electricity. One of the things we know if that if you have a fatty sheath surround the neuron, called a myelin sheath, it helps the neuron transmit electricity more quickly.

"So you could liken this, say, to water running through a hose. The water runs quickly through it, but if you puncture the hose, it's going to leak, and you won't get the same flow. And that's essentially what happens when we age — the myelin sheaths break down, and transmissions become slower."

(Quasar/Wikimedia Commons)

4) Draw out the information in a visual form

"A great strategy is making diagrams, or visual models, or flowcharts. In a beginning psychology course, you could diagram the flow of classical conditioning. Sure, you can read about classical conditioning, but to truly understand it and be able to write down and describe the different aspects of it on a test later on — condition, stimulus, and so on — it's a good idea to see if you can put it in a flowchart.

"Anything that creates active learning — generating understanding on your own — is very effective in retention. It basically means the learner needs to become more involved and more engaged, and less passive."

5) Use flashcards

Deb Stgo

"Flashcards are another good way of doing this. And one key to using them is actually re-testing yourself on the ones you got right.

KEEPING A CORRECT CARD IN THE DECK AND ENCOUNTERING IT AGAIN IS MORE USEFUL

"A lot of students will answer the question on a flashcard, and take it out of the deck if they get it right. But it turns out this isn't a good idea — repeating the act of memory retrieval is important. Studies show that keeping the correct item in the deck and encountering it again is useful. You might want to practice the incorrect items a little more, but repeated exposure to the ones you get right is important too.

"It's not that repetition as a whole is bad. It's that mindless repetition is bad."

6) Don't cram — space out your studying

Johannes Simon/Getty Images

"A lot of students cram — they wait until the last minute, then in one evening, they repeat the information again and again. But research shows this isn't good for long term memory. It may allow you to do okay on that test the next day, but then on the final, you won't retain as much information, and then the next year, when you need the information for the next level course, it won't be there.

PRACTICE A LITTLE BIT ONE DAY, THEN TWO DAYS LATER

"This often happens in statistics. Students come back for the next year, and it seems like they've forgotten everything, because they crammed for their tests.

"The better idea is to space repetition. Practice a little bit one day, then put your flashcards away, then take them out the next day, then two days later. Study after study shows that spacing is really important."

7) Teachers should space out and mix up their lessons too

Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

"Our book also has information for teachers. And our educational system tends to promote massed presentation of information as well.

"In a typical college course, you cover one topic one day, then on the second day, another topic, then on the third day, another topic. This is massed presentation. You never go back and recycle or reconsider the material.

"But the key, for teachers, is to put the material back in front of a student days or weeks later. There are several ways they can do this. Here at Washington University, there are some instructors who give weekly quizzes, and used to just put material from that week's classes on the quiz. Now, they're bringing back more material from two to three weeks ago. One psychology lecturer explicitly takes time, during each lecture, to bring back material from days or weeks beforehand.

THE KEY, FOR TEACHERS, IS TO PUT THE MATERIAL BACK IN FRONT OF A STUDENT DAYS OR WEEKS LATER

"This can be done in homework too. It's typical, in statistics courses, to give homework in which all of the problems are all in the same category. After correlations are taught, a student's homework, say, is problem after problem on correlation. Then the next week, T tests are taught, and all the problems are on T tests. But we've found that sprinkling in questions on stuff that was covered two or three weeks ago is really good for retention.

"And this can be built into the content of lessons themselves. Let's say you're taking an art history class. When I took it, I learned about Gauguin, then I saw lots of his paintings, then I moved on to Matisse, and saw lots of paintings by him. Students and instructors both think that this is a good way of learning the painting styles of these different artists.

"But experimental studies show that's not the case at all. It's better to give students an example of one artist, then move to another, then another, then recycle back around. That interspersing, or mixing, produces much better learning that can be transferred to paintings you haven't seen — letting students accurately identify the creators of paintings, say, on a test.

"And this works for all sorts of problems. Let's go back to statistics. In upper level classes, and the real world, you're not going to be told what sort of statistical problem you're encountering — you're going to have to figure out the method you need to use. And you can't learn how to do that unless you have experience dealing with a mix of different types of problems, and diagnosing which requires which type of approach."

8) There's no such thing as a "math person"

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

"There's some really interesting work by Carol Dweck, at Stanford. She's shown that students tend to have one of two mindsets about learning.

IT TURNS OUT THAT MINDSETS PREDICT HOW WELL STUDENTS END UP DOING

"One is a fixed learning model. It says, 'I have a certain amount of talent for this topic — say, chemistry or physics — and I'll do well until I hit that limit. Past that, it's too hard for me, and I'm not going to do well.' The other mindset is a growth mindset. It says that learning involves using effective strategies, putting aside time to do the work, and engaging in the process, all of which help you gradually increase your capacity for a topic.

"It turns out that the mindsets predict how well students end up doing. Students with growth mindsets tend to stick with it, tend to persevere in the face of difficulty, and tend to be successful in challenging classes. Students with the fixed mindset tend not to.

"So for teachers, the lesson is that if you can talk to students and suggest that a growth mindset really is the more accurate model — and it is — then students tend to be more open to trying new strategies, and sticking with the course, and working in ways that are going to promote learning. Ability, intelligence, and learning have to do with how you approach it — working smarter, we like to say."

Notes: Edutopia's Top 10 for 2014

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/edutopias-top-10-for-2014-betty-ray 

Dipsticks: Efficient Ways to Check for Understanding

A Simple Way to Gain Information from Your Students: Ask Them

When preservice teachers are confused as to why their students performed poorly on an assignment, I gently say, "Did you ask them why?" After all, having learners use their own vernacular to articulate why they are stuck can be profoundly useful for identifying where to target support.

According to the American Institute of Nondestructive Testing, the simplest tool to encourage student self-assessment is evaluative prompts:

• How much time and effort did you put into this?
• What do you think your strengths and weaknesses were in this assignment?
• How could you improve your assignment?
• What are the most valuable things you learned from this assignment?

Ways to Check for Understanding

[Short writing activities - > Longer writing activities - > Writing and Drawing activities]

Twitter Post

• Define _______ in under 140 characters.

5 Words

• What five words would you use to describe ______? Explain and justify your choices.

Simile

• What we learned today is like _______.

Explaining

• Explain the main idea using an analogy.

The Minute Paper

• In one minute, describe the most meaningful thing you've learned.

So What? Journal

• Identify the main idea of the lesson. Why is it important?

Muddy Moment

• What frustrates and confuses you about the text? Why?

Opinion Chart

• List opinions about the content in the left column of a T-chart, and support your opinions in the right column.

Intrigue Journal

• List the five most interesting, controversial, or resonant ideas you found in the readings. Include page numbers and a short rationale (100 words) for your selection.

Sticky Notes Annotation

• Use sticky notes to describe key passages that are notable or that you have questions about.

Top Ten List

• What are the most important takeaways, written with humor?

Advertisement

• Create an ad, with visuals and text, for the newly learned concept.

Doing It Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary

Teaching Words

Robert Marzano stresses that in all content areas, direct vocabulary instruction is essential and suggests six steps:

Step one: The teacher explains a new word, going beyond reciting its definition (tap into prior knowledge of students, use imagery).

Step two: Students restate or explain the new word in their own words (verbally and/or in writing).

Step three: Ask students to create a non-linguistic representation of the word (a picture, or symbolic representation).

Step four: Students engage in activities to deepen their knowledge of the new word (compare words, classify terms, write their own analogies and metaphors).

Step five: Students discuss the new word (pair-share, elbow partners).

Step six: Students periodically play games to review new vocabulary (Pyramid, Jeopardy, Telephone).

Marzano's six steps do something revolutionary to vocabulary learning: They make it fun. Students think about, talk about, apply, and play with new words. And Webster doesn't get a word in edgewise.

Idea: 826 Valencia model

Bring them through the pirate supply shop, to the writing room.

https://www.ted.com/talks/mac_barnett_why_a_good_book_is_a_secret_door?language=en

(6.30 - 8.05)

After college, my first job was working behind one of these secret doors. This is a place called 826 Valencia. It's at 826 Valencia Street in the Mission in San Francisco, and when I worked there, there was a publishing company headquartered there called McSweeney's, a nonprofit writing center called 826 Valencia, but then the front of it was a strange shop. You see, this place was zoned retail, and in San Francisco, they were not going to give us a variance, and so the writer who founded it, a writer named Dave Eggers, to come into compliance with code, he said, "Fine, I'm just going to build a pirate supply store." And that's what he did. (Laughter) And it's beautiful. It's all wood. There's drawers you can pull out and get citrus so you don't get scurvy. They have eyepatches in lots of colors, because when it's springtime, pirates want to go wild. You don't know. Black is boring. Pastel. Or eyes, also in lots of colors, just glass eyes, depending on how you want to deal with that situation. And the store, strangely,people came to them and bought things, and they ended up paying the rent for our tutoring center, which was behind it, but to me, more important was the fact that I think the quality of work you do, kids would come and get instruction in writing, and when you have to walk this weird, liminal, fictional space like this to go do your writing, it's going to affect the kind of work that you make. It's a secret door that you can walk through. 

Article: "The Hard Part"

There is Not Enough, but we will Find A Way. (For students too.)

The Hard Part

Peter Greene (Teacher and writer, blogger, curmudgucation.blogspot.com)
Posted: 07/06/2014 7:08 pm EDT Updated: 09/05/2014 5:59 am EDT

They never tell you in teacher school, and it's rarely discussed elsewhere. It is never, ever portrayed in movies and tv shows about teaching. Teachers rarely bring it up around non-teachers for fear it will make us look weak or inadequate.

Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post once put together a series of quotes to answer the question "How hard is teaching?" and asked for more in the comments section. My rant didn't entirely fit there, so I'm putting it here, because it is on the list of Top Ten Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.

The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:

There is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual's instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.

You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals -- wait! what?! That CAN'T be right! Plus quizzes to assess where we are in the grammar unit in order to design a new remedial unit before we craft the final test on that unit (five minutes each to grade). And that was before Chris made that comment about Poe that offered us a perfect chance to talk about the gothic influences, and then Alex and Pat started a great discussion of gothic influences today. And I know that if my students are really going to get good at writing, they should be composing something at least once a week. And if I am going to prepare my students for life in the real world, I need to have one of my own to be credible.

If you are going to take any control of your professional life, you have to make some hard, conscious decisions. What is it that I know I should be doing that I am not going to do?

Every year you get better. You get faster, you learn tricks, you learn which corners can more safely be cut, you get better at predicting where the student-based bumps in the road will appear. A good administrative team can provide a great deal of help.

But every day is still educational triage (process of determining the most important things from amongst a large number that require attention). You will pick and choose your battles, and you will always be at best bothered, at worst haunted, by the things you know you should have done but didn't. Show me a teacher who thinks she's got everything all under control and doesn't need to fix a thing for next year, and I will show you a lousy teacher. The best teachers I've ever known can give you a list of exactly what they don't do well enough yet.

Not everybody can deal with this. I had a colleague years ago who was a great classroom teacher. But she gave every assignment that she knew she should, and so once a grading period, she took a personal day to sit at home and grade papers for 18 hours straight. She was awesome, but she left teaching, because doing triage broke her heart.

So if you show up at my door saying, "Here's a box from Pearson. Open it up, hand out the materials, read the script, and stick to the daily schedule. Do that, and your classroom will work perfectly," I will look you in your beady eyes and ask, "Are you high? Are you stupid?" Because you have to be one of those. Maybe both.

Here's your metaphor for the day.

Teaching is like painting a huge Victorian mansion. And you don't actually have enough paint. And when you get to some sections of the house it turns out the wood is a little rotten or not ready for the paint. And about every hour some supervisor comes around and asks you to get down off the ladder and explain why you aren't making faster progress. And some days the weather is terrible. So it takes all your art and skill and experience to do a job where the house still ends up looking good.

Where are school reformy folks in this metaphor? They're the ones who show up and tell you that having a ladder is making you lazy, and you should work without. They're the ones who take a cup of your paint every day to paint test strips on scrap wood, just to make sure the paint is okay (but now you have less of it). They're the ones who show up after the work is done and tell passersby, "See that one good-looking part? That turned out good because the painters followed my instructions." And they're most especially the ones who turn up after the job is complete to say, "Hey, you missed a spot right there on that one board under the eaves."

There isn't much discussion of the not-enough problem. Movie and tv teachers never have it (high school teachers on television only ever teach one class a day). And teachers hate to bring it up because we know it just sounds like whiny complaining.

But all the other hard parts of teaching -- the technical issues of instruction and planning and individualization and being our own "administrative assistants" and acquiring materials and designing unit plans and assessment -- all of those issues rest solidly on the foundation of Not Enough.

Trust us. We will suck it up. We will make do. We will Find A Way. We will even do that when the state and federal people tasked with helping us do all that instead try to make it harder. Even though we can't get to perfect, we can steer toward it. But if you ask me what the hard part of teaching is, hands down, this wins.

There's not enough.

Writing: "teatime"

teatime

churned yellow
a spoon of sweet
pockets of air
mingle and meet

drops, crumbs
smooth velvet
creamy peaks
scooped and spatula-ed

flour and flower
sitting on tiers
just to say
for you, my dears

Article: "Scientists outshine arts students with experiments in creative writing"

Scientists outshine arts students with experiments in creative writing

By Aifric Campbell

With no publication angst and a killer work ethic, science students easily match their peers in the humanities in the art of creative writing. It even makes them better scientists.

Students in a lab at Imperial College London. Photograph: Alamy

We are eating noodles in the sunshine at Imperial College, London, when my former student tells me about his invention. “Meet SAM,” says Joachim and places his prototypes on the bench – a tiny switch and actuator that will allow everyone to make wireless smart things without knowing anything about coding or electronics. A jacket that heats up when your body temperature drops, a fridge that warns you’re out of milk – it’s an Internet of Things idea and the applications seem endless once you start connecting people and objects. While Joachim answers my questions about how he and his team will manage the journey from inspiration to execution, I’m reminded of another conversation we once had about risk.

It was inspired by a story about an assassin in the murderous heat of a noonday piazza – one of those ambitious narratives whose success depends entirely upon managing uncertainty. For I am a novelist and Joachim is a mechanical engineer who took my creative writing class as part of his degree, and he outlines his business plan with the same passion and precision as he wrote that short story.

For the past three years I have taught creative writing to students in science, technology, engineering and medicine at Imperial who can take humanities options for credit. It was the interdisciplinary challenge that intrigued me, but I’ll admit to being sceptical about the students’ writing potential. So I was delighted to be proved wrong: their writing is easily as good – and often better – than that of creative writing students I have taught elsewhere, including at the University of East Anglia. And my external assessors – also writers who teach and hold PhDs from UEA – agree.

“I hate the perception that scientists and engineers struggle with any arts subject,” says my student Chris Winchurch (electrical engineering). Most of these AAA/A*A*A* undergrads at the world’s second-ranked universityabandoned formal humanities at 16, so creative writing is a grade gamble. But they are eager to explore their potential and to resolve a certain tension between their artistic and scientific interests.

On the first day we rearrange the furniture. Stem students (science, technology, engineering and maths) spend their days in labs and lecture theatres and this is very often the first time they sit face-to-face to discuss ideas and peer review. Their communication skills need liberating, their critical vocabulary is underdeveloped. Farah Shair (biochemistry) tells me the first homework on character felt like “reaching inside my brain to find a part that hasn’t been used for so long”. Chris admits that it was “a lot harder than I anticipated to switch from modules with correct answers and rigid methodologies into a much more subtle and subjective world, but in the end it was the highlight of my week”.

We set sail with three rules: observe the world; read attentively; get black on white.

During the year of reading and writing and observing, students learn to tolerate uncertainty in process and outcome, embrace risk (creative, intellectual and performance) and practice humility – since writing is an exercise in failing better each time. Their writing is imaginative in theme and topic. They do not fall fatally in love with their work and will abandon experimental dead ends. Their killer work ethic sustains them through the endless revision that is essential to good writing.

Aifric Campbell: ‘Students do not fall fatally in love with their work.’ Photograph: Richard Saker/Guardian

“They are technically and creatively ambitious,” says Laura Fish, an external examiner for the course and senior lecturer in creative writing at Northumbria. “Inventive risk-takers who look at story and subvert,” adds playwright and fiction writer Laura Bridgeman, a moderator for the course who has taught creative writing at four different UK universities. They are interested in writing that will engage a reader – which makes them perfect raw material for workshops where work must always be placed ahead of ego.

Best of all, Imperial’s creative students are not obsessed with publication as an end goal. Like Junot Diaz‘s students at MIT, Imperial’s students are “not all trying to be novelists”. This makes them particularly exciting to teach, since they are completely absorbed in the creative process and spared the torment that afflicts so many students on creative writing degrees.

The debate about creative writing studies continually circles around this issue of publication, and distracts from the far more interesting question about its effect on intellectual and personal development. Stem students discover unexpected synergies between their scientific and artistic talents. Fanny Heneine (civil engineering) says she “produces more creative and well-thought solutions to engineering problems”. Alumnus Stuart Holland, now a software engineer, alternates between programming and creative writing projects to exercise “two different yet complementary forms of creative problem solving”. James Owen (biology) reflects on the potential for creative writing to engage the public in “what is current and exciting in science”.

As I write, Joachim and his team are well on the way from dream to execution: SAM Labs has ignited the technology press and smashed through its funding targets. According to Joachim, the “constant questioning and endless iterations” of his startup experience are very similar to creative writing.

“The most profound lesson I learned from creative writing studies was about the impact of science on society,” concludes Stefan Grossfurthner (biotechnology). A year of reading and writing fiction raises all sorts of ethical and moral questions that inspire Stem students to apply their talent for sceptical enquiry to an analysis of human behaviour.

And isn’t this precisely what we would all wish for our scientists, engineers, technologists and doctors – that the men and women who build, design, code, fix and shape our world are enriched by their exploration of our human condition?