Leslie Myint

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Teaching and learning

Last tendedDec 28, 2025╌ ❖ ╌7 min read

How can I teach in a way that reaches every student without burning out and while being true to who I am?

How can we create new models of education that are fun and cultivate a better world while working within traditional education systems that make this work challenging?

Teaching is as much about the teacher as it is the students

I came to deeply appreciate this after reading The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. My Substack essay Who is the teacher that teaches? explores some crucial aspects of my identity that have shaped how I approached teaching in the past and how I want to approach it in the future.

One of the scariest questions to ask in a room full of teachers is “What are we even doing?” Is what we’re doing in the classroom making the impact that we want?

What impacts do I want?

It feels like I’m supposed to say that I want my students to gain an appreciation for statistics.

I’m not going to contradict that. That is something that I would be happy about. But is that it?

In the Afterword to The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer raises a provocative proposal for what we might wish for our students:

I have five immodest proposals regarding the education of a new professional:

  1. We must help our students debunk the myth that institutions possess autonomous, even ultimate, power over our lives.
  2. We must validate the importance of our students’ emotions as well as their intellect.
  3. We must teach our students how to “mine” their emotions for knowledge.
  4. We must teach them how to cultivate community for the sake of both knowing and doing.
  5. We must teach—and model for—our students what it means to be on the journey toward “an undivided life.”

What strikes me about these proposals is how they are so obviously not just about domain content. Having a goal for my time with students that is not solely about domain content captivates me. I do want my students to have an understanding of statistical tools, but if I were forced to choose between some domain knowledge and growing as a human, I would choose the latter.

In reality, I probably will never have to choose between the two in an all-or-nothing way. I have recently focused on trying to marry the two by encouraging my students to pursue project topics that are meaningful to them. I’ve tried out asking students to write down their 12 favorite problems on the first day of my data science courses. I can tell that some students love this exercise. I’m not sure how it resonates with everyone though. I’d like to try the following prompting question for projects…

What is something lacking in the world, and how can we make it better?

I like the potential for this question to spark meaningful project ideas. For one, it can encourage students to think about what they care about and long for. For students who do end up picking a topic that is personally relevant to them but who are nervous about sharing their connection to it, the framing of this question (how it’s not “What is something that you are lacking in the world”) allows them to center the topic but stay at a safer emotional distance from the topic, with room to get more comfortable showing connection with the topic as time goes on.

The “make it better” part invites action. Taking action is the best antidote for a fear of failure when starting something meaningful and uncertain. This part also very naturally nurtures a connection with data.

Essays

Since starting at Macalester:

Older (from when I was a graduate student):

Notes

Quotes

I remembered when I used to get anxious walking patients back to my office. Am I walking too fast? Am I swinging my hips? Does my ass look funny? It seems so long ago now. I admit I’m a battle-hardened version of my former self, more stoic, possibly more indifferent. Was I a better doctor then, when I knew less and felt more? Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke

Caring too much can lead to indifference. Is indifference (in some degree) better—for the teacher, the student?

What should the goal of education be?

William Cronon’s 10 goals in the essay Only Connect: The Goals of a Liberal Education resonated with me:

  1. They listen, and they hear.
  2. They read, and they understand.
  3. They can talk with anyone.
  4. They can write clearly, persuasively, and movingly.
  5. They can solve a wide variety of puzzles and problems.
  6. They respect rigor not so much for its own sake but as a way of seeking truth.
  7. They practice humility, tolerance, and self-criticism.
  8. They understand how to get things done in the world.
  9. They nurture and empower the people around them.
  10. They follow E. M. Forster’s injunction from Howards End: “Only connect…”

HT@ Macalester’s Curriculum Implementation Committee for sharing the essay

Group work

Facilitating good group work experiences in project settings is a challenge. This newsletter referenced a useful resource that provides an activity for teams of students to do as they begin group work to provide vocabulary for the challenges of working in a group (e.g., domination, ghosting, freeloading, and groupthink) and ideas on how to address these challenges. An instructor guide to that resource is also presented.

Teaching and AI

From Erik Hoel’s May 2025 post:

In other words, grading needs to transition to “showing your work,” and that includes essay writing. Real serious pedagogy must become entirely about the process. Tracking the impact of education by grading outputs is no longer a thing, ever again. It was a good 3,000 year run. We had fun. It’s over. Stop grading essays, and start grading the creation of the essay. Same goes for everything else…

The idea of focusing only on process is compelling. Because the idea of focusing on process is important for mindfully moving through the journey of life---something I have come to appreciate more as my daughter grows older and I think about the trajectory of my parenting and as I continue making progress on meaningful work during my sabbatical.

And yet, the cynic in me is wary. Students can and would use AI to work on the process of a project if they don’t find it meaningful, interesting, useful, or relevant. For example, asking students to brainstorm ideas for a topic is absolutely something AI could do easily. Designing the right activities to engage with the process is essential. The activities need to be engaging, ones that they would be curious to try out.

This NYT editorial is a great discussion of the evolution of adaptation to AI on the instructor end and how it has prompted a return to older forms of assessment: blue books (which are quite foreign to a generation that grew up with typing) and conversations (which have the potential to develop the relationships that are beautiful about an in-person college experience).

Designing for student engagement

This post has a great idea for cultivating a culture of engagement and support among the students in a cohort. Students can’t only be students. They need a second role. A role related to cultivating a community in the classroom.

Learning how to learn

From Teach Students How to Learn by Saundra Yancy McGuire:

A first-year dental school student described the difference this way: “Studying is focusing on the ‘whats,’ but learning is focusing on the ‘hows,’ ‘whys,’ and ‘what ifs.’” I am particularly fond of this last response. The student who gave it went on to elaborate, “I find that when I focus on the ‘whats,’ if I forget them I can’t recreate the information. But when I focus on the ‘hows,’ ‘whys,’ and ‘what ifs,’ even if I forget the ‘whats,’ I can recreate them.”

Books

Fun with R

Graph View

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