Teaching is like building a Tree House

Teaching is like building a tree house
Debora Weber-Wulff

I spent two days in Sweden with my son and his friend building a tree house. Back in Germany I was forced to have some hard thoughts about how I actually teach, in order to determine how best to transpose teaching to an Internet-based environment. I was struck by the similarities between my lecture preparations and building a tree house.

I do not write a book, elegantly argued and sequentially built up, for each course.

Instead, I stand before a metaphorical pile of wood. I have lots of books, Internet articles, saved bits of paper, objects and what not. I begin digging through the pile looking for useful material.

There are some great, solid bits that I pick out right away.
There are some pieces that are overly ornate, but which will do in a pinch.
Some stick out in a nasty way, but with a saw I can cut off the offending portions.
There are some real thin boards in the pile, but they will have to do, as there is nothing else in the pile that is the right size.
Some important pieces are not to be found. For the tree house, I just have to go get the old Christmas tree from the compost pile, clip off all the branches, strip the bark, smooth out all the sharp bits, and I have just what I want. For a lecture I either have to formulate from scratch what I want to say, or sit down and construct some bits of program that actually work that I can present and discuss in class.

Now the fun begins. I have a pile of useful material, but it has to take on form. I try a piece here, see if it will fit, saw off offending pieces, Jerry-rig a support, curse when things go wrong, and enjoy watching my masterpiece grow. Of course, it is not perfectly level. Some bits only fit at weird angles. There is the odd hole, but these can be useful. In the tree house, my son imagines putting fishing line down the hole and catching a fish, or using the hole as a sanitary convenience. In my lecture, these will hopefully become the points that so engage my students that they begin to discuss the topic with me and begin to understand what I am trying to teach them.

I am proud of the result. It is not a piece of carpentry mastery or of scientific brilliance. But it serves its purpose well as a platform for the imagination. My son imagines himself a pirate, a spy, a detective. Lunch in the tree is a wonderful adventure. My students learn to think, to weigh what they hear and determine if it is believable, not just take my word for it. They construct their own understanding from my rough presentation. And from this construction comes the deep learning that I want them to do.

So: should I try and make my on-line courses be perfectly organized, leave no open questions, have each piece fit seamlessly into place? I think not. Perhaps for the very first courses the students are taking, so as not to unnecessarily frighten them as they begin the e-learning adventure. But for any courses from the second one on I think not. I want to build tree houses, to lift my students up to a higher level, so that they can from there reach to the sky.