There’s something magical that happens in a classroom—something that can’t be engineered by algorithms or contained in a learning management system. When you spend your life teaching, particularly in the world of higher education, you begin to understand that knowledge isn't just a set of facts, and students aren't just vessels waiting to be filled. They are people. Full of contradictions, energy, doubts, ambition, humor, and the capacity to surprise you just when you think you’ve seen it all. That is the first secret of teaching at a university level: you never really master it. Each student brings a new mystery, and each semester, a new puzzle to solve.
I remember vividly a moment that forced me to re-learn what I thought I already knew. My son, deep in his doctoral studies in immunology, had just finished explaining to me the crux of his research on Murine Immunity-Related GTPase M Proteins. At that moment, I nodded politely, feeling proud, even slightly smug—I thought I understood it. Later that evening, I tried to relay it to a colleague. The look on her face reminded me of something every educator eventually confronts: the illusion of understanding evaporates the second you're asked to explain. That moment didn't embarrass me. It reawakened my respect for the work it takes to truly teach something, not just repeat it.
The deeper I dove into various subjects throughout my career—math, social studies, educational design—the more I realized that real teaching isn’t just about mastering content. It’s about decoding how others learn. That means asking questions that have nothing to do with the curriculum. What makes this student tick? What metaphors are already living in their world that can serve as bridges into the abstract? How do we transform something as inaccessible as algebra into a reflection of real life? These are the moments that thrill me.
Several years ago, I found myself sitting on a subway in New York, casually eavesdropping on a group of teenagers debating whether Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant was the better player. Their arguments were layered, full of unspoken variables: influence on teammates, consistency under pressure, the evolution of the game itself. No formulas. No charts. But undeniably, mathematical thinking. When I later shared this with a leading math curriculum designer, he lit up. That’s exactly the kind of thinking we want to cultivate, he told me. And just like that, I realized the best learning moments don’t live in textbooks. They emerge from lived experience.
What makes higher education such fertile ground for discovery is not the infrastructure, though ivy-covered walls do inspire. It’s the fact that you’re working with adults at the edge of transformation. These aren’t passive learners. They’re people who have made a conscious choice to devote time, money, and energy to evolve. That changes the stakes. When I taught a course on personalized learning recently, we went deep—not just into frameworks and data, but into the vulnerable truth of what it means to really connect with someone in an academic setting. What does it mean to make education personal, not just personalized? These aren’t just words. They are the bedrock of meaningful teaching.
One of my students once told me that what mattered most to her in my class wasn’t the syllabus. It was the sense that I saw her. That I asked her opinion not out of duty, but out of genuine curiosity. That I remembered what she said, not because it would be on the exam, but because it resonated. That conversation reminded me of something I read in a book that compiled stories of prominent Americans reflecting on their teachers. Across the board, it wasn’t the content or even the teaching style that left a mark—it was the feeling of being known.
That same feeling came rushing back during an encounter in Chatham, Massachusetts. I was in town for a wedding and stumbled upon Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, signing books at a local store. Years earlier, he had been taught by my friend and colleague Tom Snyder. When I mentioned Tom’s name, Junger's whole demeanor changed. His eyes softened, his voice cracked. “Does he know I wrote this?” he asked. That question—so childlike, so deeply human—hit me. No matter how accomplished we become, a part of us still seeks the nod of approval from those who once believed in us before we believed in ourselves.
It’s easy these days to fall into the trap of thinking that technology will solve education. I’ve worked in educational technology for decades. I know its power. But I also know its limits. Software can individualize learning paths. It can adapt to errors, gamify progress, and optimize outcomes. But it cannot care. It cannot recognize the trembling voice of a student who just failed a midterm or the quiet confidence of one who finally found their academic voice. These are the moments that demand human presence, not artificial intelligence.
There’s a powerful emotional current in teaching that’s often left out of scholarly papers or policy reports. A student once approached me at a conference, years after taking one of my introductory courses. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her. “I just wanted to say thank you,” she said. “You told me I was good at this. No one had ever said that to me before.” I nodded, still unsure of the context, but profoundly moved. How many such moments go unnoticed? A comment made in passing, a piece of feedback written late at night, a glance of reassurance during an oral presentation—these seemingly minor gestures can reverberate across a student’s life. You just never know.
That mystery is what keeps me going. It's why I’ve never been bored, even after decades in the field. I still get butterflies before the first class of a new semester. I still find myself scribbling new ways to explain the same concept at 11 PM. I still stop in my tracks when a student sends me an email months later sharing how a lesson stuck with them, not because of its content, but because of how it made them feel about themselves.
I recall an academic conference I attended at UCLA, where Dr. Edmund Gordon, now over a hundred years old, gave a talk that shook the room. Afterward, I went to introduce myself and reminded him that I had been one of his students at Yale. “You taught me that fairness is a right,” I said. His eyes welled with tears. So did mine. We often talk about the impact teachers have on students, but we rarely acknowledge how much students shape their teachers in return. Teaching isn’t a monologue. It’s a dialogue. And sometimes, the lesson that returns years later is the one you needed most.
In higher education, the stakes are high. The cost of tuition, the demands on mental health, the pressure to perform—none of it is trivial. But amidst all that, the classroom remains one of the last sacred spaces for curiosity, vulnerability, and growth. Students come in as they are—sometimes confident, sometimes broken, often searching—and we meet them where they are, with open eyes and open hearts.
That’s why I teach. Not because I’ve mastered it, but because I never will. Not because every lecture is flawless, but because every exchange holds possibility. Not because I believe I’m always right, but because I believe in the transformative power of conversation, connection, and shared discovery. And as long as students keep showing up with questions, doubts, humor, and hope, I’ll keep showing up too—with my own questions, my own hope, and an endless curiosity about the people sitting in those chairs, waiting to be seen, heard, and believed in.✨