Meet Matthew

Inspired by the premise of Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, I wanted to talk to students about their best college teachers. The goal is to reflect on their experiences in a variety of college classrooms to find key actions that a college teacher displayed toward them or for them, so that we can learn how students believe they are best supported for learning. 

In this format, I sit down with a college student to ask a few simple questions about what they think makes for an effective college instructor. I’m curious if we can learn just one thing from each student, that might help us try something new, or double down on an activity or approach that students like and that they know helps them to learn. 

I want to introduce you to Mathew, a junior undergraduate student as we think about some of the strong instruction or strong teachers that he’s worked with. The thing that stood out to me with Mathew was this idea of application. I hear this from my students all the time, “how does this apply? How am i going to use this?”. What Mathew was able to share about was not only applying the content to career and future goals and the sort of job he might end up in, but also applying it to memories and being able to walk out of the classroom and see the world slightly differently, and this idea of real-life examples really broadened for me in talking to Mathew.