There’s something oddly humbling about standing in front of a room full of students, whether it’s a cavernous lecture hall or a small seminar room with just a few chairs. The air always feels electric, charged with expectation and potential. For over four decades, I’ve taught everything from social studies to math and learning design, often in contexts far beyond the traditional classroom. But what keeps drawing me back, what roots me firmly in the world of higher education, is not just the content, or the prestige, or even the academic rhythm of the year. It’s something far more personal. I teach because every time I do, I get to learn, to connect, and to witness transformation.
It’s funny how often we think we understand something until we try to explain it to someone else. Years ago, my son was working on his PhD in immunology, researching something about GTPase M proteins and their role in fighting infections. He tried to describe his work using military metaphors — something about an immune infantry and special ops — and I nodded along, thinking I was right there with him. A few days later, I attempted to pass that explanation on to a colleague. Halfway through, I realized I didn’t have a clue. I stumbled over the terminology, mixed up the analogies, and ended up making his work sound more like a Marvel movie than a molecular breakthrough. That moment wasn’t just humbling. It was a powerful reminder that teaching isn’t simply about transferring knowledge. It’s about digesting it so fully that it becomes part of you — so much so that you can reshape it into something meaningful for someone else.
This depth of understanding, this need to process before you pass on, is something higher education thrives on. In no other space are we as challenged to stretch our comprehension — not just of what we teach, but of who we teach. Because every classroom is a mosaic of stories, backgrounds, and perspectives. Teaching means diving into the content, yes, but also into the lives of your students. What are they bringing to the room? What cultural references resonate with them? What metaphors make sense? When I was designing a math curriculum for middle school students several years ago, I kept hearing the same thing from administrators: these kids were behind, disengaged, and tired of math that never seemed to reflect anything in their real lives.
I did what many educators do when they hit a wall. I turned to the experts. I went to Singapore to understand their math strategies, consulted with Carol Dweck on mindset theory, and spoke with George Lakoff about mathematical metaphors. His advice? Ask the kids. Find the metaphors in their world. So I listened. One day on the New York subway, I heard a group of teenagers passionately debating whether Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant was the better player. No equations, no numbers — but layered within their arguments was real mathematical reasoning: How do you measure impact? What’s the value of leadership? Contribution? Consistency?
That subway conversation changed the way I thought about curriculum design. It reminded me that students aren’t blank slates. They’re already engaging in complex thinking. The challenge is connecting what we’re trying to teach to the language they’re already using. In higher education, especially, where students bring increasingly diverse lived experiences into the classroom, this connection becomes essential. That personal bridge between teacher and student is what elevates learning from transactional to transformational.
And there’s a profound intimacy to that exchange, an emotional honesty that doesn’t always get acknowledged in academic circles. It’s not just about crafting a perfect syllabus or nailing the final lecture. It’s about presence. Real presence. I once had a group of students explore personalized education with me — not in the buzzword sense of AI-driven schedules or modular content delivery, but in the way learning becomes meaningful when it's anchored in personal connection. The classes that stuck with them weren’t the ones that had been carefully engineered to match their interests. They were the ones where a professor’s passion lit up the room, where a throwaway comment became a spark, where disagreement was welcomed with curiosity.
It reminds me of a wedding I attended on Cape Cod years ago. The groom was a former employee at an education tech company I co-founded, and among the guests was Tom Snyder, a legendary teacher who had inspired generations. He taught social studies and science with a mix of wit, wisdom, and irreverence, and one of his former students, now a celebrated author, was making headlines at the time. Sebastian Junger, fresh off the release of The Perfect Storm, was sitting outside a local bookstore, signing copies. I approached him with a freshly bought book and mentioned that I had just seen his old fourth-grade teacher. His face lit up with the kind of tenderness that only childhood memories can evoke. “Does Mr. Snyder know I wrote this?” he asked. You could see the need in his eyes — not for validation from the public, but for recognition from the man who first taught him how to think.
That moment has stayed with me. We often speak of student evaluations, of peer reviews, of publishing metrics — all necessary in the modern university world. But what drives many of us isn’t measurable. It’s that whisper of connection, that hope that we’ve somehow mattered. Even if we never know how.
And sometimes we don’t. We move through semesters and students drift in and out. But every now and then, someone finds you. I remember attending a conference in California, sitting down for lunch at a session led by Dr. Edmund Gordon — a giant in the field of education, then already in his 90s. As I approached his table, I introduced myself and joked, “You don’t remember me, but I was one of your students at Yale over 40 years ago.” He smiled, politely puzzled. I continued, “You helped set me on this path. You taught me that fairness in education isn’t optional. And I’ve spent my career fighting that fight.” His eyes welled up. So did mine. His family, sitting nearby, began to cry too. In that moment, I realized that this work we do — shaping minds, challenging assumptions, believing in someone before they believe in themselves — doesn’t fade with time. It echoes.
Higher education is full of these echoes. They reverberate through research labs, studio spaces, online forums, and lecture halls. The students change, the tools evolve — these days we have AI-assisted learning platforms, remote collaboration apps, blockchain credentialing systems. All of it powerful. All of it promising. But none of it replaces the human bond. You can automate assignments, but you can’t automate inspiration. You can simulate understanding, but you can’t replicate the spark in someone’s eyes when they suddenly get it.
As someone deeply embedded in the world of educational technology, I’ve seen platforms come and go. I’ve helped build them, test them, market them. They’re impressive — personalized learning algorithms, adaptive testing, sophisticated data analytics. But they’re not magic. They don’t care if a student is struggling silently or if they’ve just had a breakthrough. They can’t smile, can’t raise an eyebrow, can’t offer a nod that says “I see you.”
That’s our job. And it’s a job I love. Because teaching is never just about subjects and skills. It’s about trust, about patience, about showing up. It’s about telling a roomful of students — some confident, some terrified, some completely indifferent — that they matter. That their questions are valid. That their voices belong in the conversation.
And maybe, years from now, one of them will cross a city street, or flip through a book, or stand at a podium, and remember something they heard in your class. Not necessarily a fact, but a feeling. A belief that they were seen, heard, challenged, and lifted. That someone cared enough to teach them not just what to know, but how to think, how to question, and how to grow.
In a world racing toward automation, higher education still holds sacred the slow work of becoming. And for those of us lucky enough to teach, that’s a gift beyond measure.