By REBECCA CARBAUGH
Contributing writer
Oct. 11, 2007

Rebecca Carbaugh is a 23-year-old graduate student at East Carolina University. She is majoring in the dual degree programs of Rehabilitation Counseling and Substance Abuse Counseling. After her anticipated graduation in 2009, she hopes to become a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Licensed Clinical Addictions Specialist, a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist and work in an in-patient eating disorders treatment facility.

As I waited to board my airplane that early July morning, my thoughts were not on the trip, but questioning what I was doing. I had just accepted a position as an astronomy instructor at the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer program in Mexico. But I had no real knowledge about astronomy, and I had only taught high school for one year.

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Carbaugh
Rebecca Carbaugh poses with her students in a Mexico classroom

When I arrived in Puebla, I found that all the supplies I had ordered, including a telescope, would not arrive. My entire plan was gone, and I didn’t have a back-up. My class, a group of twelve 7th-12th graders, was to arrive in three days, and I had no idea how I was going to teach them astronomy. There were only so many lectures and Internet activities I could do before they would get bored. And I would have only one opportunity to take them on a field trip to the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics, and Electronics to see telescopes and learn about their functions.

So I drew on my own philosophy of education to develop a plan.

Education is meant to help people develop new insights and gain confidence. I used this idea to construct a plan. My classes, while including a lot of lecture and Internet activities, focused on open questioning. I would pose a general question to my students about astronomy, and they would then have to use critical thinking skills and background knowledge to answer the question. For example, I asked, “How do you think an astronomer would measure the distances between two stars?” They then had to consider how to go about solving that problem and come to conclusions about how this could be done. They were frustrated sometimes because I wouldn’t tell them the answer, but they were able to come to their own understandings of the process and develop their own insights into the subject of astronomy.

They couldn’t just count on me to teach them, they had to be responsible for their own learning.

Joyce Carol Oates once said, “It’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.” For me, going to Mexico and having this teaching experience showed me what kind of teacher I was. It showed me that education and teaching are more than textbooks, lectures, experiments and tests. They are ways of exploring oneself and others.