Good teaching is both good science and fine art. Its beginning is not with the learner but with a philosophical encounter with the self. Who am I? Who ought I to be? Who ought I to be as a teacher? The ongoing reflections that I weave regarding these questions create the tapestry and landscape of my teaching science and art. Thus, who I am greatly affects and reflects the quality and outcomes of my teaching.

Who I am forces me to differentiate my teaching "what" from my teaching "how." I view my teaching "what" as that part of my expert disciplinary knowledge that I choose to share with students. I consider it neither possible nor prudent to share all I know about a subject. To do so is to aggrandize myself and to belittle and rob the student of the joy and wonder of learning. I am but a sharer of knowledge and, when necessary, a slayer of inaccurate and outdated knowledge, but never a hoarder or a prisoner of it. To know what to teach, then, is not a matter of knowledge but of wisdom. Teaching less is often far wiser than teaching more.

My teaching "how" is about transformation; that is, how I transform the knowledge I wish to share and the knowledge students wish to learn into an empowering learning environment. This transformation is critical to the scholarship of teaching and learning and includes, among other traits, creativity, critical thinking, caring, critiquing, clarity, collaboration, commitment, communication, confidence, cultivation, curiosity, community, curriculum reform, cumulative knowledge building/revisioning, and continuous life-long learning.

Within the scholarship of teaching, one cannot separate the teaching "what" from the teaching "how." The proper proportion of each is needed and is ever-changing. Each individual student is different. Each class of students is different. Each course is different. Each teacher is different. Each teacher-student encounter is different. The good teacher acknowledges and accepts these differences while, at the same time, sees commonalities--a respect for students and for self, an openness to "teachable" moments, an "intuneness" to students' learning and discovery, an "intuneness" to students' joys and anxieties, and a commitment to students' excellence. Yes, I believe that good teaching--that which exemplifies the scholarship of teaching--is both good science and fine art.