Listening to Teachers

Abstract

The author reflects on how much she has learned about teaching from K-12 teachers, and about the difficulties teachers encounter when they teach about evolution. Misconceptions and preconceptions, especially those concerning the compatibility or incompatibility of evolution with religion, are difficult to overcome, but teachers have devised many ingenious approaches to "defuse the religion issue." The easy way out for many teachers is to omit evolution, or compromise its teaching by either including creationism or denigrating evolution, but the many teachers who teach with integrity are inspiring to us all.