A student of mine recently shared with me her views on Interstellar, a movie about space exploration and salvation. The student told me that she had had science phobia and had never enjoyed reading or watching science fiction before. After watching the movie, she searched information about wormholes, black holes and relativity on her own initiative. She said she felt amazed at how passionate she could be about physics, and it was not the theories themselves that aroused her interest, but the combination of the theme, plot and characters of the movie.
The student’s sharing reminded me that the shortest distance between two points may not be the best route. When students lack the intrinsic motivation for learning a subject, it may not be effective to simply introduce and explain the theories to them. On the contrary, it can be anything, except the theories themselves, which unexpectedly arouses students’ interest in the subject and motivates them to do self-learning. The input that makes students take a step forward can be a movie, a sharing, a story, a teacher’s feedback, etc. Teachers plant seeds in students in and outside class. Whether the seeds can grow and help the students, especially in heterogeneous groups, walk further depends on various factors, but the greatest factor is the quality of the seeds we plant.