Teaching the teachers
They’re the sort of questions that keep public health officials up at night. How can the health system balance the rights of someone with a potentially deadly disease and the rights of the public? Can the sick be detained to avoid or limit outbreaks? They’re also the questions students in one global health class at Harvard are working to answer. As a teaching fellow looks on, students collaborate in small groups to address the case of an American tourist who knew he’d been infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis, but insisted on flying from Rome to the United States, against the orders of public health officials. It may sound like a scene from any Harvard classroom, but it’s not playing out there. Instead, it’s taking place at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Called micro-teaching, each “class” is actually made up of teaching fellows, each of whom takes a turn at the head...