I'm so lucky to be in the field I'm in. I do research on the minutiae of fossil anatomy. Then, in the classroom, I place my research into the context of the bigger questions of evolutionary research discovery. I'm standing in front of students explaining how it fits together in a big picture, only later to find myself in a museum, fussing over details. One of the most time-consuming and creative aspects of transferring his vast research knowledge into the classroom is choosing what information to share with students, he says.
Facts are easy to come by, with the Web.
We're overloaded with information. The key is the careful selection of what to say and how to relate it to the bigger questions. It looks at our place in the universe, our origins. It's not hard to spark interest to keep alive a curiosity to last all of their lives. Only a small fraction of my students will go on to a career in anthropology.