Reflections on Challenges and Rewards in Teaching Chemistry

The author gives his personal and subjective view of the manifold challenges in teaching chemistry and argues that, in most cases, the challenges lie in the difficulty of balancing two opposing concerns and thus can be formulated as dilemmas. He discusses, among others, the role of general education, language skills, finding the correct level of simplification, and specific problems of teaching the language of chemistry. Furthermore, he points out possibilities to overcome the pitfalls inherent in teaching chemistry and describes examples of the challenges and their solutions. Awareness of individual challenges is the prerequisite to finding solutions and improving one's teaching.