About Me
My name is Selim Tlili. I'm a science educator, writer, and author based in New York City.
I've spent more than two decades teaching science and math, mostly in New York City schools. I now teach at the college level and work with future teachers, while continuing to write about education, science, technology, and how we learn.
My writing has appeared in Edutopia, The Hechinger Report, The Hill, We Are Teachers, The Educators Room, and Science Scope. I've also contributed to peer-reviewed research in gifted education and am the author of Sketching for Science: Rediscovering Focus and Curiosity in a Digitally Distracted Age.
A lot of my work comes back to a fairly simple question: How do we get better at seeing what's actually there?
I'm particularly interested in observation, attention, scientific thinking, analog learning, educational technology, and the development of judgment. I'm fascinated by the ways that drawing, writing, direct experience, and careful observation can slow down our thinking enough to notice things we otherwise miss.
Writing serves a similar purpose for me. I rarely begin an essay knowing exactly what I think. I write because putting an idea on paper forces me to examine it, question my assumptions, and decide what I actually believe. Sometimes I end up somewhere quite different from where I started.
That's the idea behind Lines of Inquiry. The name comes from science, but I mean it more broadly: following questions wherever they lead and trying to get a little closer to understanding the world.
You'll find essays here about education, science, technology, books, teaching, and whatever else I've become curious enough about to investigate.
I'm still a teacher at heart. I just increasingly use writing and drawing as my tools to grasp what I'm trying to learn.