Teaching Philosophy Statement
(PDF can be downloaded at the bottom of the page)
For many of us, our success and our enthusiasm in our career is initiated from a teacher. A good teacher generates energy and enthusiasm that motivates the students to pursue the course seriously and get interested in the subject more than before. An ignition occurs in the minds of some students that will drive them to follow this attraction and choose their major, their research and their career in that area. In this way, the teacher simply changes the way people look at a scientific subject, the science in overall, their career or their future. Besides, for some students who become attracted to the course, the teacher becomes a life model. These are the points that make teaching and a teacher’s life meaningful and exciting for me.
How is this accomplished in its best way? Since the skeleton of my courses is Mathematics, my strategy is to guide the students to rediscover the great beauties and miracles of Mathematics and the way it magically governs all physical phenomena from simplest to the most complex. The great joy comes when one solves a real-world example or a mathematical puzzle by his/her own creativity and realizes how Math, this magical game in his/her mind is so powerful and real. In this type of courses, it is necessary to remember only a few simple physical and mathematical rules that can be written in three or four lines. Besides that through the whole semester the students and the teacher will collaborate to figure out how it is possible to describe and analyze all the mechanical systems using our analytical reasoning. By the end of the semester, if given enough time, my students will be able to rewrite and explain the main formulas and techniques using only analytic part of their mind rather than any memorable knowledge.
At the beginning of the semester, the students will discuss the trivial foundations of the subject matter, for example the three simple Newton’s laws of motion for Dynamics, to make sure they believe in them. From then, we will imagine that nothing else is known unless we discover it ourselves. Students, through continuous in-class and homework assignments, will rediscover their own versions of concepts and methods based on those foundations.
My class will be a workshop for students; they will be required to actively engage in succeeding the course. The very first day, they will be required to discuss and present their opinions about the subject matter, how it is important and what should be covered in the course and why. For any new chapter, they will be required to write down and share their suggestions to generate solutions for the chapter’s main question. This is accomplished in groups or individually depending on the material and the time consumption. Details and techniques of problem-solving will be mostly addressed in the homework questions. Students’ feedbacks, concerns and opinions will be dynamically considered in the course. Even the problems and course material are subject to change by students’ opinions after discussion. All in all their creativity guided by the teacher is the driving engine of the class.