One essential purpose of education is to help students develop critical thinking skills. I believe a deep understanding of economic tools could guide us to this end. My teaching goal is to help my students understand the strengths and limitations of economic tools. Only in this way can they use these powerful tools to improve their lives and change the world.
When teaching, I remind myself that sometimes I need to “think like a student.” Learning is not always easy for students, especially when they try to master something new. As an instructor, I “encourage” students to make mistakes because making mistakes means that they go out of their “comfort zone” and try new things, which I believe is the first step of learning. In this process, I, as an instructor, am their helper but not their leader. I “push” them to start to think and guide them to the answer by asking them questions in my lectures or having a discussion.
In my opinion, teaching is communicating. By communicating with students, I can know how they analyze the problems they need to solve when learning, their concerns, why they feel confused, and how I can help them. Communicating with students is the beginning of understanding students, and I can only create an inclusive environment for my course by understanding the different concerns of different students.
During the past few years, I have instructed for three semesters at UNH: once for microeconomics and twice for macroeconomics. My teaching evaluation has kept improving along the way. The more teaching experience I have, the more I realize how important timely feedback is. Instead of lecturing for all my class time, I assign in-class exercises to my students in the last 10 to 15 minutes of the class. These exercises are usually short and not hard. I walk around the classroom to answer questions from students when they solve the problems. By grading these questions after class, I can know how students understand the course materials. Using this information, I can adjust how I teach and help students better.