Teaching Philosophy

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination and instill a love of learning” - Brad Henry

The above quote is a very enlightening and self-explanatory description of a good teacher. I strongly believe in this as my goal as a teacher is not only to teach a particular discipline but also to instill in my students the love of learning. The goal is to explicitly explain the inherent purpose of learning - which is not only to acquire professional jobs, but also to evolve as human beings, to understand and reflect upon our cognitive and mental growth and to seek better understanding of experiences around us. I hope to inculcate a strong sense of growth and development of the human mind and help students appreciate the difference they feel about themselves. Just as Biology talks about evolution of species on earth, I expect students to analyze and evaluate their own evolution as a human being!

Learning is a process of evolving and one’s evolution can only be assessed through metacognition. I strongly believe in metacognition and hope to instill its power among my students so they become self-directed learners. I also believe teaching can make or break this learning process and hence a metacognitive approach to teach and orient students would be the best way to make students self-sufficient and self-reliant. A good teacher can also create the love of learning and this can only be done when the purpose of learning is made explicit. This purpose can be made explicit by using metacognitive processes through activities and assessments on a frequent basis in classroom. Some activities and assessments I have used in my classroom to help students understand their own potential and growth are:

1. Frequent use of pre-assessments and formative assessments to gauge students’ prior knowledge and to formulate my teaching strategies.
2. Frequent use of classroom assessment techniques (CAT) like muddiest point to create an environment where confusion and lack of understanding is welcomed and viewed as a normal component of the learning process.
3. Use of active learning strategies in different formats such as concentric circles, carousel, jigsaw, small groups, gallery walk etc. For example when I taught the course on research methods in health science, students had to design a research study for a given scenario in the form of a carousel/gallery walk. Students had to move about and identify different components in designing a study for a specific scenario. This helped them to analyze different study designs and learn about the research process. They could see for themselves the difference between each study design. It fostered communication and discussion and led students think deeper and all this by making the entire experience fun.
4. Scaffolding to build on previous knowledge and see the connection of the current material with future life settings. Scaffolding helped students to write a professional literature review step-by-step by mastering one aspect at a time.
5. Designing a well-aligned class so that the activities and assessments accurately measured the defined learning outcomes.

Having done all this, I still hope to use the following strategies in future: -

1. Use of metacognition cards for every summative assessment in class and for lessons that cover important topics to facilitate deeper learning.
2. Retrospective evaluation of student’s performance by conducting focus group of student cohort based on their grades. If a smaller class, one on one discussion with students to reflect on their preparation strategies and styles and guiding students appropriately by suggesting cognitively active learning behaviors.
3. Having a policy to turn in a reflective paper after every summative assignment and grading these papers.
4. Encouraging discussion which potentially authorizes students to role play as a professional/expert and tackle a situation in hand.
5. Crediting their hard work and participation and setting a standard rubric to evaluate their participation.
6. Having various types of summative assignments which benefits students with different credentials and talents. For example, presentation will benefit students who like to be artistic and have a love to communicate, on the other hand written exams would benefit students who like to prepare and have their time to answer questions. Group projects help students to develop shared understanding of group dynamics and develop/build social norms.

With all these approaches, there also remains a big part of the lecture, where complex and difficult-to-comprehend topics need to be conveyed to students in a simplified way. I strongly believe in using real life analogies with fun to correlate and apply the knowledge. For example, in the study of osmosis and diffusion, students always get confused in the direction sodium ions and water molecules move across the cell membrane. A simple analogy that sodium and water are in love and would always move together would help students retain this information for life.I have personally used these analogies in my past teaching encounters and have witnessed positive results from it. While pursuing the Graduate Certificate in College Teaching, I have completely evolved as a teacher and have understood the importance of active learning in fostering student engagement and learning. Lastly, I believe in an encouraging and supportive classroom climate, which gives ample opportunities for feedback and improvement to better ourselves as we move forward in the course. This could be a feedback from me to my students or from my students to me to improve and help each other develop a collaborative atmosphere which enhances our growth as individuals.