Teaching Philosophy

Over the years, my philosophy has focused on improving two components of teaching: passing along knowledge and instilling the importance of effort. There are many responsibilities with being a teacher, and I believe that many of them fall under these two encompassing ideas. My methodologies in teaching have evolved through several iterations, but I always try to improve them based on these two ideas.

The methods I use to pass along knowledge range from lectures to group work, online reflections, quizzes, and exams.  When I first started teaching, students told me that I moved too fast for them to keep up. I discovered shortly after that they meant to “keep up” regarding note-taking. With the rise of iPads and technology, I discovered that I could digitize my notes and share them with students. Digitizing notes served a few purposes that greatly benefited me and my students. By providing digital notes to students, they can download or print out the notes to bring to class, and then follow along with me as I present lecture materials straight from the notes. Students can write in the margins and add anecdotes I would provide in lectures. Another purpose is that digitizing notes has allowed me to freely update and make adjustments to my notes without having to rewrite whole documents. These adjustments or changes would be due to how receptive students are to the way materials are presented, the number of examples, or the time it takes to cover the materials in class. 

Recently, I have been trying to encourage my students to reflect on their abilities. Students often overlook their accomplishments because they are too focused on what their grade is or will be or whether they are passing. However, I believe that if students take the time to reflect on their struggles or their comfort with learning, then their performance will reflect their effort in learning. For my Calculus II course, I have one student with an average of 68% on their quizzes. I would ask them to reflect on the topics they are having trouble with, what topics they feel comfortable with, and how they could improve before the exam. This reflection would help them ground themselves on what they are capable of doing, and work with me to push their abilities to learn more of what they can do. This student would then average 80% on their exams following the quizzes. There are similar trends in almost all of my students who are willing to buy into the reflective aspect of my teaching. 

One repeated comment that I receive from students is that I am too tough, strict, or mean. There is a standard that I maintain in my classroom where I expect each student to come to class prepared to learn, prepared to participate, and willing to give their best effort to critically think. I believe that my desire to maintain this standard has painted me as a difficult teacher for many students. They believe that I am making the “class too difficult”, that I “ask too much of them” to retain past knowledge, and that I am impatient with them. All of these comments, I try to not dismiss and I try to reflect and work on my approach towards students so that they can view me as more approachable. I want to be open with them about my expectations and provide honest feedback. I love it when students ask questions. I love it even more when they show effort and thought into the questions that they ask; this shows that they are developing their strategic thinking. Instead of asking “How do we solve this problem”, I urge students to ask “After this step, can we try this next” or “Why can we not try this step” or even better, “I remember that this was the first step to solving a similar example, but I don’t know if we should try that here”. To help guide students, I provide resources and advice on what they can do. But most importantly, I try to help them embrace the work ethic that I believe they will need when they advance to the next course. I ask them time and time again to put in the effort of practicing, remediating their past knowledge, and applying new knowledge to critically think through problems. 

I hope and pray that I can inspire my students to do more than what they believe they are capable of by being their teacher.