This is a teaching statement I prepared for the course GS301 I took in Fall 2007.
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All along my student life, I have been influenced a lot by my teachers. I see teaching profession as one that plays a major role in shaping up the thoughts of the future generation and that is my main motivation for wanting to teach.
Teaching experience:
My experience as a teacher began in my sixth grade, when my Science teacher chose me along with some of the other top scorers in class to tutor the weaker students on a one-on-one basis. Since then, I have always been interested in helping my classmates learn and I used to be the person that my classmates would often turn to for help with any of their doubts. During college, I have given many lectures as part of the student seminar series that we used to have for some of the courses. I have realized that teaching is the best way to learn. Though I haven’t had the opportunity to teach any courses formally so far, I would like to do that during grad school and improve my teaching abilities.
Teaching Philosophy:
My teaching philosophy is to facilitate active learning by making the students think in class, instead of passively absorbing the material that is presented to them For example, I would start the class by asking questions relevant to the topic and get the students to think (see this presentation). I would help put together facts that they already know and give it a new dimension, helping them learn new concepts in this process.
Teaching Objectives:
My major objective as a teacher would be first get the students interested in the subject. I would stimulate them to think and ask questions in class and make the learning process interesting. Ultimately, I would like to transform the student from the beginner level to a state where he or she will be motivated enough to look up more advanced material by themselves and be in a position to comprehend it without help.
Classroom atmosphere:
In my field, most often than not, teaching means presenting a bunch of facts that the student needs to remember and reproduce in exams. If you take Molecular Biology, for example, the student is expected to learn the mechanism of several cellular processes, remember and apply them to their research. So it becomes very important that the teacher is dynamic and engaging or the subject becomes dull and boring. If I were to teach, I would engage the students actively by asking questions, building upon the facts they already know and make them think as they learn new concepts (For an example, see this presentation). I would use animated visuals to make them see the cellular processes (See this video for an example). I would stimulate them to ask questions like why and why not and encourage them to go look up for the answers themselves. I would form student groups and have each group present what they have learnt from their reading in class. This way the students become part of the teaching process and they also learn better by teaching their peers.
Student-teacher relationship:
I think the relationship between a student and the teacher is dynamic and it has to change over the period of the course duration. Initially, a teacher would be helping the students get a grasp of the basics if they are beginners, then make the students think by engaging them in an active discussion in class and eventually get the students to look up material themselves and play a somewhat passive role as a teacher, only helping the students learn by themselves.
Teaching and technology:
Technology tools like blackboard, powerpoint presentations, wikipages, social bookmarking tools, blogs, etc can be used to save time, improve the learning experience in classrooms, promote discussions outside the classroom and facilitate peer review.
By putting up materials in blackboard prior to class and asking the students to bring a copy to the classroom themselves, the teacher can avoid wasting time distributing them in class and use the valuable time to do something more interesting. The forum tool in blackboard can be used to get the students to engage in discussions outside classroom. Midterm exams and course evaluations can be made online, giving the students the freedom to take it at their convenience and also giving the teachers the advantage of grading the exam easily and automatically. Powerpoint presentations help present concepts visually and facilitate learning (here is an example of a presentation I used in class). Wikipages and blogs can be used for the students to share their thoughts with the other students and exchange their ideas. In case of writing assignments, getting feedback from their peers can greatly help the students polish their work. Social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us can be used when the students do literature review so they can share the resources they identify with their fellow students. Media repositories like flickr, youtube, etc can also serve as a source of teaching material.
The key to using technology in teaching however, is to not overuse these tools. One should use discretion in deciding whether this tool is better over some other conventional teaching method that might be more effective, and always be prepared with a back-up plan incase the technology tools can’t be employed.
