Teaching philosophy and interactive environment for efficient learning

We have taken many classes at college with completely different teaching settings. Most of us have taken classes where the instructor is the only speaker, giving hours of discussions session after session (could be boring, right?). In opposite, we might have probably taken other classes where students get confused and overwhelmed as they are responsible to engage in many class activities without getting enough background by the instructor to do the tasks!

 

In my opinion, in the first scenario, many students become reluctant to learn the material and might be engaged in doing irrelevant activities in class (checking social media!), especially if the instructors are not highly skilled in providing a good narration in their lecture. On the other hand, in the second scenario, although students could be more engaged (as they have to!), they might feel lost in the discussion and get unconfident about their performance.

 

As someone who’s thinking of teaching in the future (therefore, needing a teaching philosophy/direction), I think there should be a trade-off between these two. Specifically, it would be useful if the instructor provides a good overview of the topic in the classroom at the beginning, go through some examples with student together and engage them in the discussion, and then ask them to engage in more challenging activities to encourage creative thinking by the students.

 

Although I have relatively low teaching experience, using the above approach worked well for me at the first sight. Last year, I was teaching a session which required a lot of hands-on experience and computer modeling with a software. I started with some introduction about the topic and doing some examples myself. Next, I tried to engage students by asking their opinions about some specific tasks in modeling. After that, I gave them time to do another activity by themselves and then stopped by their desks to see how they are performing and what ambiguities they’re facing. I see this one-to-one interaction useful as they became more willing to discuss problems and getting feedback. Interestingly, the mistakes were also common among the classmates which helped me as the instructor to understand which parts were more problematic to cover in the lecture, so I give more emphasis in the future.

 

Establishing a teaching philosophy requires a lot of careful thoughts and different characteristics to account for. Nonetheless, regardless of the context, I believe one of my teaching style features in the future would be focused on the mutual contribution of the instructor and the students. From this perspective, (1) the instructor guides the students through the material, (2) student engage in activities or hands-on experience to foster creative thinking and facing challenges, and (3) the instructor gives constructive feedback to students so they get a better understanding of their work.

Ok, so what is the RIGHT way to teach?

When reading Deel’s Finding My Teaching Voice, I found myself thinking a lot about what kind of teacher I wanted to be and how I wanted my students to view me. I’ve always struggled to think about how I would want to portray myself in the classroom. On the one hand, I want to be approachable and for my students to feel comfortable reaching out and interacting with me especially if the material is not clear to them and they need help. On the other hand, I worry about being too approachable and losing my sense of authority. At the same time, I have heard of some students having explicit or implicit biases and expecting more lenient or nurturing treatment from female professors. I’ve also heard about biases toward and disconnect from professors of color. Being at the intersection of these two identities, I have always been concerned about how to present myself as a professor with authority that teaches effectively to all students while being approachable and ideally well liked…..that’s all.

3 things in particular stuck out to me in Sarah Deel’s writing:

  1. It may create better buy-in from my students if I keep them in the loop about what pedagogical strategies I am trying to utilize. I guess I have always thought that professors crafted these strategies behind the scenes, apply them, and then cross their fingers. But it makes perfect sense to me now to share that information with my students. At least if they feel like something is foolish and they don’t see the point if I explain the potential value to them and WHY I want them to do it (or that it could help their fellow classmates) they may engage more. I also just think transparency is key, so that really hit home for me.
  2. There is no “right” way to teach; it may be more about how you use different strategies than which strategies you use. This thought has always been in the back of my mind, but it is reassuring to see it stated explicitly. Just because one particular teacher is extremely effective doesn’t mean if I use the same teaching strategy as they do I will magically be just as effective. It is okay for me to use another strategy that pairs better with my own personality and even what course I am teaching.
  3. When it comes to fairness, equality is not the same as equity. I have been discussing these terms of “equality” and “equity” with several colleagues recently, but I had never thought about the difference between these two in the context of teaching. If I want to ensure equality, I would treat all of my students identically, make sure I said the same thing to all of them, and expect equivalently excellent results from everyone. I don’t think that model works, as Deel alludes. Not all students need the same set of information or real-world context, nor do all students share the same or even overlapping learning styles. So if I want all of my students to excel to the same degree, I need a more individualistic approach that ideally addresses the specific needs of each student. That is where equitable learning comes in.

I look forward to crafting my teaching philosophy and my teaching persona based on these points and many more. It won’t be easy, but it does make me feel a little better that there is no “right” way to teach.

GRAD 5114 – Who are you as a Teacher?

This week in Contemporary Pedagogy, we’re taking some of the first steps in the long process of putting together a teaching statement. I, of course, have a number of years to develop my teaching philosophy yet, but I’m looking forward to the practice. I’m aware that the things I love in a class are not what many students thrive on (my ideal course as a learner is a well thought out series of lectures without powerpoints but with an associated lab for practical application), and the range of classes I could have the opportunity to teach in the future is rather vast as paleontology straddles biology and geology.

What I kept returning to while thinking about the concept of the “authentic teaching self” – as this week’s topic was titled – was balancing approachability, care for students, cultivating respect, and authority. This is a difficult thing to manage for new instructors, and even more complicated for female faculty, who are often expected to go out of their way to accommodate students and possibly still be rated by students as inferior to male colleagues independent of teaching quality.

When I taught in Tanzania, I received a deal of respect for my position as a teacher, but I did have to navigate gaining student respect as one of the few teachers who wouldn’t consider corporal punishment. Being the disciplinarian to large classes of teenagers was outside of my comfort zone, but I certainly have higher expectations of my university-level students. As a Graduate Teaching Assistant here in America, I have not yet had a student venture out of line with their expectations of me.

I hope to be able to be friendly and approachable to my students. When I present, I prefer to sit at the table with the class and encourage questions and discussion. I make a point of being very clear about what I will and won’t tolerate in my classrooms (feel free to speak up with a question if I don’t see your hand raised, and I will strictly enforce punishment for  any form of cheating, no exceptions). Thus far, this has been plenty to ensure acceptable behavior. Still, I could certainly stand to add more tools to my belt in this area, as I’m sure situations will arise in the future which require more.

“Authentic Teaching Self”

Defining one’s own teaching approach can be hard to illustrate in a short blog post. A professor’s teaching style evolves as they develop professionally. Also, I believe that a teaching style evolves in response to course material, teaching environment, and the type of institution where the teaching takes place. Therefore, developing a unified teaching approach to work universally across all learning environments is near impossible. There is no one technique or philosophy that apply the concept of “one size fits all” to teaching. Another reason to avoid adopting one approach is that most subject matters, as with everything, evolve with time. With accelerating advances in science, technology, and social environment, the teaching styles of yesterday may not be as effective today.

One of the key aspects of highlighted in professor Fowler’s paper is effective communication between the teacher and the student. With effective communication skills, a teacher can elicit valuable feedback from students. Such feedback help overcome the fallbacks of following a rigid approach. A professor should play the role of a facilitator in the educational process, and any feedback from the student should guide his/her performance.

In today’s learning environment, a static teaching approach has lesser chances of succeeding. The dynamic world we live in requires a flexible approach that reacts to the indicators that define the educational process. These components should cater to students needs as they should be included in how teaching is taking place. Students should feel included, therefore, any teaching approach should be flexible enough to meet students needs. One reason for that is student attention span. With distractions surrounding students, the window of delivering information is shrinking. Any effective teaching approach needs to convey knowledge within the span of students’ attention.

Thoughts and Reflection!

When reading the article titled: “Finding My Teaching Voice” by Sarah, I found her experience is very informative and interesting to reflect upon. I really like how she wrote her story and thoughts. Below I summarized what the most important takeaway lessors (in my opinion) and along with some personal experience:

  1. There are many different techniques but a few of them work for us, not all. That is we have different personalities and characteristics. It is to me like a medicine that might work for some people and not for others. A couple months ago, I was attending a teaching workshop where the instructor gave us a lot of techniques but she stressed out that it’s really important to realize that not all of them work with you, so the participants’ job is to find out the best teaching style that could work with them.
  2. Instead of coping with the exact character of the particular teacher, we should aim at picking up the best practice/teaching techniques and build our teaching style and keep improving it over time.
  3. One way to keep teachers being improved is to hold a monthly meeting with other teachers to exchange experience and thoughts.
  4. Teachers should get feedback from students so often (not only after the semester is over!). For example, the teacher could ask the whole class to answer one question using a questionnaire app (there’re plenty of FREE apps for surveys) if they had achieved the goal of today’s class and understood the most of it.
  5. One thing comes to my mind but could not address it: is it better to have an anticipated behavior so the students could easily predict teacher’s response for what he/she would do or is it better to follow unclear anticipated approach so that students never misuse this for their favor?
  6. One missing part I see in most of the courses I’ve been taking is we don’t what the plan is for today? Yes, we know the syllabus and the main topic for this week but don’t know what the details are we going to covered? What is the teacher expected from the students at the end of the class? To me, this is what makes students get bored as they don’t know what to learn. It’s like going on a trip but don’t the purpose of the trip nor know when it will end.
  7. One lesson I learned when teaching is that never things would come as perfectly as we expected! Simply, because we teach humans with different feelings and personalities, and each one had a different day that might affect his/her engaging in the class.
  8. Being always relaxed or very serious when teaching is a bad thing. To me, our teaching style should have relied on different factors such as today’s topic, the current circumstances of the class, and the level of engagement between the teacher and students, and so on.
  9. Preparation is a key factor that almost all the good professors I talk to are doing. They would prepare along enough although they have been teaching the course for years! Watch how much efforts this professor has spent for this class!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FfKaIgArJ8

 

  1. The author said “Instead of assessing students equally, in some circumstances I have shifted toward assessing students individually” but a teacher might being trapped in treating them unfairly!
  2. The first 5-min of the class could be a great opportunity to increase the level of engagement and motivation between the instructor and students. One way is by discussing any non-related topic to the class and letting the majority of the students to express their opinion. That could maximize their participation and make the class more comfortable and relaxing to talk and express their feeling.

Discovering One’s Authentic Teaching Self

The works by Professor Fowler and Sarah Deel on discovering one’s authentic teaching self are very enlightening. In these works, the authentic self as an entity is presented as something that is integral to good teaching practice. As I struggle to find my authentic teaching self, these works have stocked up a number of questions in my mind. What is at the core of this authentic teaching self? How does one discover it? Does this entity help in making one a good teacher? Or Is there any chance that one’s authentic self would, actually, be detrimental to good teaching practice? Can the authentic self be re-engineered?

Perhaps at the core of the self would be the crystallization of one’s character, the remnant being once all the unnatural externalizations are stripped off. This would be the unique being that is in its purest natural form complete with fears and inhibitions and reflexes to stimuli. The authentic teaching self would be the same, just understood within the context of the teaching needs. This would be the unique being that is in its purest natural form when responding to stimuli within the teaching environment. As this authentic self is unique to each different individual, it could manifest in many different ways. It could manifest as nervousness in one individual, for example, and composure in another.

The individual self may be discovered once all the externalizations are shut out and stripped off. With regard to teaching, the authentic self might be discovered once all the externalizations are shut out with the exception of the teaching environment. The being that remains once the outside world is shut out to a world where only the teaching environment exists with respect to the individual self becomes the authentic teaching self.

The varied manifestations of the authentic teaching self give rise to the next important questions. Does this entity help in making one a good teacher? Or Is there any chance that one’s authentic self would be detrimental to good teaching practice? In its purest form, it may not be said that the authentic teaching self can inevitably contribute to good teaching practice. For instance, it would be highly unlikely that an authentic teaching self that manifests itself through fits of nervousness would make one a good teacher, in spite of this being the one’s authentic teaching self. To be sure, this teaching self would only characterize a less than desirable teaching experience. However, for those individuals whose teaching self manifests through composure, it would be unsurprising if that makes them good teachers.

Can the authentic teaching self be re-engineered? Surely, those individuals whose authentic teaching self is detrimental to their teaching practice must not be led into belief that they are condemned to being sub-optimal teachers. Perhaps this authentic teaching self can be altered to take out the undesirable manifestations and replace them with the desirable ones. It should be encouraged for individuals to copy what has worked elsewhere and use it to train their authentic teaching selves in unlearning the undesirable traits. Overtime, a new authentic teaching self should be able to awaken.

The discovery of one’s teaching self can be seen as being integral to good teaching practice in so far as it helps individuals learn of their weaknesses and strengths, whereby, if the former is undesirable it can be unlearned and replaced altogether. Adequate preparation and repeated best practices, for example, could be some ways through which an authentic teaching self that manifests itself as fits of nervousness could be unlearned and replaced.

 

Teach True

Sitting though classes for the majority of our lives teaches us part of what it means to be a professor. How many times have you sat through a lecture where you couldn’t look away? I bet you could name that professor. I bet that professor didn’t even use a bunch of new-age technological teaching advancements, not that these can’t enhance the experience, but I can almost guarantee you that this professor had their teaching formula down to a practiced science.

One of the best lectures that I sat through was a teacher that used none other than an old-fashioned overhead projector. No PowerPoint slides. No Iclickers. Just a couple charts and an overhead marker was all he had, yet he kept students enthralled and interested. Like putting on a uniform, he found his authentic teaching style and leaned into it.

I did a strengths finder assignment for class once and learned the best teams are made up of people with differing sets of skills and that our time is better spent honing our strengths and less time focusing on our weaknesses. In terms of teaching, I see faculty as a complicated network of educators who comprise a student’s educational team and just as there are difference learning styles, there are different teaching styles. All that we can do is to find what works best.

Now, how many times can you say you sat through a lecture where you lost interest, became board, even left early because the professor or lecturer was, for lack of a better term, blah? If you are like me, then probably too many to count. Which is sad.

As human beings we can usually tell when someone is not being their authentic self. When someone is acting fake or not genuine. And as communal beings we are naturally attracted to confident people. As people, and especially as teachers, when we are acting in our true nature is when we are our most confident selves. Aristotle said, “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Therefore, how can we convey wisdom without first knowing our authentic teaching self?

Finding My Authentic Teaching Self

I believe I have several traits that would benefit my authentic teaching self. I am laid-back, I am warm, I am a good empathetic listener, I have the ability to project when I need to, I can be quite charming when I rely on safe, light-hearted humor. I say safe because I am not one to tell jokes, rather I know the kind of comments to make that may cause the audience to chuckle. Since I don’t invest much time in setting up the joke, I am okay if they laugh or choose not to. For me, this is a good way to diffuse tension/nervousness in the room and on my end.

However, after my experience this past summer with advising five incoming engineering students, I realized I may only be able to keep the audience attentive if they already perceive the topic as interesting or beneficial. I can be energetic when I present in class after much practice, but these presentations are infrequent. I worry I will not be able to maintain an appropriate level of energy for an entire class period, every class period. I do not have much experience with engaging the audience; not just getting them to listen, but also actively participate. This past summer, I tried to encourage participation by asking the students to read certain segments or share their perspectives, so I was not the only one talking. Mostly, I found that they were disengaged—perceiving the academic advising session as just another block of time forced into their already jam-packed days created by the summer transition program. I would like to ask questions to keep my students engaged—I think students are more willing to respond when the questions are open-ended and do not have one answer. Perhaps there is one answer, but the instructor does not actually know at that particular point in time. When an instructor relies on asking questions to which the answer is already know, it can limit participation because most people do not want to be publicly wrong. I’ve found that students will even whisper/mumble the correct answer because they are not entirely sure. Going back to my roots as a drama/musical theater performer, I would like to work on my enunciation and diction—even expanding my own vocabulary. This often makes me the self-conscious when I present or teach, depending on the audience. Being comfortable with the words that are coming out of one’s mouth is important to effective communication and overall confidence.

Touching briefly on the idea of using physical obstacles on teaching presented by Professor Fowler, I’ve often thought about this. I feel writing on the board with one’s back turned to the class is ineffective in maintaining connection and engagement. I personally like the idea of using a document camera, although this can be an example of an obstacle between the instructor and intended audience addressed by Professor Fowler, such as a podium. However, combined with guided notes that are available to print and bound, document cameras can be useful to fill in key concepts/equations while still being able to look up to interact with the students. I will continue to consider organizing the class in 15- to 20-minute segments to be mindful of the varying attention spans—I thought this was an valuable consideration raised by Professor Fowler.

I would say that I think it is important to cover the key topics in a class, especially an engineering class. Thus, in order to not prioritize coverage over meaningful learning (I cannot tell you how many times I have heard my professor say this semester “I have 45 slides to get through in 45 minutes”), it might be useful to plan a “condensed” and “extended” version of the class. The extended version of the class would provide additional topics the class can choose to explore, perhaps with a research or industry focus. It is also crucial to actually schedule in “workshop” classes/practice sessions, to work on problems throughout the course, not just the class before the exam. Scheduling them in allows the students to prepare problems and does not leave them with the feeling that the instructor “sacrificed” a class period to answer questions.

Own way to teach

There are various types of teachers in the world and students have their own preferences. If someone wants to know which is the best way to teach or how can I be a good teacher, the answer is “it depends on ..”

I have taught high school mathematics for almost 10 years. High school students have a strong desire to study and excellent concentration. Providing appropriate examples with easy explanations has made me the best teacher for high school students. For difficult problem solving, if I share strategies for how I find this problem solving, they have the same ability as me in a year. Until I taught elementary school, I thought I found the way to be a good teacher. Teaching young children was completely new. It was more important to not lose interest than to convey a lot of knowledge. The children needed another way of teaching because it was impossible to concentrate for a long time.

As the teaching method is different according to who is taught, education can be changed according to who teaches. While uniform education can guarantee quality above a certain level, not all students need to receive the same education, so the teacher must have a way to maximize his or her merits. Most people will try to teach based on what they have been taught. However, as the best teachers have different ways of teaching, there are different ways of teaching that I can do well. It will be the first step to becoming a good teacher, not only to learn teaching skills and prepare classes hard, but also to find effective ways to communicate with students based on my personality.

 

On Being Real

When I was searching for MFA creative writing programs, I realized that Virginia Tech’s package is a complete anomaly. Not only did I require funding for my graduate program, but, likewise, I desired teaching opportunities, so I maintained the expectation that I’d teach comp or creative writing at one of the universities. While this is the norm for funded programs, what’s also the norm is that they throw you right into teaching—without any kind of pedagogical training—on Day One. Also the norm, many schools make you compete among your cohort for these positions while there, hold annual callouts for reapplying—for proving your worth, for boiling your anxiety without ever having given you the tools for teaching-success in the first place. Here’s the message: You’ve seen someone teach, yeah? Now you can, too!…or, perhaps it’s: As a university, we realize you’re not ready for effective teaching, but, hey, you’re cheap! A good researcher! Here’s your side-gig! Attempt to guide those students paying $3,000 a-person for your class! 

Long-story-short: teaching is undervalued at institutions of higher education. Ironic, no?

Something I am especially appreciative of in my program here at Tech is its assurance of full funding, teaching placements and requirement to take a six-credit composition pedagogy class prior to teaching. In our pedagogy class in the first semester here, my cohort bonded through discussions of theory, weekly shadowing, grading practice, syllabus construction and guest-teaching opportunities—all of which helped us reflect on finding our teaching voices, becoming effective teachers and feeling as comfortable as possible prior to becoming instructors of record.

And then, of course, the real learning came when we got into our classrooms and just got to do the damn thing. Though, while I’ve gradually been building my self-awareness of my teaching style through the act of teaching, what’s encouraged this awareness has been constant reflection. Each semester, I take a practicum course that serves as a weekly teaching check-in; similarly, I have teaching mentors and I continue to take classes (like this! Hello!) that ask me to reassess my preexisting practices and values.

In reading Sarah E. Deel’s “Finding My Teaching Voice” and Shelli Fowler’s “The Authentic Teaching Self and Communication Skills,” in particular, I felt quite lucky to be a person who doesn’t deal with teaching nerves, though, similar to these educators, I do consistently reevaluate my practices. Certainly there’s truth in the point that teaching can be performative, though I never think of my teaching in that way. I feel deflated when I read reflections like that of Deel who recalls worrying about how to be that charismatic professor who naturally engages students. I want to say this stems from self-confidence, so, I don’t know, just build some of that…but, of course, the issue is far more complicated than for what I’m giving it credit. Nonetheless, charisma, for me, comes from just being real—from providing transparency to my students about why I’m having them read this short story or analyze that Instagram post or consider the use of pathos in the lyrics of their favorite songs; from letting them in on my life once in a while and telling them a story about my sister’s test or the movie I saw last night or my love of blue raspberry anything (real life—this can come with benefits. Got a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher out of this personal-life point of transparency last week).

There’s an art to maintaining professionalism and authority without being an authoritarian; being an authoritarian will gain you no respect, anyway. Just fear. And although our culture can encourage us to believe that fear and respect are interchangeable entities, they’re not synonymous concepts. So, while we shouldn’t be spending time or energy on being people we’re not, we must also remember to be people, too. Part of authenticity is doing away with the robotic appeal, of being some intimidation-inducing hierarchical gods of knowledge, untouchable to our students. Part of being genuine and real and present is making human connections with our students—by speaking (verbally, one-on-one, you’re-a-person-hey-I’m-a-person, moving-the-mouth speaking), learning about their interests, their needs, their fears. I grow exhausted by the message that this kind of connection is impossible. While I’ll agree that our current system isn’t set up for more individualized care of a student, it absolutely could be. We just need to reinforce the importance of good teaching and reconsider our priorities regarding into whom/what we should be funneling our investments.

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