Teaching skills: Personalization, being energetic and enthusiastic and clear communication

I started teaching from when I was very young and now I am a PhD student. I taught in informal settings and laboratory settings in India to freshman engineering classroom settings in VT. This is my fifth semester teaching in VT. My students’ ages ranged from 4 years to junior year students (pretty amazing). Every … Continue reading Teaching skills: Personalization, being energetic and enthusiastic and clear communication

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What kind of teacher are you?

I am sure that my answer to that question will change as I gain more experience in teaching and as I keep improving my teaching stylethrough experience. However, I have come to the realization that the way I was taught should not be the way I teach. I live in a new era where I have more educational resources at hand along with many new challenges. I will be a dynamic teacherwho is open to new ideas of teaching in a diverse world and willing to adapt and improve my teaching style to fit each student’s needs through effort, dedication, and incorporation of positive feedback.

One of the first qualities I aspire to have is passion. Teaching is not just a job but a skill, a hobby, and a way of life. The way you convey the material to the students will either have a  positive or negative impact on their minds. Therefore, I will prepare my lectures and be energetic in the classroom as I find joy and reward in inspiring students and make them enjoy what they are learning. To do that, I intend to incorporate many teaching styles and create an interactive and dynamic learning experience. My lectures would have changes in rhythm and style every 20-25 minutes in which I incorporate real life examples and relate them to the class material. I aspire to create learning focused lectures by putting more emphasis on learning and progress rather than the grade, and I will definitely encourage group work and information sharing.

I also aspire to be flexible, and approachable. From my first few experiences in teaching, I realized that could be a challenge at first. When I was teaching, I felt a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders and tended to be much more serious than I usually am. Standing there in front of 40 students who consider me an expert in the material can be a bit overwhelming. For the first few minutes, I was nervous but as I went into the material, I realized that I started to relax and teaching became more natural. I started to pause, joke, and share my experience on the subject. Students were much more enthusiastic and more receptive and responsive to the questions. I realized that I needed to be myself: approachable, energetic, and flexible since more of who you are is reflected in the way you teach. Creating an enjoyable learning atmosphere for everybody is an easy task when professors are comfortable with the way they perceive themselves and reflect that in the classroom
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GRAD5114: Know yourself and your students

I have taught online classes and have worked as teaching assistant for four semesters and I’ll be teaching my first in-class course in Spring 2016 semester! I am really excited about it and I also start getting prepared for it this semester. This week’s reading is really helpful for my preparation and makes me think … Continue reading GRAD5114: Know yourself and your students

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