ESL 5301-002
Teaching Philosophies – 2nd
draft
1. Teaching Philosophy
As a graphic design instructor, my teaching
philosophy has been influenced by a fusion of Western and Chinese cultures. In
Chinese culture, teaching has two inseparable folds: Passing on knowledge and
nurturing of minds. As such, I define teaching as not only a process by which I
instruct students in the acquisition of knowledge but also as a process that
encourages students to become independent thinkers. I have observed that some students
feel that learning is all about memorizing information and following
instruction in the classroom. When one possesses this type of mentality for
learning, they often want instant answers for questions with little attention
to how to formulate the right answers, or how to resolve problems
independently. A proverb from Western culture states, “If you give a man a
fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a
lifetime”; I try to emphasize to students that memorization of graphic design
concept and theories, and practice of technique skills is only a fraction of
what should be learned. The most important and challenging part of learning is
the understanding of the rationale underlying the concepts and theories. It is
knowing how, why, and when to apply learned material to solve novel problems in
design process. (Xiaomiao)
2. Teaching Philosophy
One of the major jobs for a Personal
Financial Planning instructor is to train future financial planners. In order
to become a competent financial planner, one has to remember voluminous laws
and regulations about income tax, investment, retirement, and estate.
Simply reading materials to students
in the class is inefficient and even ineffective. The best way is to have the
students read the book before the class. In-class quizzes can ensure that the
students do their reading assignment. Students can obtain an overall
understanding of the knowledge when they read the book. The instructor
therefore has enough time to introduce important knowledge in class. Students
tend to get confused about regulations. I encourage students to ask questions in
class or after class if they have any confusion about the material. Solving
problems in class helps all of the students who have similar confusion.
It is important to ensure that the
students understand how to utilize the knowledge they learn. Students can
quickly find out how to deal with real clients in specific situations if they
go through some case studies. A financial planner is supposed to have a
comprehensive understanding of his or her case. Therefore, I will design cases
for students to practice and give some adapted past real cases for them to
read. The case study will be assigned to each individual student so that each
student can consider all the details of the case. I will encourage my students
to discuss cases with each other and find out the best solutions so that they
can potentially find out different opinions. The discussion can occur on
Blackboard or meetings after class. Software will be introduced to help
students solve problems efficiently.
Assessment methods can be different
depending on the specific courses. For most courses, the exam simulates the
certification exam (Certified Financial Planner) and helps students prepare for
it. For a lab course introducing software, case studies are the best because a
student cannot finish the case without having a comprehensive understanding of
the software. (Ruizhi)
3. Teaching
Philosophy
As a
graduate student pursuing a PhD degree in the field of chemical engineering,
one of my future career options would be to become a faculty member. One of my
main duties will be to teach courses related to my research area and my field
of study to undergraduate and sometimes graduate students as a faculty member.
Therefore, I often think about myself becoming a teacher. I have attended many
classes during my undergraduate studies and have had many teachers. I have also
had the opportunity to teach a few classes as a teaching assistant and hold discussion
sessions for undergraduate students since the beginning of my graduate studies.
I believe that I can use my own experience as student and as a teaching
assistant to develop methods and ideas that could help me become a good
teacher.
It
is important to know that nowadays, teaching is no longer the process of making
students memorize the contents of so many books and evaluating them by testing
how quickly they can recall the information memorized in the form of
limited-time exams. Nowadays, anybody with access to the internet can find the
information they need online very quickly and very easily. Therefore, I believe
the students need to learn how to approach the problem they’re facing (for
example, the design of a chemical plant), how to find and acquire information
that will help them solve the problem, and how to apply those information in
order to solve the problem. In other words, I want to teach my students
fishing, rather than just giving them the fish. For example, instead of writing
down a list of mathematical expressions and relations, I can show the students
how to derive them.
I also
believe that learning is done through doing. For example, one can only learn to
drive once one sits behind the wheels of a car and starts driving. Students
will learn how to apply useful information to solve a problem by actually
applying different problem solving methods to various problems, which can be
done through examples and exercises. These exercises can be in the form of in-class
quizzes, which serve the purpose of helping students to understand the concept
they learned in the classroom and how it can be applied to practical problems.
Furthermore,
I believe that critical thinking is an important skill for any student to have,
as good questions are usually the results of critical thinking. These good
questions can in turn lead to gathering more information about the problem,
which leads to an easier solution. Developing the critical thinking skill in
students can be achieved through group assignments (for example, a take home
exam or a project on which a group of students can work while having more than
enough time), where students can discuss various problems with each other,
listen to each other’s ideas and also question each other’s ideas. Through this
process, I believe students can learn about different ways of thinking, expand
their views on various problems and learn how to approach a problem from
different perspectives.
I
believe that the more traditional methods of teaching are not efficient
anymore, and teachers who can bring innovation to their methods are more
successful in training skilled engineers. I hope that my teaching philosophy
can be categorized among the more successful ones. (Pouria)
4.
Teaching philosophy
In this essay, I will introduce
my teaching philosophy in teaching immigrant students. Teaching immigrant
students whose English is limited requires more special teaching skills than
teaching local students. For me, I think there are two teaching strategies I
would like to implement in my classes.
Making knowledge clear to
students is a very important teaching strategy for bilingual teachers. It means
that teachers should use special teaching methods to make knowledge easily
understood by students. For instance, when teachers are teaching kindergarten
immigrant students’ objects, such as, different kinds of fruit, instead of
telling students directly the English name of fruit, showing ELLs (English
Language learners) the real fruit is a better choice. By hearing, touching,
feeling, and smelling the real objects, students will learn English
effectively.
Another teaching philosophy
that appeals to me is making students involved in my class. There are several
ways to involve students in class. For example; in teaching ELL’s vocabulary, teachers
model the commands and continually repeat and review them until the students
can carry out the commands with no difficulty. Specifically, teachers may give commands,
such as “stand up” and “sit down,” then they do the commands; by repeating
these, students know what is meant by “stand up” and “sit down.” After that,
teachers give comments to students and make them involved in this activity. By
this kind of physical activity, teachers involve students in the class. (Lu)
5.
Teaching Philosophy
When it comes to being a
teacher, some people consider that a teacher must be equipped with abundant
professional knowledge and responsibility of teaching students. However, these
are merely fundamental qualities of being a teacher. In my point of view, it requires
effective methods of teaching as well.
Unfortunately, I have no
experience of being a teacher, but I have undergone undergraduate education of
landscape architecture for 4 years. During these times, I took many courses by
different teachers and felt various teaching methods and class atmospheres.
Some are good while others are not. As a result, I gradually got some ideas
about teaching philosophy.
If I were a landscape
architecture teacher who was teaching undergraduate students, I would be responsible
for every student. Since undergraduate students are mainly undeveloped or being
developed while they are eager to achieve professional skills; it is crucial
for me to help them look for methods of knowledge acquisition and foster their
personality during undergraduate studies. For undergraduate students, they
already have the capability of grasping knowledge from books, so teachers
should focus on the key information of the topic rather than convey knowledge
by mechanically reading a textbook to students. In my teaching philosophy,
cultivation of students’ confidence and ability for independent thinking should
be taken into account. First, every student should be prepared for each class,
with questions and critical thinking in mind. I will let some students
summarize the articles and encourage them to express their viewpoints
respectively instead of entirely accepting what I teach. Second, starting a
discussion consists of producing questions and getting other students to solve
them. I will focus on making a full explanation of those questions that no one
could answer. Third, I will emphasize the main concept of this topic and make
sure everyone has understood it.
For landscape architecture
students, they may have no idea of design while concept learning is not enough.
Showing them pictures or videos of the design process helps construct an idea
of it and is also conducive to grasping their attention and makes a better
understanding. In this way, students will achieve more success. Also, it is
essential to share various aspects of experiences in my career, because
students can be directly aware of how to apply the knowledge in their career
and what personality should be built, which contributes to their final growth.
Meanwhile, I strongly consider students should work in groups, as they
gradually form a sense of being cooperative and develop ability of leadership;
especially in landscape architecture, not all projects can be finished by
oneself, either in university or in one’s career. Students must learn how to
communicate and work with others, accepting and sharing different ideas,
finishing their own work on time and integrating everyone’s work, to present a
perfect design.
Last, different teachers have
different teaching philosophies and the best is always the one that can be
accepted by students and effectively beneficial to them. I believe the teaching
philosophy that I mentioned can let students achieve more success in the
future. (Kai)
6. My Teaching Experience
I have
always wanted to be a teacher
from an early age. I used to teach math
to my
younger brother as well as
neighbor kids since I was 12 years old. I believe that has something to do with the fact that my father,
a civil engineer, used to be a private math
teacher and would
do it as
a second job. I
remember observing him
teaching for hours
without having a
single clue about
what he was
talking about. When
I entered the
university, I was
not able to
think of any
job which would
suit me other than
being a professor.
I was completely sure this was
going to be the
career I
was going to
do for a
living. There was only one problem.
All the students
seemed to be
bored in most
classes or at
least they were not
fully comfortable. That
was when I realized teaching could
be just a
job like any
other career, or
it could turn
into an art
if the person
who was doing
that, cared about
it greatly. So I
tried to use
my experience as
a student and
turn it into
my materials as a teacher.
I was
fortunate enough to be a
teacher when I
was studying my
Master of Science. I have had
over 300 students
in 4 years,
all in the chemical
engineering field such
as mass transfer,
chemical reactions and
thermodynamics. These experiences
made me realize
I should always
consider two goals. First,
always try to
get better and
try to be
the most updated,
fun, knowledgeable teacher
for your students.
Second, you will not
achieve goal number
one! So it
is almost impossible
to make all
of the students
satisfied at all
times and there
will always be
some students who
do not agree
with your points
or your method
of teaching. However,
nothing horrible would
be coming out
of hard working
and pursuing goal
number one!
I think in
general a teacher
should be very
focused on the
core concepts of
the course he
or she is
teaching. I personally
used to spend
enormous amount of time before
each class to
own the topic
because to be
honest, even a
student who knows
nothing about a
topic will get
the sense if
you are not
prepared. In this
way the teacher
would lose the
student`s trust and
consequently his own
confidence. But surprisingly
having a vast
knowledge of a
certain topic is
not enough as
we see many
great researchers and
scientists are not
necessarily decent teachers.
One should try
to get better
in the art
of passing the
wisdom and knowledge
to students with
use of various
examples and expose
them to different
aspects of that
particular problem. He
or she should
help students to
visualize the case
or at least
give them an
imagination about what
is really going
on instead of
just formulating the
problem using pure
math or physical
definition. This is
really common in the
engineering area because
often you see
students who are
brilliant in math
and are able
to do many
engineering problems despite
of having no
idea or deep
understanding about the
features of them.
Another trick that
I eventually learned
to use was
to keep the
environment of the
class very friendly.
I believe along
with being strict
and running the
class based on
certain rules, the
teacher should have
some sense of
humor! Being funny
is essential for a teacher
because let’s face
it, even if
you are the
smoothest talker or
the deepest professor
in your field
you are going
to lose the
audience`s attention eventually.
I personally would even take my time to prepare my jokes before the
class. However, my jokes always
work better when I improvise them!
Another key component in teaching in my view is
making students interact! I remember
being bothered or
I could say
feeling left out when my
teachers would not
ask me any
questions or not ask about
my opinion. Maybe some teachers ignore the fact
that sometimes simple eye contact with students would help
them build their confidence. Sure,
there are always
more active students in class who
are willing to
participate in class
discussion all the time, but
let`s not forget about
those more shy,
introverted students in
class who need
to be given
attention. So building a class atmosphere with
interaction between all attendees
could help us to avoid having a thick air, boring and
not likeable class.
Teaching
has always been
an inspiring job
for me and
I think the
ability to share
your knowledge with
students and help
them to think
more deeply, and gain
self-confidence to build
a better future
for themselves and
society is precious
and priceless. But like
any other goals, it will not be achieved except by
putting endless effort into it,
because that is
how the world
works. To do
that, he or
she should always
be prepared, open
to questions, very active and
caring to all the students with a little bit
of humor. In this way, the student would enjoy
the class as much
as they enjoy any other fun activities. Learning plus
having fun? That is utopia! (Sina S)
7. Teaching Philosophy
From
an early time in my education, I
have experienced teaching
to my friends,
classmates and siblings,
and most of
the time I
found it very
fulfilling. It not
only improved my
ability to transfer
my knowledge on
that subject to
others, but also
it helped me
learn more about
that topic during
the teaching process.
Those small experiences
and also a
lot of points
which I learned
as a chemical
Engineering student or Teaching Assistant have
developed my teaching philosophy.
I
believe the most important skill that a teacher should have or at least try to gain
is the skill
of communication. It seems essential to be able to
connect to students,
and also it will help to avoid a
stressful or uncomfortable atmosphere. Students should be ble to ask questions
and get answered
properly. Therefore, I always try
to communicate with
students and encourage them to ask questions to make sure that they are understanding what I am trying to
teach. Even if it means I have to repeat a part, the students should be comfortable
enough to ask for it. Friendly discussion with students and sometimes a little
sense of humor can help to build a good and comfortable atmosphere.
Furthermore,
since Chemical Engineering courses involve a lot of mathematics and
formulas, therefore the
best method I
have found to
grab students’ attention
is to prepare
power point slides
on most part
of the material
and copy them
and give them to students. In this way, they will be
able to follow the teacher without
getting lost. In
my experience, the
key to the
highest effectiveness of
this method is
that there could
be some blank
spots in power
point notes, which
students need to
fill in themselves.
This can make them
more focused on
the subject, and
also they should
follow the teacher
to find out
the answer of
those spots.
However,
in order
to prevent students
from memorizing the
formulas without a
deep understanding of
them, I have
found that solving
example problem can be really
effective. This makes it
possible for them
to apply their
knowledge in real
example which leads
to adequate perception
of the concept.
However, it will not
end here, because
what students learnt
in one session
can be easily
forgotten in the
next class if
they do not
repeat or solve
more examples. Therefore, suitable number
of homework assignments
can do the
trick in here.
Furthermore, I believe one
important step in
learning process is
frequent open-discussion quizzes,
because in this
way students will
learn more than
what they expected
from each other.
Last,
sufficient distribution of
the points which
make the final
grade of the
students on the
course is critical.
Multiple homework
assignments, projects, midterms
and of course final
exam should be
considered for each
course. In this way,
even if the
students miss a
part for a reason they
can make it
up through the
other sections during
the semester. (Soraya Honarparvar)
8. Teaching philosophy
The purpose of education is to
prepare students for a better future and to have the ability to improve the
economics of their societies. Therefore, teachers have a significant job that
requires several skills and training to be successful. We are mistaken to think
that teachers need only to be good in their field and to forget that teachers
interact with students of different ages with different needs. There is no
doubt that teachers should prepare well for a class, be organized and provide
materials that help students to understand the lessons.
In kindergarten class, I would
put in my consideration the relationship between me and students, how to
inspire students and how to create a positive environment in the class. I would
respect students and give them freedom to express their opinions. Students
would be inspired by teachers who love their subjects and express that love.
This love will encourage them to create new methods of teaching and update
their information. As a result, students love and get attached to the subject.
Therefore, I would use face expressions to show how I love all activities that
I would provide from different subjects. Using positive words also is one of my
teaching strategies. Positive words will help students to work harder and give
them confidence in their ability. Also, positive words will make students happy
and attached to school. As a result, the learning performance will improve.
Another way that helps to
improve the learning performance is to connect information with experience,
like learning math through cooking. For example, I would use ingredients to
teach children simple addition and fractions. Also, by using a measurement cup,
I would teach them some concepts such as, half and quarter. In kindergarten
class I would use different kinds of material and activities to connect playing
with learning and to make sure that all children understand the information. I
would avoid using a lot of technology, because at this age children need to
learn how to interact with others. Therefore, I would provide group activities
to teach them how to take turns and share with each other. I believe making
learning fun will help students to love school and learning. As a result, the
idea of continuous education will be part of their lives when they grow up.
(Ebtehal)
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