MY STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
More than transmitting knowledge, teaching, for me, is about inspiring others to discover their purpose and potentials. I’ve been involved with education much longer than 10 years. In addition to my Master and Bachelor education; I worked as a high school math facilitator & teacher, a computer teacher, and an information technology university instructor. Presently, I am honored to serve as a Graduate Research Assistant in Learning Design & Technology at Wayne State University (WSU) where I work with the faculty on research projects and online course design. Over the past ten years, I have had the opportunity to meet wonderful educators from many parts of the world who made a difference in my life, broadened my vision of teaching and learning, and shaped my teaching philosophy.More than transmitting knowledge, teaching, for me, is about inspiring others to discover their purpose and potentials. I’ve been involved with education much longer than 10 years. In addition to my Master and Bachelor education; I worked as a high school math facilitator & teacher, a computer teacher, and an information technology university instructor. For the last three years, I was honored to serve as a Graduate Research/ Teaching Assistant in Learning Design & Technology at Wayne State University (WSU) where I worked with the faculty on research projects and online course design. Over the past ten years, I have had the opportunity to meet wonderful educators from many parts of the world who made a difference in my life, broadened my vision of teaching and learning, and shaped my teaching philosophy.
Working as a teacher at different grade levels, I have had the opportunity to impact the lives of my students, and I take that role seriously. After attending a valuable workshop series “Designing Courses for Significant Learning,” offered by the Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) at WSU, and subsequently reading the book by Fink (2003), I have learned that for significant learning to occur, there has to be a change in the students’ knowledge, skills and values. I redesigned my courses to generate powerful learning experiences for my students and formulated my course goals that promote not only knowledge and application (cognitive) learning, but also help my students to make connections between specific ideas, to interact effectively with others, and to care about the subject. Likewise, I encourage them to be critical thinkers and to learn how to keep on learning.
To achieve my course goals and to fulfill my ultimate goal in teaching- to be the best educator I can be, I help students in my class to master the fundamentals of the subject matter and ensure they understand them in order to be successful in their fields of study and their lives. In that sense, I always differentiate my instruction, so my lessons are tailored for the gifted students who need more challenges and for those having difficulties understanding the concepts. My role as a teacher varies, sometimes, I am a coach who teaches the basic skills and provides students with opportunities for practice, other times, I am an advisor who answers students’ queries and a facilitator who guides them to the appropriate resources.
My other predominant course goal is to develop students’ critical thinking skills by stimulating their interest in the subject. Students in my class are encouraged to synthesize information from different resources, not solely from their assigned reading. They evaluate these resources, reflect on their experiences through journal writing, and discuss their thoughts about them with their colleagues. I believe this approach not only empowers my students but also encourages them to be explorers and innovative learners.
My mantra for teaching is engagement. Students in my class are required to interact and work in groups either face-to-face or online. They discuss their opinions and reflect on the assigned readings. In turn, I incorporate appropriate resources such as videos, graphics, and presentations in my courses that align with the instructional technology standards and fit diverse learners; I also include a variety of thoughtful activities into the syllabus in order to reach all of my students. For example, in the Evaluation Tools and Techniques course, students developed a class presentation about examples of evaluation. Students in my class used either a poster or a presentation to present their work. I also arranged an expert to visit my class to empower my students and expand their knowledge about the topic. Likewise, I incorporated team case studies in which students develop an evaluation report to determine the alternative recommendations. Further, I adapted my teaching methods to be accessible to every student in my class, especially those with hearing, sight, movement, and cognitive disabilities, to help them to be more engaged and motivated to learn.
To encourage my students to demonstrate what they have learned and to keep on learning, I use authentic assessments, either individually or in groups, in which students are provided with guided instructions and rubrics to complete a task or a project related to the content. In my hybrid and online courses, I use journal reflections, group discussion forums, quizzes, written papers and peer reviews. These assessments enable me to evaluate my students’ ability and to provide effective feedback on their performance. At the end of the course, I prefer to give a take-home major project to see what students can create when given the time to be creative.
I value feedback from my students as well. In addition to the end-of-term evaluation, I give my students a questionnaire in the middle of the semester to learn their suggestions for improving the course while it is in progress. I have really appreciated my student’s suggestions over the years; they helped me enhance my instructions and develop my teaching techniques. For example, one gifted student in my previous Calculus class suggested incorporating more challenging problem-solving questions in my class, which positively impacted my students’ performance at the end of the semester.
Additionally, I believe that teaching is a continuous process. I am extremely enthusiastic and passionate about developing my skills; therefore, I continually examine my pedagogical techniques and try out new ways to become a more effective teacher. Further, I regularly take advantage of the seminars offered by the OTL. These help me to stay up-to-date with the innovative, emerging technologies for education, to adopt new practices that address the diverse needs of my students, and to incorporate various assessment strategies. For example, a workshop on hybrid course design enabled me to gain insights and design principles on incorporating different tools in Blackboard such as Voice Thread, Wiki, Blog, Echo 360, Sway, Jing and Camtasia Studio. Furthermore, it expanded my knowledge about flipped classrooms as an alternative to the traditional lecture-based model that allows greater differentiation of teaching strategies to facilitate learning and motivate students.
Teaching is my passion. I really enjoy inspiring and guiding my students to fulfill their dreams. By creating engaging learning experiences, I transfer my passion to students and motivate them to perform better than they imagine and to become innovators and critical thinkers.
References
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
MY STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY