My teaching philosophy is very much a chimera: many-headed and ever-changing to what needs it must satisfy and what challenges it mush surmount. As such, I fully expect it to change over time and, possibly, if luck is on my side, mature into a more condensed and easily-digestible form.
In Short:
A succinct and poignant version of my teaching statement is: My greatest strength as an instructor is also my greatest weakness. I have always valued professors who can speak to students (roughly) as equals, rather than vessels to be filled up with knowledge. So, I think my ability to engage with my students in a productive yet amiable way is a good strength of mine. It lets me gauge the class’ interest and skill in a subject much more candidly, as we can talk frankly about what, in terms of the Assignment at hand or the class in general, is going well or needs improvement. However, I fear I am too reliant on my student’s feedback, and I fear that I am teaching the way they want to be taught at the expense of teaching them something wholesomely new and outside of their comfort zones.
In Long:
Strengths: At the moment, from the reflections on my own teaching and from what I’ve heard from my colleagues, I think I’ve had my strengths affirmed. Namely, I think I hit my stride during the times when I am most congenial with my students. My most successful classes, by far, have been the ones where we talk together as a class, pooling ideas, inspirations, and thoughts on Assignments and the class as whole. I think that I have a certain ease and charisma when up in front of the class that helps my students let their guard down and talk more openly to me than a professor who is definitely more ‘professional’ and sets him/herself off from the class. That isn’t to say I’m explicitly informal with my students, I still find that I need to corral and direct them as any instructor would, but since I find that I’m oftentimes very in-tune with my class, we can have very good discussions to the benefit of all.
I think the shining example of what kind of good this can do is on the 30th of September, the date I required them to hand in their Assignment #3. Rather than have my students complete the reflection questions given as part of the curriculum in class (I did assign those questions to be answered on Moodle, however), I sat down with my students and spoke very straightforwardly with them about how they thought that class was going— not so much in terms of the content being taught but in how it was taught and how the students wanted to be taught. Either by luck or by projection on my part, my students spoke up very earnestly about ways the class could be improve; those ways happened to coincide almost wholesale with my strengths as an instructor. More in-class discussion, visual representations on the board, and focused work on individual topics rather than touching briefly on a wide spread of topics were all stressed. I found this enormously helpful, as I always have worries that what I’m teaching my students is, so to speak, entering one ear and flying right out of the next. Plus, I’ve had very good responses so far with this increased ‘rapport.’ My students are, for the vast majority of them, willing and able to speak up, ask questions, and contribute to the class. This really lets them take control of their own learning and get what they want out of the class. I’ve taken to heart the idea that we can lead our students to water, but we cannot make them drink (an extension of the idea that we can’t ‘save’ our students). Putting the learning into the hands of the students, teaching to their expectations rather than just doling out information, sits well with me.
Weaknesses: Still, I confide that my weakness as a professor comes while being outside of the class. The myriad of rules, protocols, paperwork, and procedures is overwhelming to me in a way that causes a good deal of stress and confusion to me personally. While this may seem like an inappropriately person aspect to focus on, since I place so much emphasis and pride in my easiness and charisma in front of the class I increasingly find that what transpires outside of the class can directly affect how well I perform in front of my students. For instance, when I find that my students, who have been often-reminded in class and through email, that they need to attend class every day, have a finite amount of absences, and need to respond to all Moodle forum posts, will be inconsistent at best at satisfying those requirements, it can play on my morale. More personally, it makes me doubt that my class is listening to me and finds importance in the tasks I’m giving to them. Perhaps ironically, though, as mentioned before, my class is still very open in conversation with me and they contribute good points to conversations and their Moodle posts. I only wish that they would do so more regularly. It would also stop me from having to repeatedly tell the whole class about assignments or classes that just one student missed.
Beyond that, I know that sometimes I bend to the whims of my students a bit too often and am a little bit too, how to say, “on their side.” That is, I’m willing to negotiate things like paper length, subject matters, and even class-by-class material. On more than one occasion, I’ve made two different lesson plans for one day so I could ask my students if they would prefer Option A or Option B.
An example of the above comes from my class of October 10, 2016: I had constructed three different lesson plans for my students. Option A had my students ask questions of me about the in-progress Assignment #4, followed by individual research time. Option B had my students put into groups of four. They would then have time to analyze a movie poster I would give them, putting to use what we learned on the classes of the 5th and 7th of October. Option C was the same as Option B, but we talked about the posters as a class, rather than in groups.
I had my mind set on Option B, especially since I’ve been meaning to push group work more often, but the class, save for two dissenting votes, asked for Option C. And so, I relented. I had always found that I respected, and followed with more fervently, the professors that saw his/her students as people with difficult lives, busy schedules, and creative and/or individual enough to know what they’d like out of their college education. I always admired the ability for professors to connect with their students— however, I fear that, especially since my students are freshmen who are taking a Gen-Ed class, rather than something they’re entirely passionate about, they may be unwilling to budge from what they are familiar with. Case and point, their resistance to group work. After all, while my students have expressed to me that they learn more from class-wide discussion, rather than group work, my job as a professor is to facilitate teaching. So, I should press and push my students more to unfamiliar territory, instead of just working with the familiar.
Still, I am hopeful that I can, with my background in creative writing and a wide appreciation and dabbling in various art fields, give my students mindsets and modes of thought they may not get anywhere else in their undergraduate careers (especially if they stick closely to their engineering and science fields). That is, I want my students to know that it is completely alright to argue for their interpretation and use their creativity as a legitimate source of knowledge and intellectual strength, no matter the situation. Different ways of looking at the same problem, situation, or object should, it is my hope, become inherent to my students upon their departure from my class. I fear that, as engineer or agriculture students, they may end up missing out on some very important ways of looking at the world. As a result, I hold myself responsible for making sure that incredibly complex mindset gets (somehow) taught to them in just one part of one semester.
Needless to say, I find myself in a paradox with my teaching philosophy right now. I find strength in confidence and weakness in anxiousness and uncertainty. At least my path to a better state of teaching is clear and narrow- to solidify my intentions for my students and pursue them, being meticulous in detail and careful in language while still being a professor in charge but also a fellow learner.