-Stage 7.3-

Teaching Statement

Your teaching statement is supposed to represent your values on teaching and what you hope to accomplish, so these are mine.

To be a good teacher there are some qualifications that I feel one should possess.

1. The teacher needs to exhibit to his or her students that the they knows more than the students do. Otherwise there is no need for the students to pay attention or even care if they feel they know more than the teacher, whether that is the actual case or not.

2. The teacher must be liked or at least respected by the students. Students are not likely to pay attention or care about a class in which they do not like or respect the professor. Although respect may be the more important important of responses I find that students who like their teacher are more likely to try harder and often learn the material faster. This is because they feel freely to ask more questions and engage the teacher in a conversation, perhaps learning more than the other students who did not engage the teacher.

3. The teacher must be approachable. This goes along with the previous qualification in that students who feel they are able to talk to the teacher about what they do not understand are more likely to grasp concepts than the students who do not understand and continue to avoid talking to those more knowledgeable than themselves.

4. The most important part of learning is the learning. Often I find in classes that deadlines are deadlines and you go past them then you are screwed. But how does that help the student to learn. I find that by giving them more time or allowing students to make up missed exams or quizzes that, for one, they are grateful, and two still learn the material, which is the most important point. To counteract the procrastination tendency, I will enact a penalty for late assignments. Although not a perfect system, I would prefer the students learn the materials than conform to the schedule I set out for them.

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