Post 266: How To Formulate A good Teaching Philosophy Letter For Employment

Post 267: How To Formulate a Good Teaching Philosophy Letter

1. Describe the best learning experience you have had as a student.  The best learning experience I had as a student all had to do with hands-on learning.  My French teacher taught us about French culture by taking us out to a French restaurant and we made a school trip to see Carmen in New York City. We all sat backstage as we watched Carmen being performed in French live. We had spent time in class studying Carmen and doing a background unit on Carmen so we would be familiar with the story, the author, and the historical time period. We also learned some of the lyrics and sang the songs of Carmen before we went to the actual opera. Tying what we learned in class to a real world event made learning the French language and French culture real to me when I was a teenager. I love listening to the opera songs of Carmen to this day.
2. Describe the best teaching experience you have had as an instructor. Are there any similarities to the learning experience you described above?  The best teaching experience I had was also a hands-on teaching experience. My best teaching moment was the moment when my Chinese student realized she could read an all-English book by herself without any Chinese translation and without any help from me. That moment when she finished the book, the light of pride in her eyes, the light of love and gratitude to me for all my patience, that look will live in my heart forever. She realized that she had finally acclimated to being in the US and we hugged that moment of victory together. For me, the best part of teaching is when my students get that ultimate 'aha' moment. That's what makes it all worthwhile for me.
   
3. What are you trying to achieve in your students with your teaching? (This is a big question and may be best initially answered by thinking about it in the context of what you feel is the course you teach with the most success.) When I teach writing classes online or face to face, I want my students to develop a lifelong love of writing, to realize that writing is not a chore but a way to release stress and express the deepest part of themselves to the world, and a way to let others see their point of view. With my students, I am trying to get them to gain enough confidence in their writing that they enjoy writing for the sake of writing and they gain enough confidence in writing an academic research paper that they can see research not as an assignment for the class, but see research as an exploration of new ideas on a topic they are interested in so they can develop a life long love of reading, writing and research.
4. Why is this important to you? (This helped me to begin articulating my approach to my discipline in the context of teaching. For others I know it becomes larger than the discipline itself and may link to the personal growth of students and not only their intellectual growth.) Having my students develop a life long love of reading, writing and research is important to me because I love reading, writing and research as a way to relieve stress, escape from the world, explore topics that I am curious about in order to gain an understanding of the world. I feel if you can gain a better understanding of the world, you won't feel so helpless about important life events.  I want my students to share in my excitement to read to explore new ideas, other time periods, empathize with other people, to write to release tension, to share a part of myself to the world, or to persuade others to overcome ignorance, and research because I love reading and writing about different perspectives. By having a more student centered class, I get to know my students better and bond with them.
5. How do you achieve your objectives you wrote down for question #3 above? That is, what teaching strategies or approaches do you use in your classes that produce the learning environment or opportunities for your students to reach your teaching objectives? (Hopefully, this has been informed by your answers in questions #1 & 2 above. If there is no apparent connection between this question and your answers to #1 & 2, then this might be cause to pause and reflect why this is.) To make what I teach become real for the students, I do what my teachers did for me--I relate what I teach to world events around them.  My French teacher had us go see Carmen and did a unit on Carmen. In 2016, I talked about the 2016 election and we talked about how both Trump and Clinton used the Ad Hominem Fallacy when they insulted each other rather than focus on the issues.  When I teach students how to tell fact from fiction, I am teaching them a love of reading, a way to find credible facts for research, a way to educate themselves and see multiple perspectives. I also like to provide hands-on teaching just like I did for my Chinese student when I taught her how to read and write in English by working with her peer editing whatever she wrote so when I teach my online writing classes, I create a forum where students peer edit each other's rough drafts and students become a community of learners and bond as they correct each other's papers. I have my students play grammar games--my students love playing grammar games online.  I try to provide the hands on teaching and relevant world experience that I liked when I was a student.
6. Why do you use these particular teaching strategies as opposed to others that are available to you? (This is where you start developing the argument or citing the evidence for the value or success of your approach to teaching. Hopefully, you are able to make links to your own learning philosophy.) I found that the most boring classes I have taken as a student were classes that were teacher-centered long lecture format classes. In those classes, I used to tune out or daydream. So instead of a teacher-centered classroom,  I like to teach in a project based collaborative student/learner centered classroom where I relate real world events to what I am teaching in the class.  I like to be the guide by the side not the sage on the stage (this cliche I learned at my other school). As the guide, I help my students take responsibility for their own learning. As the online class progresses, I let my students do most of the talking and doing as they do their papers, write projects and interact in the forums.  I like to pose challenging teacher questions to stimulate and move the conversation forward.

Questions taken from: Six Questions That Will Bring Teaching Philosophy Into Focus by Neil Haave on the Faculty Focus Website