Statement of Teaching Philosophy
My teaching goal is to encourage the pursuit of knowledge. I believe that students are the main players in the learning process; the teacher’s role is to inspire their interest and advance their abilities in life-long learning. My teaching emphasis is on motivating and helping students learn, which is especially important in teaching an emerging subject, such as new media. In particular, it is a teacher’s responsibility to help students develop a vision of the future, to enable them with fundamental concepts, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and to exhibit the excitement of the overall learning process.
An interactive and inspiring environment is vital to achieve my teaching goal. I want students to actively participate, collaborate and communicate in class. Even though computers are the major tools that students deal with in my classroom, I constantly encourage them to talk in class either to the teacher or to each other about the topics covered. When designing a course plan, I attempt to create opportunities for students to cooperate with each other. I teach students to switch roles from a communicator to the audience so that they can not only improve their professional projects, but also understand the value of a communicator relies on the interaction with the audiences.
To create an inspiring environment, I use multimedia to provide a vision of the subject matters; my teaching materials are designed relevant to students’ lives. Moreover, having a faith in the benefit of ‘good moods’ on learning and creativity, I strive to establish a stress-free style in my presentation. When students work on their projects, background music works effectively in terms of keeping them patient and stimulating their inspiration. In addition, I offer students a chance to revise their projects, by which I express my high expectations for them and move them forward.
Enlightened by Confucius, I pay special respects to diverse talents and ways of learning to make every student enjoy the journey of pursuing knowledge. The first thing I will do in every quarter is to survey students about their prior knowledge of the subject that I am teaching and their expectations for my course. In addition to taking care of the majority of the class, it is beneficial to provide other students with extra learning materials and special office hours.
Assignments and projects are the major approaches to measure students’ learning. However, the emphasis is on detecting their improvements during the overall course. The initial survey functions as a baseline for evaluating individual student, whereas their progress can be more easily observed from the revision for each assignment as well. To let students review their fellow classmates’ projects can promote critical thinking and role-playing.
In order to achieve the ultimate goal of encouraging students’ active pursuit of knowledge, I attempt to employ various strategies to establish an interactive and inspiring environment. Under a helpful and pleasant learning circumstance, students’ enthusiasm can be stimulated and their skills of further learning can be enhanced.
今年正经八百的Halloween赶上了星期一，这便让这个发狂的节日稍稍逊色了一些。星期六是Athens一年一度的block party，也是这个小城一年中最最热闹和疯狂的日子了。去了两年的block party，今年就一点兴致都没有了。加上天气寒冷，以及俺那个苟延残喘的tercel让俺很闹心，这个Halloween过的很depressed。
看了网上的关于今年block party的照片，觉得这个虐待战俘的custom最有创意。这些学生们啊叫俺这样的当老师的又恨又爱。
修改：找来原版的虐待战俘照片，真实形似神更似。
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