Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Values

Utility | Every student who walks into my classroom has their own values, motivations and reasons for being there. They also have different goals for the semester: to gain skills in a lab, to understand biology, to become a better scientist, to get a passing grade. I believe that understanding students’ motivations in the classroom, even if they are not fully aware of them, is essential to ensuring that my class is useful to each student.

Students will interpret a given assignment to meet their needs, and I think that it is important to create assignments that are useful to a diversity of motivations. I have completed several projects to provide additional support for a scientific writing assignment for the general biology lab program, in which students are asked to write a paper in a standard scientific format about an experiment they performed in lab. One of my goals is to make the assignment useful to more students by emphasizing approaches to the paper considering the scientific method, the biological principles, and the structure of scientific papers that will be useful in future classes. This will encourage students with different values to engage with the assignment and will increase the benefits of the activity.

Empathy / Compassion | My students also have motivations outside the classroom. Some of them are parents, or have parents who need their help. Some are struggling with their physical or mental health. Some have full-time jobs. Some have none of these things, but have other priorities that may or may not make sense to me. As an instructor, I do not believe that I have the right to tell them what their priorities should be. I only have the responsibility to accept their priorities and provide a space for them to learn.

My students see my empathy in many ways. I always try to make accommodations when asked, and have offered additional support to students who are struggling even if they can not ask for it. I also recognize that there are times when accommodation or attention are not the solution to a student’s problem – in these instances, I simply try to provide space, whether by inviting the student to take a short break or by creating the opportunity for peer support and group activities. If a small change in my classroom can make a situation more accessible for just one student, I will always make that change.

Agency | Recognizing what students need to engage with the material both academically personally is about acknowledging student agency. Regardless of my values and actions in the classroom, students will make decisions about when and how to engage with the curriculum. I aim to give students the opportunity to build their own learning goals and to tie the material to their values.

I start this process on the first day of my general biology classes, when I ask students a simple question: why are you here? The answers have been varied, but are mostly some variation of “because it’s a requirement.” My next question, then, is why they think the class is required by their department. This encourages them to think not just about what the biology department wants them to get out of the class, but what they want to get out of the biology department. At this point, they begin to recognize their values and motivations: to gain skills in a lab, to understand biology, to become a better scientist, to get a passing grade. Throughout the semester, I come back to these principles; my weekly learning objectives are organized into these categories to help students connect to them. Once students recognize their own goals, they are more likely to use their agency to engage with the material and learn about biology.

Learning Goals

While students may have their own goals and motivations in a classroom, I also have learning goals for them that I hope extend beyond their time in my class. Regardless of the course I am teaching, I hope that students will learn to:

1. Critically engage with scientific theories and ideas

2. Communicate their scientific ideas successfully to diverse audiences

3. Ask questions and develop plans to answer them

These three goals are learned skills that are often expected in higher education but rarely taught. This creates a significant barrier for some students who have never been exposed to the processes of scientific thinking and communication, which often disproportionately affects students from disadvantaged communities. While all students will benefit from explicit discussion of these goals, I feel that students who need this support will be more likely to continue in the sciences when taught with these goals.

Additionally, I aim in each of my classes to show students that science is a community of thinkers who are working together to answer fundamental questions about how the world works. As a student, I was often exposed to single scientists who changed the world and never heard about the work by hundreds of others that contributed to their theories. In my own experience, I have felt more confident and supported in my learning when I think of scientists as a community, and I hope to pass that on to my students who would benefit from the same worldview.