My Statement of Teaching Philosophy, Redux

[rynling]

Although I strongly believe in the value of education, I hate how unapologetically elitist the American university system is, and one of my goals as a professor is to resist and undermine this ideology.

This is one of the main reasons I put a lot of energy into a commitment to give every single student in every single one of my classes a grade in the "A" range. The way I see it, different students have different strengths and talents; and, as a professor, it's my job to figure out what these strengths and talents are and reward them instead of punishing people for failing to meet some sort of arbitrary, idealized standard. I want my students to feel excited about reading and thinking and learning, and I want them to get a sense of accomplishment and empowerment from my classes.

This isn't always easy, but I've gotten much better at it. I managed to pull off giving every student an "A" last semester, and I think - based on the way things are looking - I can probably pull it off this semester as well.

One of my life goals (and I understand how small and unimportant I am, so I know this is ambitious) is to make quality higher education at least a little more accessible to anyone who's interested in pursuing it at any level and for any length of time. In order to make college-level material more accessible, I think you have to account for a range of diversity in your students, their learning styles, and their goals, and you also have to respect their limited levels of time and energy.

I think it's important to make people feel heard, validated, and appreciated. And let's be real, given the state of higher education at the moment, it's also important that students feel like they're actually getting something in return for the massive amount of money they're borrowing. If I skew the university's numbers and averages by accommodating and supporting my students, so be it.

Comments

[lassarina]

....This reminds me, via "god what a good contrast bless you for existing", of a professor I had freshman year who proudly said that she nearly never gave out A's.

My university is top 20 (probably will rise to top 15 as the cheating scandal filters out into the rankings) and I just. That class was so disheartening, for a 100 class, as a tiny thing? And I happen, even, to be someone who's good at the Traditional Academic Structure; I can shit out a paper that gets A's from almost all my professors the night before with little prep or thought. (Sometimes I wonder how good I could've been if I'd tried, and want to spit acid at past-me, but also she was dealing with undiagnosed anxiety and depression and a hell of a lot of emotional shit, but still.)

Good for you for making the world a little better.

[runicmagitek]

Thank you so much for being a good egg like this. I struggled so much in school (high school more so than college) due to not following a teacher's idea of how a student should operate. I struggle so much with taking notes. Not only is it a tremendous amount of energy for me to listen and process what someone is saying to me, writing down what they're saying while they're still talking makes me block out whatever they are currently saying. So I'd write down a chunk of information I deemed important, only to miss whatever the fuck they just rambled off about the last minute. I ended up not taking notes so I could listen in hopes that if I found something genuinely interesting, I would remember it. Sadly, this didn't work for classes I had zero interest in, like chemistry and algebra. And a lot of my teachers deemed me lazy or rebellious or flat out stupid because I didn't take notes like everyone else. Even when I tried explaining it, I just got written off as a flaky teenager making up stories to get out of doing work. Sigh.

At least professors let me take pictures of their whiteboards or even emailed me copies of their presentations used in class. Now with my job, I can ask people to stop talking for ten seconds so I can type out important shit so I don't forget and not get this look of how dare you not keep up with everyone else what is wrong with you.

This also reminds me of how many courses at my school were locked behind way too many prerequisites or even majors, like I couldn't take a lot of creative writing classes, because I wasn't an English major. There was literally one (1) creative writing class for non-majors at my college offered once a semester and rotated as to what it focused on: novels, poetry, or screenwriting. It filled up instantly. The only time I ever had a chance to take it was my final semester of senior year... and it was the same time my required graphic design class was. Sigh. I also wanted to take a bunch of computer-related classes, but I need to have a certain score in so many math classes to qualify or be a particular engineering major (which also requires a lot of high scores in math classes). And I never did well in math, so I figured, "Well, I guess I won't be good at that, either." Which in hindsight, is absolutely terrible.

It warms my heart to know you're paying attention to the needs of your students and knowing not everyone learns the same way. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but wow, I wish I had you as a professor when I was younger.