How to Write a Teaching Statement

so this particular workshop will be primarily about teaching statements it's philosophies and what role that plays and how to write them and we'll have some experience with it hopefully between this week and next and well let me just go over the outline in a case my name is Gary halida I'm in engineering alright just without further ado let's look at our learning objectives okay we want to look at why a teaching statement is important what's what what are the characteristics of it what goes into a teaching statement it's something by the way that as you probably know I don't have a slide on this but as you know it's something often required as part of your application if you're going to apply to another university somewhere or even this university to teach you're always asked for even if you're going to do research whatever you ask to write a teaching statement that's part of your application package and so what I'm talking about today and next week will help better prepare you for that part of your application so we'll look at what can go into it something you're going to know more than others we have all different levels in here and then hopefully you'll learn but learn learn a little bit about how to write a better teaching statement so our game plan today will talk a little bit about teaching now there's going to be a whole nother workshop some point in the future on teaching teaching methods teaching and learning learning styles I'll mention that stuff today because I don't think I can talk about what goes into a teaching statement without talking about learning styles and teaching methods and Technology and things like that so I'm going to mention some of that stuff but not go into it in the kind of detail I'm going to go into it in a further workshop I want to what we know about teaching uh basically what's important try to pull out of what we know about teaching what's really important because you're going to write a statement about what is important in education and teaching what's important in your teaching what you envision to be important in what you're going to do with the place you're applying for a job from and that's what you're trying to do here so we will look at what's important we want to look at how do you build the background and content for these kind of statements something else I want to talk about is as you write these drafts you may start to notice wow I I don't have a lot to say because I haven't done a lot and so I want to talk a little bit about the idea of how can you build up some background that you can use in these in these in these statements and your teaching philosophies where what can you start doing even where you are right now at this time that will give you the information that you need that'll look good in the future so we'll talk a little bit about that okay so when you to develop a teaching philosophy or teaching statement also a teaching philosophy is in general and then narrow it down to this one or two-page statement you should try to understand that you have to understand the relationship between between teaching and learning and those are two different things now I'm going to like I said have a workshop on this stuff but I want to talk a little bit about it today because this this relationship is key you basically teach things and you hope people will learn them now that's sometimes wishful thinking but you want to make sure that you're teaching in such a way that learning actually occurs you want to know that's learning learning is occurring you want to know how to measure that learning is occurring and you want to build that into your overall background and your philosophy as you go along so we'll look at a few things what's you know these these are more of the topics for a teaching workshop but these are important questions that you need to know if you if you don't understand this you're going to have a hard time writing a teaching philosophy because but you already know some of this stuff even if you haven't had a formal background in it how many people have ever taken a workshop on teaching or class on teaching education so you know about it but for a lot of people it might be a little bit new I'll mention one or two philosophical structures for how look for learning styles just so you can get an example of what we're talking about but you need to kind of educate yourself on this if you're going to write these teaching learning statements then you understand what learning is how people learn so you want to do some background reading oftentimes when someone reads and evaluates a teaching statement they look for something in there that tells them that wow this person is actually learn something about learning they've actually read a paper about it they've they've studied it in some way they took a course on it they went to a workshop then they took what they learned and they incorporated it into what they were doing and then analyzed it to see how it was working and that's very impressive as you're reading applications you know I've read applications for faculty positions and I read teaching statements and I don't want to read a teaching statement that just gives a list of what courses the person t.8 or whatever that means nothing imagine just you know it's a laundry list now I want to know what was important about it what they did how it worked what did they learn from that how did that feed back into themselves in order to help them become a better teacher that's what I want to see right so and then how we teach effectively so these are these are basic things that I would cover in the teaching workshop hopefully things that you understand a little bit I'll go over a few of them now in a few points about them anyway so the first part of understanding the the connection between teaching and learning is to understand learning and understand who the learner is who you know who is the student you know I ask you a few questions about what your background is that's that that's that's only the tip of the iceberg you have to know something about your students to teach effectively so we want to understand the learner we wonder stand the teacher that's you will understand the connection we wonder stand the setting it's a narrative we're building up a we're talking we're writing a short story you know you want your characters here so the first character number one is the learner right so so we only know who are the learners who are the students you know what do they want when they say who are they also want to know what they what they know how they approach what they do what is the nature of their learning how do they do it if you don't know how they do it how you going to teach you right so what do they want how can you better understand the students or the learners and focus your teaching methods on on what they need now they come in with certain needs too and you have to understand that to be able to express that your teaching statement is important that you understand that the student you are receiving that you were coming into your class have certain needs their needs might be I just want to graduate I want to get out of here I want to learn some you know other ones like why wants you to prepare me for a career you know other ones you're just saying well this is a required course you know some are saying well this is a technical elective I don't you know I'm taking it because I'm interested in the topic you their needs are important if you don't understand their needs if you're teaching a course and you don't even know whether that course is a is a required course or an elective course that's terrible you should absolutely know that you should know and if you don't know what your course is a is a prerequisite for that's bad if you don't know what courses were prerequisites for your course that's bad lesson so these are very important things that you should know and that helps you know who the learner is who the student is in the classroom I always ask this question in a teaching workshop I'll ask it here for just a second because I want to actually you know get a little bit of feedback from a couple people here just in your mind because this helps us understand teaching a little bit better when you think about a good teacher that you've had versus a bad teacher but Lisa good we've all had good teachers we've all had people that taught us things that that that we look back on and say wow you know mrs. so and she was great you know our professor so-and-so they were terrific you know that was great what what what is it that they do and this is something you need to think about if you haven't thought about it and you're currently teaching think about it right now what did they do that made them so good because I want one of the things you want to do is try to emulate things from the past that you have found useful so anybody give me a suggestion for me always lazy things back to what was happening in my life annual team has it's hard cuz I'm not a technology but like I'm a theater arts person and so even in a math class or science class there is ways that the teacher could connect that to you or to you know a play about science or something like that's us so for me good teachers are ones that can kind of engage with what's happening relate things to what's happening in other areas it's not just so they find connections that make it important they find a way to make the material important to you yeah okay no it's your way of saying it's perfect my way of saying may be different but it's no better or worse it's just what I'm saying anybody else yeah the best the best teacher I had in high school they're just so passionate about what he taught just excitement just ooze out of him he may go into his class so so so so there's a teacher who is passionate there's that there's that there's a teacher that helped a person become a problem solver by going to a certain process teachers that convey how important the material is to you by thinking about people the note learning objectives so all these different methods anybody else want to have a into that imagine if you got one that you're jumping and ready to say I'm not going to stop you sometimes you can think about what's a really bad teacher and then try to make the inverse we've all had those two I in it in a broader based teaching workshop by going to the bad teachers because that gives me a chance to tell really bizarre stories so but I won't do that right here um bad teachers do the opposite of all those things all right but uh and so for a teacher to be able to do the stuff you just talked about you were talking about basically how a teacher you know teacher made you feel confident made you feel that you could learn the material made you feel that what material was was important that made you feel it because Eva enthusiasm is all about making you feel the material is important you know if you got somebody to sit there and just drones on in a math class or something like this you and it's not important to them one should be important to me so all this comes out of how the teacher prepares the class how they put it together in their head they you prepare a class here and then you prepare a class on paper and then you prepare a class in the computer but all along you're preparing it you're putting it together you're shaping it you're shaping it for a purpose the purpose is not just to fling it out like a giant ball of data mud yeah here it is learn this okay the purpose is that you actually learn it you know you want it's all it is almost that analogy and the teacher is not just throwing it out there where the teacher wants to do is hold this up and have you pull it in all right give you that enthusiasm that self belief that you pull it in and you do something with it and so it all comes out basically have a good process and I go into it more detail other times but how a class is prepared what you do what sort of activities you create things like the reason I bring is that these are things you want to weave into your teaching statement somehow especially if they're extremely valuable how how could you do that what you just said how could you do that for somebody else in your class how could you prepare so that people get that same feeling that you got now how could you deliver with enthusiasm so people get the same feeling you got and something we don't often going to talk about assessment you know how can you assess how how can you because the one thing people don't often mention but they often think of a good teacher as somebody who not only fairly assess the quality of their work but then didn't just use it as a like putting a big thermometer on top of your head and saying oh you're you're you're real you got this much right and you've got that much wrong well that's just what you are and go away you know you actually use that assessment to help the person learn more and help the person get better so that's what assessment is assessment assessment isn't just measuring stuff that's evaluation it's what you do with it all right we could talk about assessment all day long to anybody here talk about all day long all week long oh my whole life long keep going so what I want to talk about is well I've got a few quotes actually I forgot I put these in here there we go um and I think these quotes are fairly useless useful in that I just think they're kind of they're kind of good quotes that relate to I was talking about the famous quote from Galileo we cannot teach people anything we can only help them discover it within themselves I don't really believe that uh but I do believe that he's hinting at something in here which is useful uh not you know no one's born with thermodynamics lodged in their skull somewhere they normally have to learn those equations but um when you say discover it within themselves I mean you can stretch that definition a little bit what you when you're teaching I totally talked about pulling things in drawing things in we only draw things in in a way that we can then understand them you can't put a square peg in a round hole sort of thing we saw relating stuff to your lifelong experiences to your life experiences that means that you're taking the knowledge or the teacher is helping you take the knowledge and shape it in such a way that you can pull it in otherwise it's just not going to make it all right so that's that's when he took discovery within yourself discovered entering yourself you know that's what that means um another one I like another quote here I think this is something that L is a joke I like this one I taught my dog to whistle I don't hear a whistle I said I taught him I didn't say you learned it so the idea you can teach things but the concept is all right it's oh this is this is uh yeah you think if you think about the difference when teaching and learning think about this joke here you know you can teach somebody something but what are they going to do it how they actually gonna use it two more quotes I like this one this is an Australian author won a Nobel I think I forget what I was taught I only remember what I have learned very similar to this so here's a joke version here's a quote first so that's why it's why you really focus on the learner all right education is focused on the people learning not on you teaching very important keep that in mind and finally when my or quotes a professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep but a that that's I I can I can probably help example somehow bad professor I throw that one there that's cute but don't bore your class hope you're nicely hopefully you're awake to try to keep people awake it's very important don't talk in their sleep if you talk in their sleep make sure you tell them important things so they remember okay um let me I want to talk about different types of teaching philosophy as one took my time here okay good so what do we learn from this a few things a good teacher uses teaching methods that our student focus that's another way of saying a lot of things which I've just said focusing on the learner learner's the students so you're you're focusing on the student and when you write your teaching statement you're going to write about how your teaching methods are student focused if they're not student focused you should make them some focus and then write about them because that's what people want to see who are reading your teaching statement who are evaluating it they want to see that you're focused on the learner and the relationships you learn on the teacher I mean they've always been all these great movies about about teachers you know there's a Dead Poets Society or Robin Williams being carried around by students that's an absolutely terrible picture even though it's great movie I don't like that the reason I like it is because that doesn't look student focus to me they're carding their teacher around on their shoulders now look at that and I say okay that's teacher focus and if someone else pointed out in the past they're all male but anyway um it's a boys school um but nonetheless uh you know that's even though it's a lovely movie and they they're focusing on you know this person is obviously the one they're focusing on teachers being focused on so you want you want to talk about teaching methods in your statements that are student focused one thing you need to understand and I'll mention this in one or two slides next because I could go on forever about it that we all learn differently if you're going to focus on students then what you need to know a few things who they are why they're there and how can you get that you know how do you fit that you know square peg into the round hole now what adapter do you use I think these analogies forever but it's as if you're trying to adapt one thing to something else you have to find ways to do that with your material so that they can draw it in easily so they can work with it they can learn it you're not just teaching it they're actually learning it so we have to learn about how people learn if you don't know about learning styles I think I'm doing another workshop at some point on that but well we'll go into in great detail on nauseam but I'll tell you if you two models of learning styles real quick and then tailoring your teaching style to the students learning styles or at least you know entirely tailor it but what you do is you try to fit as many learning styles and as possible so you reach out to as many people as possible so again that's the point of trying to you know make this entrance of knowledge this learning easy for the students and that's what i if I'm evaluating somebody who's coming in who wants to teach in my program I want to know that I'm not going to get a line of students outside my door complaining about them because they're not teaching I mean that the students aren't learning they may be teaching or they may think they're teaching the students aren't learning there's lots of models of learning styles out there oops please put these up all at once all right um I have everything up there once so here's two examples of people right about learning styles this is an older one a honey and Mumford typology of learners what kind of learners there are anybody who took a workshop or a course in learning methods may have seen this stuff before the one I talked about engineering a lot is one by Felder and Solomon Felder's at North Carolina State University and if you ever pick up a copy of the journal of engineering education I don't know if I've ever found copy that Felder's have at least one article in so it's pretty pretty amazing output so if elder and Barbour Solomon study is how you know how do people learn and what they do is they've created a scale that look at how people learn in different dimensions so here's a bunch of different dimensions for example they try to understand they you have active learners and your reflective learners we're all different types of learners by the way and you can probably fit find yourself up here you know active learners or people who need hands-on activities they want group activities they like workshops they like lab classes you know if you're in and that's that's easy to do with your teaching engineering I mean if you're teaching literature it's harder what do you do only give them to act out something maybe you can get them to you know read things in class may get them to analyze something as a group and then report back I don't know it's probably a whole bunch of stuff you can think of but those are things that you've probably done or that as a teacher or been involved in as a student but you know so-and-so active learners are appealed to by active things reflective learners or people like to study alone they like to have time to think about things they don't want you just race through things in a class they want you to spend they want you have little gaps in which you let people think about a topic that was just presented and I'm probably bad at reflective learners or someone's barreling ahead and things but I have to think about that there's people way say whoa wait a minute wait a minute that concept you just brought up let's let's think about that for a second I they need that reflective time so maybe and so some of you were more reflective some of you are more active in your learning other types of categories I won't go into this in great detail sensing versus intuitive you know you know sensing learners again are kind of like the active learners they want to they need more set data input more sense as sensing input you know or understanding intuitive learners basically build their models up from the inside out visual versus verbal is easy and I know in engineering I have a lot of visual learners a lot of active learners so I got pictures and movies and things like that for the visual learners I've got lab experiments demonstrations for the active learners you know I have to make sure that's all in there otherwise they're going to fall asleep on me and that can be happy they're not gonna be learning because even though I'm putting the knowledge out there they can't there's no vehicle for them to pull that knowledge in to draw it in and make use of it sequential versus global that's where I differ from a lot of engineering students myself I'm a more global thinker I like to think about how the whole the whole thing works you know a sequential learner wants to learn each mathematical principle and sequence or something like that and then try to put them together and come up with a global principle that explains it most engineering students are sequential learners I can be more global and then inductive deductive is is how you how you use the knowledge whether whether whether you you take various evidence and you put it together to come up with a theory or whether you have the theory and then you try to come up you you basically look at how that applies to many different situations and so it's you know and I'll go over this in the future workshop sometime as I said down here but it's important to know that you need to connect your teaching and learning style so if you don't know about learning styles it's something very important and you should learn about it I mean you'll always have a you know I mean not just that even saying when the topics change maybe their learning style more or less if they're a certain learning style that will apply it to everything they don't really switch like they're reflective in one topic and active in another I mean because somebody who's learns in an active way say in science class say I know just kind of say they take and then a literature class they're going to have problems in the literature class unless there's some active content because that describes more how their brain works more than anything else so so so every you know you're going to have a mix in fact you can give this a quiz you can give your students at the beginning of a semester that tells you what kind of learners they are it's an online quiz really easy to use it's a fellow Felder and solomon's website I mean I'll I can't I said I can that's in my slide somewhere into the additional slides and when we put them online you can take a look at it this is a very similar type of structure this this other honey and Mumford type which was developed for other types of classes again talks about reflective reflective learners active learners who want concrete experiences I assume that's not experiences using concrete active experimentation is our the pragmatist they like to have a go at things try them out active learners are like that they want us go ahead and try it they're not reading the directions to their you know to their home electronics equipment this like guys plug it all in turn it on let's see what happens some people like to sit there and go through all the instructions first and it drives me crazy I'm the person who plugs everything in this turns it on at home my wife has to read the entire instruction book have to sit there patiently you know like wait a minute she then she beats a warranty okay anyone so the reflector reflects on things the theorist is the abstract conceptualization they will understand underlying reasons constants relationships so you could use this as a dividing methodology this and about eight or ten other models they're all out there they're all well written about I would suggest you get familiar with one or two of them especially ones that apply to your discipline so if in whatever your discipline is if there's you know Journal of biology education I don't know if there is or something like that and that's your area make sure you take a look at what's in it and what what types of things people refer to okay all right let's want to move ahead now and stuff um so all this relates to how we learn and how we learn depends very much on on where we are and I want to talk about setting a little bit also I'll get back to this topic but we learn very differently whether we're talking about a college setting or a real-world setting um and this is something important to be aware of because we're probably most of our learning that were brought that that's created in us as learners and your students as well as you they started learning things here before school even started a long time ago and now they're in this environment the school environment where they've been forced to learn in different ways but this this methodology hasn't left them so it's very important to connect these two very important to connect how you learn in school and how you learn in the world you're talking about real-world experiences you talk about how to connect things to what's important to you that's more of a real-world way we learn things in the real world they're important to us you know when we're you know we're a baby we learn not to crawl off the tabletop because it'll hurt you know full or run into something that hurts because we that's important you know it's not important to learn you know that what's going on in Congress or something when you're two years old but it's really really important to learn how not to bang yourself on the head so we learn what's important here so we have to kind of build that connection and that becomes something called lifelong learning which means that you don't just learn here you learn here you learn both of them and you have to connect them and and something I just want to bring up that's related to this part of of helping people to learn in college the way they do in the real world is to help students understand how to teach themselves and one point I couldn't find is a quote somewhere that says you can't teach somebody anything we teach ourselves what you do is you kind of help them toward it but eventually there's that final stage where you as a student your learner pulls things in so they're always going to pull things in the last last rung on the ladder is the one where they have to do it themselves now you can only get them so far and then it's just going to fall away if you let go they have to pull themselves up the rest of the way so that meant matches well we'll live student learning styles so what you want to do in your teaching statements I want to get back to teaching statements now is you want to look at how what have you done in order to respond to learners with a mix of learning styles just lots of examples you may have wanted you may have done something to reach active and sensing learners through hands-on activities demonstrations having students solve problems answer questions formulate questions of their own discuss explain debate brainstorm these are all things that you might have done you want to express this in your teaching statement can't express everything but you know what's been successful you can also reach active sensing intuitive global deductive learners through problem-based learning so if you've done any problem-based learning activities which you don't have time to get into now but problem-based learning or studio style teaching these are techniques that are out there that respond to certain types of learners you sometimes can reach active learners through group activities or cooperative learning so these terms like cooperative learning students studio style learning problem-based learning these are things that you may be familiar with that you can incorporate into your teaching statement and you can combine these methods to look again more like the real world because that's what happens in real world learning you're basically real world learning is problem-based you know you have an open-ended problem very often in the real world they're often cooperative learning you need other people to solve the problem to help you to work with you so you want to try to look at that connection between the college learning or the school learning and the world learning and put them together and make a point of it all right who's the other person in the story a person or a narrative is you is a teacher so you ask the same questions who are they who are you what do you want you want a job that's important that's going to be expressed somehow in their - I mean you want I mean but you have to want to teach if you're going to get a job somewhere we're going to be teaching you when you read your teaching statement after you've written it does it sound like the teaching statement of somebody who wants to teach it better better sound like you're really excited about teaching it's not you really want to do alright and this isn't a part of the teaching statement part of it - narrative describe your own journey how your teaching goals and philosophy make you a better family member as well as a better scientist or a better scholar I mean you're going to want to teach you to college you want to go into a faculty position because you wanted to research publish books how is the teaching going to help you do that because if if somebody's reading and really looks to them like your teaching is just something you have to do to get paid and the rest of its what you really want to do that's going to become obvious but if you can turn around say my teaching philosophy is actually going to help me be a better scholar and researcher and here's how that's there say all you've integrated it you put it all together you know you've got the ball you're going to run with it it's very important stuff so your teaching statement becomes a narrative summing up your personal and professional development and that's very important to talk about your teaching statement as well and there's going to be some sample teaching statements you can read in a file that will be provided online as well we'll talk about that in a second all right so now any questions okay jump ahead a little bit here I've got a few more things I really want to get through my main in time so now we have the characters in the plot you know we have the students the teachers and the fact people want to learn and people want to teach together our stories coming together how about the setting don't forget the setting in your teaching statements so where do we learn well oh it's too late you can't see it that was a globe here's Africa I don't know that's out America that's gone my slide all washed out okay imagine you're seeing a map of the earth right now use your imagination you can can't see something here it could be a stain on the screen but I think that it is North American it's Canada okay anyway um so the rest is gonna be really great if this faded out um yeah so here's your here's your globe your your earth that's your setting but within that setting you have a subset namely the University all right so let's say it's Stony Brook it could be wherever you're applying for a job from give me any generic teaching institution so there's interfaces between the institution in the world something happy aware of you're not going into the ivory tower and never you know being heard from again until they you know drag you out and then within the university is this it's a picture of blackboard Sophia basically it's a in cater of your classroom space so your classroom whether it's a classroom you teaching or whether it's another version all right your teaching area your your educational area is a subset of the university which is subset of the earth all right so knowing how these interrelate is very important all right and there's the characters happy student happy teacher so they're the characters within the classroom so you're setting your place includes not just the world and the university in the classroom also includes any technology which you can bring into it as well today teaching technology is very very important and you shouldn't leave that out of the picture how do you take advantage of this picture how do you take advantage of the fact that your university or the place you're applying to think about the place you're applying to as it interface with the rest of the world now I'm applying for a job teaching at Stony Brook let's say maybe I will something now um and I wanna you know and I'm teaching in a department like I don't know the the journalism program I have the notes the journalism program you know now had some outreach to the Turkana basin program in Africa and word has or implying to the engineering department I know it's the engineering department has a whole bunch of connections to industry all right how can I make use of that okay is there anything in mind what I've done that would make use of those connections and can I then explain it in such a way that makes people think wow you really want you can really do some great things if you come here you want to show innovation in teaching and if I have a classroom am I using the technologies that come along with that classroom early learning technologies all right I'll talk about those a second and and don't forget your setting also includes the demographics of your of your University don't forget very important I'll tell you one slide on that in a second okay so this this picture which is very faded it's kind of a philosophical way to see where you are when you write about your teacher when you develop a teaching philosophy and write about it you're a teacher dealing with students with certain demographics in a classroom or in a learning space with certain characteristics within a university that provides you certain resources and asks you certain things that they want from you and you have other things you want to do in that university like scholarly research and that's part of the world and here's how the rest of the world plays into it these are things to keep in mind a lot of things to keep in your head so there's a lot of technologies out there I won't dwell on them but these are just ones from the teaching learning technology website they show students learning in all sorts of environments you know with with interactive whiteboards and and some kind of cooperative learning spaces and and group activity spaces these are all available at Stony Brook but you may use some of these and within the way you teach and by the way here's a important point up to now your teaching may have been traditional it may have used certain techniques but maybe you want to look at what's available to you through the faculty Center through the teaching learning Technology Center and start using some of it because then you can go write about it all right don't forget that yeah marina you know this DigiPen how we should be our DC philosophy sounds good both yeah yeah but you you have have a philosophy if philosophy could be as long as a single quote or whatever you have you have a philosophy that includes student-teacher the learner the teacher you know how that how that relationship works and then show how you can use the setting to the advantage with concrete examples that's how can work there's also technology around everybody's clickers I love these things I just got addicted to clickers Student Response systems a way to get students actually answering and talking in class I run around I do Poli in class I feel like I'm doing Family Feud it's great survey says um they love it we have a kicker everybody starts talking you can't shut up the class when you start using these things there's other technology students use like portfolios electronic portfolios that says that heading from one student's electronic portfolio in my class students can report back you can use these things for assessment there's assessment technologies all these things are out there and they're available there's this course management software like blackboard talk about some of the concrete exams we'll use but don't they say I have used a B C and D that's like saying I have taught this three-letter 3-digit class this three-letter three digit class this three letters okay you know it might as well just make a table with classes and technologies and see if that impresses anybody know you should just pull it out and say I've used course management software and this is how I've used it to my advantage in order to promote my philosophy and my philosophy of connecting teacher and student all right then you start getting exciting and hopefully you excite yourself by doing this you know I hope um and there's and and by the way in case you want some ideas there's that the teaching learning technology website lists all sorts of workshops and stuff available you can go to TLT website look down a list these are all things they offer under faculty services um I just you know could spend days going over all the stuff that's in there I think I've got to talk in there somewhere - I don't know someone has a video of me in there - I think it's hiding somewhere I've never found it it's probably the wrong page I've but uh but like you know for example I looked up educational assessment design of educational assessment and this is the beginning list there were like 30 30 classes I could take online classes they offer I mean it's just and then you could take some of this and then use it and then report back how you used it and how what effective it was and put that make a little blip about that in your teaching statement again very impressive just more ideas so you can go this website on your own and take a look at it when you get a chance Hayakawa who is that Sandra from California I think I would yeah I think so um and also an educator who wrote a number of books on education had this great quote good teachers never teach anything what they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place I think of the whole bunch that's my favorite quote and part of that is the setting I just mentioned so to include in your narrative your story you want to include the relationship between learner and teacher this is what I want you to do when you're in your homework when you write a teaching Staton your personal and professional development is in there as well did you take classes in education how did you use that information if you haven't have you tried to do something new because you knew somebody you did something cool and you adopted it it's part of your professional development only any of those things to be professional development doesn't be a class like this it can be something you just came up with you invented it I can be impressive if it worked I decided to teach my class standing on my head I took a survey afterwards found out students were impressed I could stand on my head as a result they learned that I got a headache you know it's like whatever I mean it's useful but it even put together how to make the most effective use of techniques like you talk about different learning techniques and technologies and also I forgot I'm just leaving this in the end here don't forget about where you're applying for example for a job there is an issues of diversity that are extremely important depending on what kind of school you're applying to and what kind what are the one of the diversity challenges that you can respond to and how do you respond to them you call it that could be cultural ethnic gender-based age economic life experience all sorts of things so know what the challenges are in your field and when you're you know when you're applying and to the place you're applying to so if you're applying to teach engineering know that there are issues concerning gender diversity issues in engineering when you have more female students in engineering disciplines and help retain those students how do you build better retention for female students in engineering that might be something you address in your teaching philosophy very important to the school you're applying to perhaps to find out what's important in that school are you applying to a school that is a minority serving institution alright are you applying to a school that's in a these are terms of NSF uses you know emerging Hispanic colleges there are different terms that are defining the demographics the challenges you're applying to a school in an EPS Core State there's a large Native American population there's more issues and there's some emerging issues too so these diversity so know the demographics and special challenges where you're applying to some of these we know a lot about read about a lot cultural ethnic gender diversity which varies depending on which discipline you're talking about there's also the challenge of variability in preparation and skills some schools have to spend more time working with students with more diverse schools skillsets and knowledge coming in how do you deal with that can you help you basically want to tell people in your application you want to tell people how you can help them there's also new challenges for example for example economic diversity if this if a lot you know we have some growing economic chasms occurring in societally and how that can affect access to educational materials restricted schedules because many students work full time undergraduate work full time that's another challenge you know how do you deal with that also age for example returning students there's many veterans re-entering the educational system if it from Community College and for your college levels they have special needs have you read about that have you read about how your course could help them or your your teaching technique finally to think about this is a big this is huge it's like that globe big stuff any question okay a few more minutes I want to show you I'm going to show you a little bit about what goes into some teaching statements so all this leads into your teaching statement let's spend a few minutes so let me just define it based on a few different websites there's a few resources when you have when you download the presentation you can take a look at them the McGraw Centre for teaching and learning is one of them this is at Princeton they have a lot of good tips you can find all sorts of great tips on these websites I'll give you some of these websites look at so what is the McGraw Center say they define they define it as a one or two-page single-spaced essays well that's not important explains your teaching strategies and goals and grounds them in the context of positions you have held and seek to hold that's a very general definition but that didn't tell you all the cool stuff I just told you but that's a base bottom line what it is all right so I want you to write this it's a narrative it's a story about your teaching it's a statement that covers issues like intellectual and creative skills and knowledge you aim to enable your students to achieve what do you want to help your students to do you want to help them learn is there something specific you can say about that how do you see your role as teacher who are you how do you interact with the students the connection between teaching and learning how do you organize your time how do you address challenges and how do you obtain and respond to feedback from your students so it's pretty much the stuff I just said don't forget the the bottom part the assessment part that should be in there too how do you use assessment these are a few tips from an Oracle called developing a philosophy of teaching statement from Annette Nancy Venn note Chisholm at Ohio State University know your audience use technical terms appropriate sometimes you know some depending on where you're applying you'll use terminology relevant to that field if you know if you're applying for you know a teaching position in an apartment that has a graduate you know literature program you may use a certain different language that you're applying for a Marine Sciences job teaching it's gonna be different words different technical terms your statement should be reflective and personal that's what we said before should be late to your personal development what brings teaching philosophy of life is the extent to which it creates a vivid portrait of a person who is very important intentional about teaching practices and committed to career it better sound like you want to teach when you read back that statement have somebody else read your statement take a look at it I'll read them we'll look out next week but have somebody read them think about am i reading the statement if somebody's excited questions to ask yourself I don't want to get into this 2-mile got a few minutes I guess um we have five minutes five minutes okay what conceptions these are other things to ask yourself or think about in that article what conceptions are misconceptions about concepts or inquiry your field the students bring to your classroom that's another type of diversity diversity of knowledge come in you know in my case I think of that in terms of they come in they you know what if they don't have what if they're math preparation came from a lot of different angles what if their science knowledge is sketchy in some areas and I'm trying to put together and Applied Science and Engineering class you know how do I deal with that diversity of viewpoints if you're in literature or something else there's another type of diversity religious studies another type of diversity so it's not this diversity of of culture and where you were born and what your how much money you have and how old you are to the adversity of how your brain works and what you're thinking about what you know past knowledge as well as learning styles how do you eat your students interested or intellectually engage with your field what kind of problems you ask how do you pose them what questions do you to you know do all this stuff but these just good guidelines what kind of questions do you teach your students to ask how do you teach them how to answer questions how do you explain or otherwise help students understand difficult ideas how do you balance your objectives for your students with their own as I said before students come in they may be needing to graduate may your course might be they haven't they need a minimum grade in that class to graduate so they have very specific objectives or it may just be something they're interested in how do you help students understand the implications or significance of what they're learning or learning to do in your class how do you relate it to the real world all right so those are just some questions one other website I'm going to mention which is very good to look at there's that a nice website on how to write teaching philosophy statements Washington University in st. Louis is I think where our president came from our president of Stony Brook I think was Washington University sailors um in this case they say what you know basically the teaching philosophy statement should answer four questions so these are different views on the teaching philosophy statement why do you teach what do you teach how do you teach how do you measure your effectiveness again don't forget the assessment portion very important it should include your question back there concrete examples of specific course topics assignments assessments and strategies drawn from courses you've taught or prepared to teacher from past mentoring and advising experiences by the way if you've done advising or mentoring those are incredibly good ways to teach talk about them advising is important part of the process you may be required to advise students in your new position make sure you talk about advising in that case most important read the Job Description know know what you're applying to I mean it's like you know you don't go to a job interview without knowing anything about the company if you're in the industry you know yeah is there anything you should have board give you on the search community there's a condition statement or something I don't want to see it regurgitate a mission statement without I mean if you give me a part of the mission statement back from that University's education program but then it has say this is why I'm perfect to respond to this is why I can help you with your mission and very specifically give reasons if it does regurgitate stuff without giving specifics that's terrible that's what I watch out for you know it's if you're going to bring up something that's either on their website or in the job ad or something like that you don't just drop it in the middle to say I can you know your drop it says this paragraph so I'm going to say I can do and repeat your paragraph that's that's nothing why tell me why I don't have time to go over this but I'll there's this questions they'll be in the slides about about answering why you teach all right you know what do you why are you drawing some rewards and challenges of teaching uh hopefully you are what you teach what our specific subject courses so you can bring up specific things you can do what are your objectives for student learning why are these important what do students gain from taking your courses I can skip over this I'm just showing I put a slide here it showed that if there are certain accreditation processes in the program you may want to relate your teaching to them for example in engineering we have a list of outcomes or students supposed to learn upon know upon graduation so I make sure that I was applying for an engineering teaching position that I would say I can respect you respond to these I can help your program meet the accreditation challenges of your program people would love that and then finally how do you teach what methods and strategies to use what how do you what kind of assignments and assessments you use why why do you use them how do you take into account different learning styles all these things we've talked about how do you approach teaching non-traditional students do you use technology if you do how and why ok and how do you measure your effectiveness how do you know whether you're meeting your objectives you know basically how do you conduct and use assessment okay alright and that's it you

Channel: Stony Brook University

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Keywords: Stony Brook University

Id: rn--OiDwIxY

Length: 51min 45sec (3105 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 21 2012