Teaching Philosophy
It is very special to be able to inspire inquiring minds and help students become something much more than they thought they were capable of.
My love and passion of teaching occurs no matter the culture with which I am engaged. I have experienced the same sense of fulfillment teaching internationally as at the Faculty of Agriculture.
My focus is to present challenging, interesting, thought provoking, current, and relevant material. I make sure to foster a positive learning environment that is stimulating, motivating, participative, and supportive.
Imparting independence, critical thinking, and communication are central in the courses I teach. I encourage students to explore new ideas and develop confidence in expressing their thoughts. I make every effort to learn from the insights, backgrounds and experiences of all my students. It is this that makes my approach to teaching “student centered.”
My goal is to teach students the love of learning so when they leave my class the learning never stops.
I offer a unique first year economics course, which is applied and interactive. To enhance skills and catch student interest, I use a multitude of learning and teaching devices. I have developed an integrated and interactive webct resource. Apart from lecturing, I use cooperative learning techniques and independent out-of-class assignments.
Group in-class assignments are used to give students additional learning devices and enable students to teach one another.
News podcasts are used in which students apply microeconomic theory to analyze real world issues.
Clicker technology has been used by organizing teams of students and playing a game of jeopardy with economic concepts.
My goal is to have students understand that economics is an exciting, stimulating and fun area to study.
In my policy classes students further develop analytical skills, independent and critical thinking, presentation of ideas, and leadership through several types of teaching techniques.
To allow students to bring their own interest to the course they read, present, and lead class discussions on domestic and international policy issues. In groups, students develop newsletters for particular organizations in agriculture and food. The goal is to have students be creative and communicate information about policies through articles, letters to the editor, and important announcements.
The “jigsaw method” of learning is used to also have students teach and learn from one another. To broaden student thinking, policy debates are held. Guest lectures and trips to local farms and businesses are used to demonstrate the “real world” of policy.
Teaching does not only take the form of traditional classroom lecturing, but can also occur through conversation. It is this component of teaching that makes academic advising an integral part of my teaching program.
Students are encouraged to drop by my office any time for conversation. It is these conversations, which allow me to thoroughly understand students’ learning approaches and desires in their education.
This has allowed me to incorporate different approaches in my teaching program that has reached students. This is evident from comments on course evaluations.