[365-130] Teaching Philosophy Workshop

學校請兩位正在社區大學任教的教授來談如何書寫 Teaching Philosophy, 雖然依然是一種聽歸聽,寫還是得靠自己,不過他們倆位聽起來還蠻誠心回答問題,同時也顯示出雖然材料大同小異,不過每個人煮出來的菜不一樣就是不一樣,底下是今天紀錄的討論內容

• How to start on "Teaching Philosophy (TP)?"

          Speaker A: Get a copy. Then replace content with yours. Then polish, polish, and polish.

          Speaker B: Think about what should be included in a TP. Ex: dialogue, flexibility, enthusiasm

• What should be included in TP?

          Speaker A: Kind of depending on yourself.

          Speaker B: For teaching experiences and research, 2 to 1 ratio is a good guideline. In general: dialogue, flexibility, enthusiasm. 

          Dialogue: listen to students, understand how current teaching works for them, adjust in timely manner

          Flexibility: there are a variety of students, not only one way of teaching works. Be flexible to adapt with teaching situation.

          Enthusiasm: the thing that makes teaching exciting

          Finally, let other people read your TP. See if they feel exciting for the kind of teacher describing in your TP.

• How long should TP be?

          About 2 pages, single space.

• What to expect for an interview?

     Speaker A: In social science or humanities areas, committee might ask what is the book that you want to teach the most? What are the 3 things that you want your students to remember when teaching XXX if they are gonna forget everything else? Also, ask your advisers what are their favorite interview questions.

• What is the teaching and researching proportion in your current life?

     Speaker A: For some very lucky people, they can really get to top schools where they do research and guide smart grad students for most of the time when first looking for jobs. For others, teaching mostly every day is more like when first getting into schools. Humanities or social science schools research is more like writing books. As long as keeping writing, research is always moving forward.

     Speaker B: Current goal for the school I am serving is to become a research type college. So I would say 50:50.