August，2020
I believe that teaching is not only about conveying knowledge, but more about developing students’ passion for learning, improving their critical thinking ability, boosting their confidence, and building a friendly learning community for them. In my own journey as a student, I found that learning is a wonderful and meaningful process, which could bring learners wisdom, joy, and meaning of life so I would like to help my students to reach this goal.
I realized the importance of passion for learning when I was learning the piano and teaching Mandarin. Each student has their uniqueness, in the aspects of thinking styles, interests, needs, potentials, preferences. Considering students’ individual conditions and teaching objectively could enhance their interests in learning, boost self-confidence, and develop their potentials. I believe that “good, worthwhile work creates a desire for good, worthwhile work” (Jardine, 2013, p.24). When the students are interested in the subject, they would be self-motivated and actively explore more. I have been developing students’ love for learning by considering students’ individual needs while designing course objectives, course contents, course outlines, teaching methods, and I encouraged inquiry-based learning by connecting students’ interests to their learning. Also, I would include various kinds of fun class activities to let students learn, practice, and improve in a joyful way. In my TESL practicum, I sought a couple of times for students’ feedback on how they felt about the teaching of vocabulary, the pacing of activities, as well as the interest of the discussion topics and level of interest in the activities. The students indicated that my classes were interesting, useful, and relaxing, and they felt very comfortable, fruitful in my class, as well as participated actively.
Improving students’ ability to think critically is another essential job for teachers to work on. In Chinese culture, there’s a saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”, which I found true for education. Learning should be a life-long journey for people. As a teacher, I want to teach my students not only the knowledge but also the approaches to seek, to explore, to absorb the knowledge, and to develop their personal knowledge through experiences. To achieve this goal, I would guide students to reflect on the knowledge, to think about the knowledge deeply under the surface, give them reflective tasks. Also, I would develop students’ growth mindset by modelling it in classrooms. With the growth mindset, students will be encouraged to confidently face the challenges and motivate themselves to improve. I would mostly practice two approaches to develop the students’ growth mindset, which are confronting the challenges positively and critically, as well as differentiating non-constructive criticism and constructive advice. Students would be able to think critically about their mistakes and challenges, take useful advice seriously, learn from them and improve while not being anxious.
Building a friendly and connected learning community is also what I have been working on. Being connected with students, teachers could hear the inner voices of students, design suitable lessons for them, provide assistance timely. In my point of view, being truly respected and interested in students could help build this connectedness. I would also include various class activities, discussions, and games, which require the students to work in groups or pairs so that connectedness could be built among students. Students would be able to learn from their peers’ thoughts, be supportive of each other, and develop a sense of belonging, which would improve their confidence and mental health while they improved academically.
My philosophy of teaching statement is based on the aims of helping students to learn effectively, happily, and develop a life-long passion for learning. I believe that students will benefit from these educational objectives.
Jardine, D. (2013). Time is not always running out. Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, 59. Retrieved from https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/jaaacs/article/view/187726