Teaching Philosophy

My academic and teaching experiences have exposed me to a diverse body of people with varied working and life experiences, strengths, and weaknesses. These experiences have helped me to develop my teaching and interpersonal philosophy in which my belief in people I work with and for is fully based. I recognize that students as well as colleagues I work with have diverse experiences and different ways of interpreting phenomena. Acknowledging this, I expand my instructional techniques considering these with a view to maximizing on each learner’s experience and learning style. I assess students on their individual abilities and perspectives in defining problems thus I recommend solutions.

In the past, I have noticed that when students sign up for a course, they bring to it different levels of knowledge and expectations and desires. Some students come with certain levels of acquaintance with the subject more than others do. Freshmen often feel intimidated by seniors in seminar and classroom discussions. My principal task as the facilitator lies in bridging and easing these differences. Through this, learners and I acquire new insights and understanding through free and open discussions. I try to challenge my students to think independently and explore possibilities and opportunities for growth and development in their personal and academic lives.

Towards the above end, I link materials covered in class with applicability in real life situations. Additionally, I guide students to identify learning needs, encourage their individual, and group participation, where their strengths and weaknesses are respected. For me the greatest challenge about helping students  to learn is not only to help them master the content and deliver it, but in developing and enabling students’ participation, and enhancing their skills in critical thinking, problem definition analysis and problem solving.

In general, I encourage my students to work in groups of no more than three for purpose of developing skills in finding solutions through teamwork and collaboration as they would in society. At the end of each course, in addition to standardized university evaluations, I request students to evaluate my professional performance by listing three things I did well and three I need to improve on. This has helped me move along progressively in my career as it facilitates to the understanding of my students and me better while improving teaching techniques and course designs.

From students’ evaluations, my strengths always seem to be in the mastery and delivery of content and ensuring students’ participation in class discussions, approachable in case of problems, and fairness in grading. My weaknesses range from occasional lateness in grading and returning assignments, to delays in responding to students’ emails. I have learned a great deal from these evaluations. On my strengths, I believe that there is always need to improve, on the other hand on my weaknesses I make sure a previous oversight does not persist.

The greatest satisfaction I derive from teaching is the knowledge that at the end of a course, my students have added some value to their acquired knowledge that positions them to making positive contributions to their communities, their nations, and to humankind as a whole. My research interests are in the teaching and learning of mature students and their coping mechanisms. I think this is because most of my education was realized when I had to manage multiple tasks such being a full time primary school teacher, acting administrator, being a mother to my five children.