Um, so just for those who don't have not applied to faculty jobs yet. So normally you're asked to write a research statement at a minimum. Typically it's three page. Sometimes five pages. Then you're asked to write almost always a teaching statement, which is tagged as teaching statement or statement of teaching philosophy or statement of teaching philosophy and experience. And more often lately, you are also asked to write a diversity statement or equity statement. They go by slightly differ name, but they tend to mean the same thing. Those in length, I've never seen them more than three pages, but I've seen them less. I've seen the maximum one page. Yeah. To what extent do they need to be tailored to the institution you're applying to working you kind of have a general one? Somia, what do you think? I have I. Yeah, I think for example, I'm guessing especially when you're applying to an institution where it's a teaching based institution as opposed to another institution that you will have both research and teaching. I think you might have to adjust that for institutions where research is also very important big part of your responsibility, you should also probably talk about mentoring and how what you think about it and what are the approaches you're going to take as a mentor. But also I mean, and also for the diversity statement, I think, it also depends on where you're applying. They told us that actually for some For some states, it's actually banned to have a diversity statement, apparently. And so, Texas have been diversity. Yeah. And then so to just be aware that some states don't want you to talk about it just when you're applying. But yeah. Yeah, that's what I think of but the one I think. Yeah. So realistically, what's going to happen is that you're going to have a template, and then you're going to always try to adapt it. So for the teaching statement, you might have a couple of teaching statements that you choose which one to use. And if it's a research focused institution, you'll talk about the graduate classes that you can develop and your mentoring of graduate students. But if it's a primarily undergraduate institution, that would be, you know, that would not be effective. So you might want to talk about this is how I'm effective in teaching large undergrad I think I will be effective in teaching large undergraduate classes and DC is you know, an example of a research project that can be done by an undergraduate in the span of a summer. Is really good. I don't know if this is something that Somia will go over. It's always really good to have specific examples. But those examples may need to be different. Ultimately, it depends like how much do you want that job. If you're just throwing the hat in, you're just going to submit your generic statement for everything. I did them once and I ended up because I really thought I had no the job description didn't really align with my research and I got on list with that anyways. I kind of kind of rend. Go ahead. Yeah. So y. So first of all, let's start with things that are more related. The definition. Sometimes in the job applications, they mentioned that they need a teaching philosophy statement, but sometimes they just say like a teaching statement. The way they define for us was that the teaching philosophy is where you describe your personal values for teaching strategies and objectives. You say polio here. Portfolio is basically a thorough report. This is I think mainly for faculty members like All the people who have basic their teaching and they need to submit reports every year and also for promotion. People like faculty member have a teaching portfolio, which is more than just a teaching philosophy or statement. It has also a lot of other parts. But for the purpose of the job applications for faculty physicians, we're focusing on teaching philosophy and a statement. It says I think statement. Yeah. I think it also depends on can you put together a portfolio? A portfolio is like these are the things that I've done. If you're applying for your first faculty job, you probably don't have a lot of experience teaching, and you should post all if you lecture one class for me, lecture class for sure. If you TA teaching assistant with this and this and that responsibility. But I obviously that should be if you're applying for like your second faculty job or if you're coming from a faculty job, and you want to switch University, then you better have some portfolio. Yeah, that's true. Exactly. So yeah. And then it said like the teaching statement is combining both, like you're talking about the experiences and the evidence, but focus more on the philosophy and methods. Which I really found these two to be much the same. I don't know if I'm wrong in thinking about that. No, but I think we might be overthinking it. I think this might presume that the people that put out the faculty ads actually have a thorough thought about whether they want teaching philosophy statement, or teaching statement, or teaching experience in philosophy statement. In most cases, we don't. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to interrupt you one more time just to say in the faculty searches that I have roll in, when I'm a member of the committee, I generally fight to remove the word philosophy. From this teaching statement. I try not to make it written as a teaching philosophy statement because that's when you get all the fluffy stuff. That's when you get people to tell you, I've always been mesmerized by the night sky and I want to share that with all the people in the world. And I don't need to read that 300 times for 300 100 applications. Words matter, but we don't put a lot of thought generally in how we define this. It's a statement about teaching. Yeah. So it's really interesting, your description, I totally understand your description of what you don't really want to see in the teaching statement. But the way I like the way the people describe it for me in the teaching like department records like it was more leaning towards like have a general description of what are your values, which would be very just like exactly the repetitive thing like I care about active learning, like I don't know. Sorry, I mean to be misunderstood. If you tell me I know that active learning is an effective pagogical tool. I've read this and this and that paper, and this is how I structure my classes or how I intend to structure my classes to be a more effective teacher. That is 100% gold, especially if you have the three citations. If you don't use words, words words. But if you have the citation, you demonstrate that you have put enough care in it, at least to dig out, at least to just do a Google Scholar search and dig out something that sounds reasonable. I don't know if you read it. But that's not really these days, we get that more. But I really have read statements that were like, I want to be a good teacher because I always love the night sky and I want to share that joy with all the children in the world, and I will teach equally to students of all races and colors and genders and political affiliations, which is insane because as Greg was pointing out last time. It will be illegal for you not to do that even in Florida. Yeah. Okay. So also. So here, what they describe should be included in the teachings sgment. I like it should be more like personal, narrative, first person. And it says it should not include references and avoid jargon. So a little bit different. And yeah. So just like it says just think about the type of institution you're applying to and I guess I would have not been hired at Rugers. Yeah. That's interesting. And, it should be self explanatory. I guess I mean, it should be clear enough and I think I agree with all the things except for the not including references though. Everything else is on point. Yeah. Okay. So let me ask you this question when So when you say to have references, so is it like for example, if I'm proposing to use a method, and I think that's effective it's good to have some references, right? So if you were like maybe there's also a bit of a discipline divide here, as scientists tend to be reference heavy scholarly compared to other fields. But, if I was writing maybe their statement, I would say, this is the problem. These are the references that demonstrate that this is a problem and anything that is worth pursuing. This is the method and these are the references that demonstrate that the method is effective in pursuing it. I would do the same with teaching. If it's a place that has large classes, I would say, I expect that I will be teaching 100 plus students to be effective at teaching physics to 100 plus students. It is well known that active learning techniques support better pedagogical better learning. For example, par and share moments, and you have the citation to the parent share moment method, then maybe you want to have reflections on caveats of active learning, which there are many because it actually doesn't necessarily decrease divide and might increase stereotype threat, if it's not done, right, we have references to that. That's how I would. Let me also say that while I've heard people saying, it doesn't matter that the teachings mement does not have references, it's still good. I've never heard anybody say, let's throw away the teaching statement because it has references. That's true. Okay. Yeah. We were engaging in this activity to basically start thinking about it by answering by continuing these sentences and what we think of the top three characteristics of a good teacher are and to engage students in class, what are the methods that I have in mind that I think would be useful and excellent teachers recognize the students are basically to show your understanding of where your students are coming from and what you think is important for you to know about that and keep that in mind while you're teaching and developing methods. So I activities. Can we take 5 minutes and do it? Can I suggest that I'm going to open a breakout room? Can I suggest that I'm going to open two breakout rooms, that people online go into split into the two breakout rooms, and people here talk to the person on there right? That's not. But you know what I mean? I'm going to move you in break rooms. Only go in the breaker room if you are, yes. Only going in the breaker room if you're online only. Which question? 5 minutes. The three questions that you don't see because I have don't worry. But the question what are three characteristics of a good teachers, I'll fetch the other questions from Somalia. Well, I have four people that are one. I need to pair them. Well, but not just act like reading reviews at the end of the semester Incorporated feedback. Incorporated feedback. You can make that more general keeps up to date on education they should give cos money, let me put the second question. Are you? I can put them. Yes. Nothing. Okay. I found it ply funny that you put the AI generator back around. I should have read your message more carefully that I did it at night. Students that are. The second one is to engage students in class. I. The, the experience between the students sometimes maybe I do like how about pair share. Then we come back together and discuss. I'm going to put it up. Recognize struggle references struggle. In class recognize that students try to figure out a students don't do that. I think a lot of teachers will see if a student doesn't like their class small teacher. It's not there's I think a lot of teachers, I've never classes like they don't really at they don't accept responsibility. Class teachers teacher. They don't care if their glass is bad or if the. One more minute. You're not teacher students can have valid opinions? No. It's such a bar for excellence. I recognize the students are humans. All that. I'm just saying the word here is excellent. Dog trainer is be excellent. Share point. Pin. No. I think there's a lot to learn from dog training that you can bring into the classroom, to be honest. Yeah, the positive training. As ta clicker. Yes. Oh, my God, that will be so offensive. For a second, I went back. I feels like something you need to pass. Yeah. Quick. Every time someone answers Gives a good answer. All right, let's wait until our peers come back. 23 seconds. Welcome back. So what did you anybody wants to share anything that they talked about? We still don't have Alex and Easton. All right. We're all back. To share what you discussed? You don't have to. I think, you know, most of the exercise was like the discussing, but anybody wants to share any of that. I think that I think that a good teacher will listen, will take students feedback, even if it's really negative and really think about it because I think that lot of teachers specifically talking about undergraduate teachers or maybe even like high school teachers. Basically when their students aren't necessarily electing to be there. Like graduate students generally, they signed up for it and then they kept like signing up for it. So you expect them to be engaged a little bit. Maybe with undergraduate students. I think a lot of teachers, I think a good teacher should should try to should try to listen to the students that really don't want to be there and figure out how to communicate to them. Not that I think not that that should come at the expense of other teachers, or other students like the students who are excelling because I feel like that's always what people say when people say thing is that, Oh, what about the students who are doing really well shouldn't you focus on them. But I think that what I would be focused on as a teacher is to make sure my students are learning and happy. And I think that's how you get people to remember stuff and have a good experience and have a lasting experience. And so trying to keep your students happy I think is really important. And I think most teachers probably don't do that. Sure. I think you made a point that is in retrospect quite obvious, but I never thought about it. Like our memory works by trying to make us forget bad experiences unless they're bad enough that they trigger like some sort of pi And so if you're having a miserable time, you're actually going to remember less. You have a good time that's so obvious and never occurred to me. Anyone else? We have a quick. So what we were casing. Yeah. So context for the known dog people. So dogs, there's a thing called positive training where you're teaching things to the dog and as soon as they do that, you sound the clicker and they associate the sound of the clicker to positive reinforcement. And then typically there's also a treat. So it's trick click tre. And we were saying, I go You were saying, I wonder if that would be okay to bring a clicker in the classroom. There is the treat. Anybody else that anybody wants to share? I just want to add to that about an interesting point. I do remember. Number from the teaching class I took. Here you? Yeah, 366661. And so the one thing that I do remember is that a lot of the teachers have the attitude if I could do that, my students should be able to do it, but they don't recognize that you were the exception and wanting everybody to be like you. So basically, you are the exception in the sense that the system does not really result in a lot of people understanding everything. And if you want to perpetuate that system, you you're. Great job. And There's another thing that a lot of I've heard it from senior physics fac about 1 million times. They're trying to explain to them things like, my new realization, that students are not happy that memory actually blocks things or that there's a stereotype threat. So you can't expect the same kind of performance if the environment has the stressors that triggers stereotype threat. And that you just generally when you try to propose that we could make a system where students are not suffering through it, but are thriving through it. Like the answer very often is like, I had to go through the qualifier, and he was miserable and I hated it. And I don't see why anybody else shouldn't share that experience that I hate it just because I had it, so I think they should have it too. And I think that's I think that's like a really nefarious part of human nature, like tribalism. The idea that people who, like they're not just saying that they should have to do this too, it's that like I want them to be a part of my community of people who had these shared experiences. And that's really hard for people to let go. That's true. Can you click yourself and check yourself, Alex. Also, that's the definition of hazing. So at undergraduate students, awareness of this among the faculty, pointing that out and asking them to explain. How is that not hazing that Sometimes it's effective? Yeah, that's I'm writing a note for my next faculty meeting. Anybody else that wants to share something, Tatiana, I know that you had a thought. Yes. So my thought was that I don't like the questions there Maybe to general. Because even in the same class, the same teacher, the experience for every student is going to be very different and very opposite. Yeah, I mean, I guess you can do everything like the book say, but even that will not change. The experience is going to be bad for all the students. Because we are different people. Yeah. I think maybe that also relates to what we were saying, who who's your target? Because at some point, you have to strategize, you have to have a goal when you st need the lost function here, right? You have to have the goal when you strategize. And so the goal cannot be so generic as to say, like, I want all the students to get a good grade in the class. You kind of at some point have to focus on like, I want no students to fail, or I want the top students to get the most out of the class. Those things are you would make your class different if that was your goal, depending on which one is your goal. And I think that as a teacher for me, that's kind of like the hardest thing, especially like kind of given the classes that I teach that tend to be rather technical and a grad level, I have a lot of students, or even like the undergraduate class that I teach at Lincoln and UD, right? There's a lot of students that know how to code. But I still have to make sure that the students that don't know how to code can code and after they can do the rest of the class. And my coding students are like, Oh, my God, this is miserable. Like, why am I talking about what's a variable? But that's really hard. Soma, was it helpful to hear what are some things that the people set. Yeah, a lot. Really. Thank you. Good. I was thinking maybe let me know what you think For example, for each lesson in all the classes. Is it too much to expect that, for example, at the end of the class, each student leave just one sentence and tell me what they learned in that class. One sentence. I don't like more than one. I did try When I was in San Francisco, one of the classes we took was a literature class where we would do, like read a journal article. And one of the things that the teacher did is she had us all, make sure we brought note cards. And at the end of class, because the way we approach those articles, we talked about the methods. We talked about the goals and this and that. And it was a Tuesday, Thursday class. So at the end of Tuesday, she said, Hey, leave a note card with what questions you want to lead off with on Thursday. And then on Thursday, it was like, Okay, write a summary of these things. So it was something that we took the last 2 minutes a class or something, but it was something exactly what you're talking about for that particular class. I think it's really a valuable activity. I've tried to fold that into I've tried to make sometimes because you know how I teach with the notebooks and the assignments are a folder in a repository on gub. In some classes I've asked, you read me should say, what was the topic? What was the focus of this homework, what you've learned? And what was the hardest part for you. So I think it's a very good activity, but I would say, if there is any literature that says that that's a good thing to do. And the other thing that I would say is in practice, it was so demoralizing because 90% of the students were really phoning it in. So a lot of things that I might think are a good thing. You know, I only have so much tolerance for like really shallow outcomes. And so I abandoned that because it was not really because it became my pain to read those, like, very generic statements, and it was so disappointing. Yeah, you're right. But don't the statement. Don't put that in the statement. I just I was just thinking like looking back at my day that my undergraduate college, I had a lot of problem focusing in the class. I almost never learned things inside the class because I just couldn't focus. I just had to go home and just read the material myself and learn it back home. But I was thinking if I if I knew that I had to have a very short feedback at the end of the class, maybe that would have made me focus at least just to learn things overall general things in the class. And Maybe that would have been a good exercise for me to try to be more focused during the class. Also, there's a teaching method part of teaching philosophy that is very common that they tell you that when you teach something, you should even when you give a talk, you should tell people what you're going to tell them, then you should tell them what you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them. So you should that's where we have outlines of talks, right? And it doesn't have to be in an outline sense, but there has to be something that groups them and makes them understand what the context is. And then you tell them the things in detail, and then you summarize so that they can reflect on the things. Did I interrupt you? No, I was going to say something I think that Soma touched on as well that I think a good teacher will do is recognize that your students have other responsibilities. And that's kind of like kind of like a 50 thing to say now. But I think practically, I think that most people like most teachers will probably over value their own stuff and think that everything that they can think they need to put as they need to teach as much as they can. Was I think that I think your goal maybe shouldn't be that. It should be like what's the least amount I can teach? Because that's way more effective. L is more for sure. And if you As a principal. If you teach people how to learn the things that pertain your topic. If I teach people how to think about machine learning models, I don't have to teach every single machine learning model because you have a framework to learn the next one by yourself. Right. If you teach them like the procedural knowledge, then it doesn't matter if they remember anything from that class, they always have that. And that gets very hard when you teach curriculum classes, when you teach physics like two or six because then there is a physics two or seven that I have to take and that you had to have covered all the topics. So y Another discussion that we always have in faculty meetings is like, I would love to apply active learning classes, but it takes too much time that I cannot cover everything. I need to teach them everything, and those of us who think active learning is like you actually haven't taught them anything. You have told them things, that doesn't mean you taught them things. Alex, if you have an effective way to deal with that. I will take that those discussions are crucial. I don't know about how to discuss it if, if you're in trouble for not having covered all the details. I do know that one of the classes in grad school that was most useful to me was one of these here's a laundry list of lots of methods that will go over superficially, but it was accompanied by a textbook and the textbook was much more useful than the lectures. So I do think it would have been More useful the lectures had matched the textbook, which was like, Here's the general idea of this class of methods and quick examples of using a bunch of those. But it was good. Yeah. Mostly was the textbook was very good for I think a sorry. I think I think a lot of teachers mistake their role as a teacher for that of a guide. Like they think that they think that their goal is to just present the information and the student will do all of the learning. And I think that obviously if it's going into your brain, you have to make it go into your brain. But also, I think teachers will like they dismiss I think the reason why they dismiss things like active learning is because they just don't think that that's their role. They think that it's like that not their job. I never thought about it. That might very well be the framework of a more traditional teacher is like I told them everything. Like the rest of the work is on that. All right. So we go on with the sides. Yeah. Thank you so much for all of it. I've been very helpful. Okay. Yeah. What are the things to basically try to make sure that you are including in the teaching statement? It would be useful to think about these questions and how you're answering that. What knowledge Guild attitudes are important for students success in your discipline, what are you preparing students for and what are key challenges in teaching or learning process? These are these questions, I think would be helpful when we're thinking about the answers and that can be basically part of what we're discussing in the teaching statement. And And also like what teaching methods do you use? How do these methods contribute to your goals for the students, and why are these methods appropriate for use in your discipline? Yeah, I think there are very good questions to think about. But I mean, there's tons of good methods out there when you when I search and see what people are recommending. There's really a lot of things that I find and I can connect that to some of the things that I have experienced myself or I have in mind. But I'm not I'm still not sure how to basically decide what to put in the segment because the statement is not like super long. It's like it has some limitations. I've been trying to answer these questions, just like write down my answers in front of them and then search for more ideas. But, I still like It's not easy to put it in like a organized uniform format and decides. I mean, because you're right, those are very generic questions, so the answers would be very long if you had to really expand on each of them. But what I would recommend again, take everything with a grain of salt. I don't know anything. Let's just make that clear. But when I read the statement, I think the ones that I digest better, these You know, that this is true. So you know, you want to probably list a lot of things that you think are good, but have an example of one, take one and explain that one in detail and give an example of how you would implement it. That's going to make it sound a lot more relatable, and it's going to make it clear that you haven't just done a cursory you know, keywords or tas Gemini. What are the methods that are actively modern teaching? Yeah. If you have any ins like that is if you can say like Nab Dundas, when I lecture for Professor Bancos class, blah, blah blah, UD, just put that in because that's not something that Jam and I would answer. Inter teach. Teaching statements are going to be better now. Yeah. And then also just make sure that you talk about the assessment of goals and how you're planning to make sure that you're assessing basically the goals that you have set, are they're being met? And what are the assessment tools that you will use and why? I think that's pretty much all. And also. So Then one thing I have been advised that there's one way of doing it maybe is to start with a thesis statement and briefly summarize the overall content of the statement and what are the most important things to be? Then in each paragraph following that, explain those most important things and give examples and more details. Maybe at the end, also add a paragraph about the assessment and in general, how you're assessing. Things. Tell them what you going to tell them, and then tell them what you tell them, and then tell them we told them. Yes. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all this. Any other thoughts or questions?
Writing a teaching statement - Somayeh FASTLab meeting
From Federica Bianco September 05, 2024
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Zoom Recording ID: 6342477150
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Meeting Time: 2024-09-05 03:02:11pmGMT
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