Teaching Philosophy
Teaching as Profession:
“Assisting in someone’s pursuit of knowledge is the most important and fulfilling human endeavor”. This strong belief apparently pushed my passion and dream towards academia. My passion for teaching became ostensive during my undergraduate study at University of Dhaka but I never have consciously attempted to formulate my own philosophy of teaching until the day I stood before the class as a new mathematics teacher back in April 2013. During my decade of math, statistics and data science teaching career, I taught a lot of different courses to students with broad range of needs, knowledge and cultural backgrounds which helped me to frame up several important general principles that I follow in my teaching practice.
I believe in the ideology that, teaching should be an integral component of the creation of new knowledge, an initial step towards continuing education, and most importantly, self-education. Being a successful teacher depends on creating a learning environment with the open exploration of ideas, a relationship in which students feel respected as well as challenged. Students should be encouraged to stretch themselves a bit beyond their level of comfort and be given an opportunity to leave every class feeling that they have overcome a new challenge successfully. As a true believer of diversity and inclusion, it is at the very heart of my teaching philosophy that, every student is unique and every individual counts. A teacher should appeal to different learning styles, to offer a variety of instructional experiences, and to keep an open mind to new teaching techniques to give every student the opportunity to participate fully and actively in the learning process.
During a student’s learning process, the transition from fear of ignorance to develop the courage of asking for help requires a deep level of trust in the community of learners and educators. I strongly believe that, it is a teacher’s responsibility to ensure that students should not feel intimidated about disclosing their ignorance to the teacher and to their peers. I take pride in nurturing a learning environment in which students are comfortable talking to me about any difficulties they have with the course. I intentionally assign group projects so that students can study together and build friendship with their classmates. Peer assisted learning helps a weaker student to get support from relatively bright students.
Besides being an educator, I am also a constant learner. Because, no matter how experienced a teacher is, every new class and every new student pose a challenge. For excellence in teaching, there is always room for improvement.
Teaching of Mathematics and Statistics:
As a teacher of Mathematics and Statistics, I like to take advantage of the fact that, we are descendants of Pythagoras, Euclid and the great teacher of Plato’s Academy. While teaching math, I am always conscious of the fact that I am teaching only a small fragment of the giant mathematical system which drives the universe. Mathematics is a mandatory tool used in natural sciences and thus, a required discipline for almost all students. However, some students believe that they are not mathematically gifted; therefore, incapable of learning mathematics. I strongly oppose that mainstream belief. By changing how we talk about ourselves and what we believe our brains can and can’t do, all student certainly can learn mathematics to the highest level that they desire to. And, at the classroom of Statistics, I convey this important message to the students that, data is the currency of the future.
One of my important goal while teaching Mathematics and Statistics is to help students to become independent thinkers, capable of approaching, framing, and solving problems on their own. Students participation is crucial for learning Mathematics and Statistics. I attempt to make my classroom to be an engaging place where discussion of relevancy is more important than structured lectures, and where students always feel free to contribute and ask questions. Simulating students’ interest to mathematics is an important force to succeed in learning math. I always take steps to show that the material they are studying will be useful to their lives by using relevant application problems as examples, and then I try to display its beauty and intrigue as well. With innovative means of introducing the course material, I attempt to alter the common attitudes of students that math is a boring, useless subject. I also try to accommodate different styles of learning by illustrating concepts in different ways and by collecting informal feedback from students a few times throughout the semester. This helps to address their concerns and allows me to modify my teaching in order to enhance students’ learning. When students know their instructor cares and is committed to helping them learn, it can make all the difference.
Student satisfaction is important for better learning and teaching, especially in Mathematics and statistics. But, I believe, it should not become a popularity contest while teaching. A teacher is responsible to the society in general and should resist the pressure of lowering academic standards in education.