My work with and for students in these last four years has contributed greatly to the development of my teaching philosophy. I believe that my relationship with students is a symbiotic one and that I learn as much from them as they learn through me. My teaching philosophy, in essence, is to have empathy, diversity, and care in my teaching.

I grew up with two teachers at home: my mother, whose job was to teach at a primary school and my father, who taught me the dreadful subject of math. Both showed me two extremely opposite ways of dealing with a “student” and convinced me that I would never be able to become a teacher. I had neither her patience nor his severity. Years later, standing in my first classroom in a different country with students whose lives seemed completely different from mine, I had never felt more intimidated by a crowd. This trepidation was validated by the first course evaluations I received. This did not deter me; but I called my mother. I learned from her empathy, love, care, and understanding that I then put work into. The semester following that will always be my favorite semester and I have come a long way since then.  

​

For me, teaching started out as a product of the PhD and has now evolved into a passionate act where I propel adult minds towards learning and change.

 

My classroom is a hub of collaborative learning. I do not believe in talking at students, but I always work towards making them a part of the classroom. My goal is to ingrain the theory in the students mind by way of application and not rote learning. I start by delivering the lecture and follow it up with an activity or a discussion that thoroughly grounds the lesson in the students’ mind. I always divide my class into two equal halves between a lecture and an activity that every student will engage in. These activities could be as simple as making a survey questionnaire after learning about the different types of measurement scales (for example, Likert, Guttman, Semantic Differential) to picking up the newsfeed of a politician and assessing their social media presence and persona. This is followed by a debriefing and discussion where each group can learn even more from what everyone else did.

 

My experiences as a woman of color have formidably shaped my teaching. At the same time, I strive to underscore that I am only a small part of this diversity and there are a lot more colors to it. There are several reminders every day that I am, after all, an “Other” in a foreign country. I never want my students to feel similarly: that they are unwanted. I want my students to feel that they will be welcomed no matter how they identify and will never be silenced.
 

From that position, teaching no longer remains only about delivering instruction – it is an act of nurturing adult learners and instilling in them a critical thinking lens to view the world. To this effect, an instructor needs to understand and value the experiences of each student. This approach connects deeply to notions of diversity in my teaching. It is important that every student feels welcome in my classroom no matter what their life experience has been, whether the class is in person or online. It is also important that within the instruction they are exposed to a diverse set of examples, approaches, and even people. My pedagogical tools spring from the diverse experiences I have had. Simply saying I will treat everyone equally is not enough for me: diversity goes beyond equal treatment.
. 

I have made available the syllabi of two courses below. These syllabi were constructed entirely by me and not handed down by the school.