Teaching Statement

In working for 5 years as a Teaching Assistant, I served in a variety of different classes. As a teacher, I have experienced a large lecture with a group of other teaching assistants, developed close relationships with my students during a practical class that involved six hours every week in lab, and worked as a solo teaching assistant, with greater freedom to determine class assignments and policy. This variety has helped me develop my philosophy for encouraging student engagement in the classroom, which centers on helping them understand the value of the class in their own lives, encouraging them to become active partners in their learning environment, emphasizing the value of group work, and serving as a resource for my students.

Helping Students Translate Their Interests Into the Classroom
While helping students learn the material that we, as teachers, have set out for them is important, true learning only occurs when the students themselves are interested in the work. One way I try to encourage interest is by communicating my own engagement with the topic. I have chosen my career because I am interested in the role that communication plays in everyone’s daily lives. In particular, how the mass media inform our understanding of world and how our own predispositions color our interpretations of media and communication are questions that I believe are of vital importance. I try to let my energy and confidence in the significance of what I am teaching encourage the students to recognize its value.

But while infusing my own enthusiasm for the subject into the classroom and into assignments helps stimulate student interest, it is equally important to let the students’ interests determine their assignments. To this end, I have focused on encouraging students to bring their own experiences, projects, and pursuits into the classroom. Whenever possible, I design assignments to allow students the flexibility to match these projects to their interests. For example, students have selected the issue they want to examine to relate public opinion to media coverage of that issue, chosen what elements of news coverage to compare to examine journalistic norms, and picked local issues that they want to cover in their reporting. In each of these cases, I worked with the students to help them translate their ideas into a feasible classroom assignment to both demonstrate the concepts that we are trying to instill while producing a product that students will be engaged with and interested in developing further. This effort to make the class more personalized to students’ needs also makes them feel that the class is relevant to their goals and thus encourages them to put for the effort needed to succeed.

Learning from the Students
One thing that I have learned is that no matter how long you have been teaching, there is always something new to be learned from the students themselves. When I first started teaching, I was concerned that to maintain authority in the classroom required distancing from the students and from assuming control over classroom activities. As I taught, however, I learned that students have a lot to offer and, by listening to their advice, I became a more effective teacher. When students feel like they have input in what is occurring in the classroom, they are more active participants in their learning experience. To this end, I often ask the students to reflect throughout the semester and offer advice on how I can make the class and discussion sections better. I have used anonymous surveys in section, as well as encouraged students to talk to me personally after class or during office hours, to allow everyone to offer their ideas about improving the classroom environment. Balancing their advice with my own experience and the class goals makes an environment in which both the students and the teacher are invested in making the classroom a success.

Working Together To Accomplish Goals
No matter what profession the students ultimately select, they will not be working alone. To prepare them for this increasingly interconnected work environment, I emphasize working in groups as much as possible when I teach. Through group projects, students not only learn the skill of working with other members and negotiating differences in approach, but also have the opportunity to learn from other students’ perspectives. In the class on communication and public opinion, the students worked in groups throughout the semester on a project, which was worth over a third of their grade in the class. Meanwhile, in teaching classes that emphasized writing, students practiced peer editing to learn the value of constructive criticism, the ability to look at their own work with fresh eyes, and that different styles can lead to effective writing. Through examining someone else’s work, students often came to recognize the flaws in their own writing and to incorporate new styles into their repertoire. Although group work is often disliked by the students initially, by the end of the class, they come to appreciate that negotiating differences in the group often make the entire group – and they themselves – stronger students. 

Accessibility and Flexibility
A good teacher should serve as a resource for their students, both inside the classroom and out. I have worked hard to ensure that students feel comfortable coming to me for advice and help. To this end, I not only offered frequent office hours during all of the courses that I have taught, but have emphasized by accessibility via email and my willingness to make appointments with my students at their convenience. Students have responded well to this flexibility and have always rated me highly in terms of my accessibility on evaluations, often mentioning it as one of my strengths in teaching. My commitment to accessibility outside the classroom has also made me a common resource for a variety of students wanting recommendations – students feel that I often know them better than other teaching assistants and professors at the university and know that I am willing to help them outside of class-related assignments. By serving as an accessible mentor, students feel more comfortable engaging in the classroom, and by seeing my commitment to their learning, they feel motivated to improve.

Conclusion
As I have grown as a teacher, I have developed these four concepts of good teaching. Students perform best when they feel like the class is tailored towards their needs, when they feel like they are learning something valuable, and when they believe that their teacher is working with them and for them. But this philosophy remains a constantly evolving concept. As I continue teaching, I will continue learning from my students and from fellow teachers and refining my teaching philosophy to incorporate these new insights.

 

Teaching Experience

Journalism 201: An Introduction to Mass Communication

This introductory journalism class is not only a prerequisite for any student considering applying to the Journalism school, but also serves as a Comm-B requirement for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, meaning that it emphasizings writing and oral presentations. I taught this class for six semester, under two different professors - four semesters in which TA's had 3 sections of 50 minutes each, for a total of 48 students per semester, and 2 semesters in which TA's taught only 2 sections and 36 students, but each discussion was 75 minutes long. I was a proponent of the change, arguing that a class teaching introductory writing skills, including thesis statements and basic argumentative papers, required more time in the classroom with the students.

In addition to the heavy emphasis on writing, oral presentations, and peer editing, this class gave students an overview of three major areas of communication: entertainment, public relations/advertising, and journalism. I enjoyed teaching this class to help familiarize students with a wide range of theories and topics and helping them determine which areas they found most interesting.

Journalism 202: Mass Media Practices

J202 is the first class that students take upon admission to the Journalism school, and this six-credit class is among the most demanding at the University of Wisconsin. Students spend 6 hours a week in lab sessions of 15 students, in addition to lecture. The class focuses on developing the basic writing tools that journalists require - from writing broadcast news reports to longer print features, as well as press releases and strategy memos. This class emphasizes the range of skills that apply regardless of the format, platform, and medium in which a student works. The class also emphasized the learning of media tools, including InDesign, SoundStudio, and Dreamweaver. This class really helped me develop the ability to teach writing skills across a variety of platforms, as well as the programs needed for success in a new media environment. I also enjoyed helping students learn whether they preferred a more informational or a more persuasive approach, as students picked their focus for their degree.

Journalism 614: Communication and Public Opinion

Teaching J614 provided a very different experience from the former two classes, as it is an upper-level theory course taken largely by juniors and seniors. Rather than emphasizing basic writing skills, in this class we focused on providing students exposure to a wide range of theories addressing how the public forms opinions about topics. The emphasis of the class was a group project, in which students selected a controversial issue, documented changes in opinion over time in that issue, and performed a content analysis to test whether some feature of media coverage is linked to their opinion trend.

As the solo TA for the class, I benefited from more autonomy to determine class assignments, groups, and goals than in my previous teaching experience. I also really enjoyed teaching students basic research methods, helping them plan their content analysis, and comparing it to their opinion trend. Two of the student groups from this class have submitted their work to the regional Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research 2010, and I guided these groups through the submission process. I look forward to seeing them present their work in Chicago.