Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
It is my belief that students excel when they visibly enjoy their experiences in learning environments. In order to facilitate this my aim is to reach students in groups and as individuals on their level, like a peer or co-worker. When I sense that a genuine connection has been made in this way, the teaching process becomes easier and more fun.
Creating a comfortable environment that excludes no one is the first challenge. Personally I have never responded well to overt authority, nor does an authoritative approach fit my teaching style. Therefore, I believe that a level of trust needs to be earned and connections need to be made in order for students to feel safe, open up, and be willing to participate in learning experiences.
How do I achieve these objectives? First of all it doesn’t always happen the way I expect. Each course and group of students seems to require a distinct approach. It can take several classroom and studio sessions before the atmosphere starts to congeal. Letting things happen naturally during lectures and studio time seems to work better for me than trying to illicit responses from unwilling class members. This might be viewed as unstructured, but an underlying foundation of curriculum with carefully organized class content and detailed project requirements is critical to my approach.
What if the progress of the class is suffering from a lack of participation? I find it useful to take a varied and flexible approach to my teaching style. If a group of students doesn’t seem to respond well to a lengthy lecture or discussion I might switch to a prepared demonstration while interspersing key concepts from the lecture. I also like to combine the use of visual aids, sound, written materials, and discussion to present concepts. For example, here is how I might introduce microphones in my audio production class: I draw diagrams of two or more types of microphones while discussing their properties, I pass microphones around the room for students to look at and hold, we view photos on the projector of the insides of the microphones, and finally we record with several mics to hear how they capture sound differently from each other. This all leads into a related project and reading materials are assigned to cover more details.
Improvisation is another way I engage students and get them to start enjoying their learning experiences, which might lead them into thinking more about the concepts presented and participating with the group. By improvisation I do not mean inventing class content on the spot. As a musician I know that in order to improvise effectively from a musical standpoint, many years of practice and preparation is necessary. I feel the same is true when improvising in the classroom. For me, it is the delivery of the content that is improvised, generally not the content itself. I may deliberately let discussions meander, and entertain tangents or off-topic remarks. This may make the classroom seem chaotic and unmanageable as random groups of students free-associate. However, I relish in these moments because of the creativity that can arise, and enjoy the process of steering concepts that are spawned this way back toward the tasks at hand. I see students succeeding as the energy that saturates these sessions is channeled into viable ideas and ultimately used to produce highly developed work.