Teaching Philosophy!

As an instructor, I aim to not only teach material, but to teach critical thinking.  The physics problems in the undergraduate physics classes illustrate basic physical principles, but solving them also requires problem solving skills that will serve students long after they leave the classroom.  The key, I think, to teaching problem solving skills and critical thinking is to engage the students before, during, and after the lecture.  Pre-quizzes are designed to prime them for the material that will be presented in class by having them think through new physics problems before the new physical principles are presented.  Active learning techniques (think-pair-share, group activities, polls, demonstrations) are used to engage the students during the lecture, which increases retention of both the material and the problem-solving strategies learned during class.  And post-quizzes and homework sets are designed to stretch students’ thinking, so that the problem-solving skills primed beforehand and learned during class are increased until the students master challenging new material.  A successful course results in students who feel—correctly—that they can tackle difficult new problems that may only loosely resemble those seen before.
 
A cornerstone of this strategy are active learning techniques, which have proven effective at aiding retention and student engagement.  The active learning techniques that I used have morphed as I’ve progressed in my career, in part due to teaching workshops attended during the pandemic.

I hope that the problem solving skills that the students learn follow them out of Claremont, and I hope that the inclusive atmosphere that I try to foster by sharing with my students that I have disability accommodations and by allowing for extensions for mental health creates a good environment for learning.

Also, just personally, I find that teaching forces me to think clearly and sometimes produce new research as a result of thinking clearly.

Below are two classes, near and dear to my heart and somewhat nonstandard, for your perusal. Unfortunately, I am not going to release everything from those classes so that students don't do all the labs ahead of future year's classes, but the samples are hopefully nice.