Your Metaphor = Gardener = Meme = Fun, Loving Educator
Let’s use exercises from University of Waterloo’s Exploring your Teaching Philosophy:
What do you, as an instructor, enjoy about learning?
A radiation therapist relies on application. Therefore, I love to be able to learn new concepts and apply them. Most of the time I do so correctly, however you learn from your mistakes too, and I love this process equally.
What do you, as an instructor, enjoy about teaching?
The image is self explanatory! Love the lightbulbs going off in my students minds and equally my own.
Who are your students? Do they tend to share certain assumptions, backgrounds, and motivations? Why do they want to learn?
They are students of various personal backgrounds, however high achievers with a didactic background rooted in science and math. Each have their own reasons to become a health care worker, however a general motivation appears to be aiding patients at a crucial time in their lives.
What do you hope to accomplish when you teach? What do your aims say about you as an instructor?
Both questions answered at once: I hope to teach in a manner that creates ideal health care workers ready to treat cancer patients as if they were my own.
Create a list in response to the following prompt: “When I teach I…” Once you’ve created the list, reflect on why you do what you do.
I suppose a list is not required for this, as “When I teach, I think about how I would want to be taught”. That makes it super easy to understand my incoming goal: I know I am teaching physics, so how do I teach without being complacent and making it enjoyable and understandable for my students.
Does your subject matter affect your beliefs about teaching or learning? If so, explain how.
I believe it is incumbent on educators to be cultivators for their students. I strive to represent the ideal health care worker and looking for the same from my students. If I do my job to the best of my ability, my students will go out into the workforce and work as health care workers to the best of their ability, thereby aiding their patients.
I suppose many metaphors on University of Waterloo’s website apply and resonate with me as an educator. If I were to pick one that resonates with me, I am a Gardener. Fitting as I do great job in the garden too!
What is a “personal best” achievement for you as a teacher during the past year?
My students enjoying learning and ultimately understanding treatment planning.
Who was or is the best teacher you have ever known? What personal and/or professional qualities made this person a great teacher? How do these qualities appear in your own teaching practice?
I am so lucky to have so many great teachers. Without them, I would not be where I am. I will pick some of my most recent (as recency bias allows): Niusha Nowbahari, Robert Case, Reshika Balakrishnan, Renate Bradley, Martin Chai, and Alfred Lam. They were all my professors at the Michener Institute of Education at UHN. Invariably, I believe this set of professors found their calling. For me, the facet of their personality that stood out the most was their personability. I would hope that my students are seeing this equally as much from me.
What aspects of your teaching practice would you like to enhance, change, or get rid of? How would you proceed to do this with one of those aspects?
As the last posting is any indication, I would love to enhance my students learning in the online space. This is ongoing, and I have already employed various methodologies which are working wonders. On such method is engaging students in various treating planning topics in online forums for mini formative weekly assessments to understand how much the students understand of the subject matter.
If you wrote a book about teaching, what would the title be? What would be the titles of the first three chapters?
In relation to the previous question: on Educators’ experiences adapting a simulation-based course to an online learning environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shameless plug, but if you get the chance, do read it! My colleagues and I did a wonderful and admirable job responding to changes brought on by the pandemic, and this chapter does a wonderful job of detailing it.
Educators’ experiences adapting a simulation-based course to an online learning environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. In K. Holmes and P. Hogg (Eds.). Reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic, 144 -150, 2022. ISRRT
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A Few Of My Favorite Teacher Memes
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