Students are the masters of their own learning. Therefore, an effective instructor must, 1) guide the students to reach their full potential and 2) cater to a diverse student body with different needs. To manifest these goals, my teaching practice emphasizes supporting, encouraging and engaging learners.<\/p>\n
The foremost aspect of supportive teaching is the mastery of pedagogical content knowledge. A teacher is a guide who propagates ethical standards, imparts organized information, and, most importantly, resolves doubts through their career experiences. When a student added a wrong reagent during DNA purification in 3rd<\/sup> year biochemistry lab, I salvaged the error on-the-spot by immediately precipitating and concentrating the desired product. While consoling the student that to err is human, I also explained why such an ad-hoc<\/em> procedure reverses their mistake. However, nurturing such metacognition can be intimidating to novice learners. To address this, I curated protocols and troubleshooting guides from reagent suppliers; bringing them closer to what us as active researchers see on a daily basis. By showing students what scientists sees, they see the big picture on how methodologies are interconnected.<\/p>\n I also strongly believe that a growth-oriented space is essential to encourage competence. Students write many lab reports in their degrees; however, how to compose a scholarly presentable one may not be immediately forthcoming to them. By requesting writing samples, I diagnosed students who required intervention early, and organized small group discussions on how to annotate gel data and discoursed the best protein purification system in a concise manner. A workshop on creating publication-grade figures was employed using the open source software PyMol. As a result, the median word count decreased by 36%, their reasoning became more scientifically rigorous, and the protein structures generated were presented like works of a seasoned structural biologist.<\/p>\n Engaging an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students on a divisive topic like radioactivity is challenging, but engaging these conversations is a necessary skill for an instructor. When the course started, I noticed students were apprehensive with radioactivity due to its perceived danger and sociopolitical controversy. I leveraged the affective attention to introduce objective facts about different doses of radiation. Combing the psychomotor skill of using a Geiger counter to measure background radiation, students learned that radioactivity is not only around us, but also a natural phenomenon. After establishing the safety of low-dose radioactivity, we discoursed the environmental injustice on nuclear contamination around the Dene Nation, discussing the ethics of radiation infrastructure.<\/p>\n In conclusion, my overreaching instructional strategy is to guide students to think rigorously and self-improve. Practice does not necessarily make perfect; expertly practicing with tangible improvements do. Therefore, imparting expert opinion is precisely my profession. These skillsets will remain universally useful to the students, regardless of their terminal career aspirations.<\/p>\n Where to Go From Here<\/strong><\/p>\n Here is how I realize my teaching philosophy.<\/p>\n Go further: Academic Responsibilities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n A list of what courses I have taught, trainings I have undertaken, and academic services that I served on.<\/p>\n