I teach in the philosophy department at St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Canton, NY where I have taught regular courses as well as courses in their first year program. During my time here, I've done my utmost to adopt the liberal arts style of teaching. I focus extensively on fostering a personal relationship with my students, provide numerous opportunities for reflection on class content in ways that relate to student experiences and that encourage applications of philosophical concepts, and take a very hands-on, guided approach to teaching.
I view teaching, particularly at the upper division level, as apprenticeship. This is clearest in my approach to structuring paper assignments where I scaffold writing assignments into distinct chunks that require revision at different stages in the writing process and require in-office meetings to discuss ideas and directions for research. I also do this by, on occasion, allowing students to see my own work in its early stages. I aim to instill in my students the concept of writing as process and aim to demystify myself and the writing process by showing students that their professors, too, put considerable effort into their writing projects.
In my reasoning (critical thinking) course, I structure activities and group assignments around active discussion of class concepts that allow students to apply concepts discussed in class. For example, when teaching inference to the best explanation, I use an activity in which students are presented with a number of observations and a particular phenomenon to explain and require them to organize the information and argue (using inference to the best explanation) for a narrative that best accounts for their evidence. I have also adapted a project designed for philosophy of science courses (see here) for use in this course. In this project, I have someone place an item in a box and the students are required to provide their best arguments for its contents without opening the box. Students have completed this assignment successfully, often deploying argument forms in surprising (even if unconventional) ways and finding creative avenues for investigating the box. There is, of course, a prize on the line - so the students have a powerful incentive to do this well! When teaching social justice oriented topics, I've employed activities that simulate the decision making of the least well off, to convey more clearly how philosophical concepts work, i.e., structural explanation (see here). For example, in the activity to which I alluded, I have students break up into groups where each receives a profile describing their family, their needs, and their budgets. They have to figure out how to allocate expenses within those constraints as "life happens" - they receive cards that present new challenges that will affect their budget.
During my time in the first year program, I have had the opportunity to teach courses that make use of Community Based Learning, where students, as a part of the course, work with different organizations in the (Canton-Potsdam) community. This course presented students with a series of writing assignments that pushed students to relate their experiences to content covered in the course (this course, in particular, covered a number of issues related to the social construction of race and gender, with a minor focus on economic inequality).
In sum, in my teaching I aim to design an interactive and welcoming classroom setting, treat my students as apprentices, and push students to reflect about the course content and its relationship to their life experiences.
I view teaching, particularly at the upper division level, as apprenticeship. This is clearest in my approach to structuring paper assignments where I scaffold writing assignments into distinct chunks that require revision at different stages in the writing process and require in-office meetings to discuss ideas and directions for research. I also do this by, on occasion, allowing students to see my own work in its early stages. I aim to instill in my students the concept of writing as process and aim to demystify myself and the writing process by showing students that their professors, too, put considerable effort into their writing projects.
In my reasoning (critical thinking) course, I structure activities and group assignments around active discussion of class concepts that allow students to apply concepts discussed in class. For example, when teaching inference to the best explanation, I use an activity in which students are presented with a number of observations and a particular phenomenon to explain and require them to organize the information and argue (using inference to the best explanation) for a narrative that best accounts for their evidence. I have also adapted a project designed for philosophy of science courses (see here) for use in this course. In this project, I have someone place an item in a box and the students are required to provide their best arguments for its contents without opening the box. Students have completed this assignment successfully, often deploying argument forms in surprising (even if unconventional) ways and finding creative avenues for investigating the box. There is, of course, a prize on the line - so the students have a powerful incentive to do this well! When teaching social justice oriented topics, I've employed activities that simulate the decision making of the least well off, to convey more clearly how philosophical concepts work, i.e., structural explanation (see here). For example, in the activity to which I alluded, I have students break up into groups where each receives a profile describing their family, their needs, and their budgets. They have to figure out how to allocate expenses within those constraints as "life happens" - they receive cards that present new challenges that will affect their budget.
During my time in the first year program, I have had the opportunity to teach courses that make use of Community Based Learning, where students, as a part of the course, work with different organizations in the (Canton-Potsdam) community. This course presented students with a series of writing assignments that pushed students to relate their experiences to content covered in the course (this course, in particular, covered a number of issues related to the social construction of race and gender, with a minor focus on economic inequality).
In sum, in my teaching I aim to design an interactive and welcoming classroom setting, treat my students as apprentices, and push students to reflect about the course content and its relationship to their life experiences.
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