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In order to educate a wide variety of students, it is necessary to provide a vibrant learning environment at multiple venues when necessary.  Learning involves thinking and feeling while positive outcomes are obtained by enhancing both the knowledge and the motivation of individual students.  It is essential to stimulate interest through reinforcements and punishments that express the need to learn meanings in addition to facts.  This practical teaching philosophy is what motivates me to encourage my students.  My objective is to ensure that a high number of students seek to enroll in the classes I teach and that their initial interest grows to become an in-depth knowledge of the subject material.

I have built many strong alliances with both faculty and students.  Those successful relationships are due in part to the strong personal connections I can make with individuals.  I continually seek to facilitate the same type of individual connection between each student and the material.  I teach social problems that enable students to:

• understand theory;
• appropriately utilize methods; and
• combine the two into an application to a pertinent social problem.

As the students draw connections to things relevant to their primary interests, they then attach that interest to the subject matter.  Each student brings with them a prior set of knowledge to the class.  Teaching social problems accomplishes:

• a realization of where and how newly learned sociological practice is currently taking place;
• a relevant view of theoretical framework; and
• an introduction to social processes in a socio-cultural setting.

When students apply their newly acquired knowledge to prior interests through current application, a blend of theoretical framework, social process, and socio-cultural setting occurs.  This well-rounded technique allows each student to present a strength while simultaneously incorporating a weaker area, improving their comprehension of the material in its entirety.

When more students contribute, the greatest gain occurs for all.  Therefore, I assign both individual and group work.  Some students are more confident writing individual journals while others prefer to express their critiques through a public discourse during the class period.  I administer lectures (auditory), multimedia presentations (visual), individual written assignments, and group presentations.  This variety of methods enables contributions through many different means and allows a diverse course of learning.  Student involvement is encouraged within a risk-free environment.

I have witnessed teaching evaluations that are highly indicative of the perceived grasp of material that the students take from each course.  I believe post-course evaluations best express the enthusiasm that the students possess during the course.  Students’ enthusiasm will amplify retention and so it is a primary goal of mine to receive high marks from the students.  The reciprocal exchange of respect and ideas contributes to a fluid and organic critical discourse.

In the long term, I maintain the objective to mentor and lead as many students to success as I encounter as a professor.  I hold an awareness that allows me to focus on reaching the confident student as well as the meek.  I will bring exciting substantive lessons to a broad variety of students at an assortment of levels and venues.  At the end of my teaching journey, I am confident that I will have left no student without a thirst for learning more about the subject matter in order to form a new practical application to the next social problem.