Teaching Statement !Applicant: Mengdi Zheng!

Teaching Philosophy !With experience of teaching and tutoring mathematics and physics to children to adults, I think of teaching as an audience-oriented experience: teaching college students has a different focus than elementary school students. College students are active adults that are able to ask questions, collect information, and conduct group discussion on their own. At the same time, the time they spend in classroom is no longer enough to cover the materials and exercises for them to understand a mathematics or physics college course thoroughly. Therefore, as far as the limitation of time in class and the learning ability of college students are concerned, my goal in teaching is to deliver inspiring ideas, arouse their interest to the subject, and emphasize the key points during a college level class.!As a Ph.D. student, I think teaching and research highly related. When we speak on a conference in research, we are teaching; when we conduct discussions with our students during teaching, we are researching. Both teaching and research are comprised of collecting materials, remembering facts, asking questions, discussion, and solving problems. Therefore, I think of teaching as an enhancing experience and practice to research.!!Teaching Experience !I would like to mention a few things I realized through my teaching experience.!⭐ Limit of compromising!Although teaching is student-oriented, there is a limit that a teacher can compromise in order to reach the goal of a course. The students often want to hear what they are interested in but the teacher must deliver what is basic and useful. When I taught in astronomy labs, some student came to the dome where the big telescope was and asked me, ‘Can we look at the Pleiades tonight? That is my favorite constellation.’ We shall not kill their enthusiasm to what they love but at the same time we shall make them understand that there will be some interesting parts and some boring parts. I think it an important skill to stay on the track and help them to postpone their tempting distractions.!⭐ Engaging the whole classroom!Often, there are active students in conversation with the teacher and quiet students in a class, but we shall try to keep the quiet ones also active in thinking. We shall not force the quieter ones to speak up but we can still keep them interested and thinking. When I taught in the basic physics lab, there are students who came with prepared minds and developed forms only to come to fill out the data, and there are also students with blank minds. Whenever I asked a question, it was always those few active students answering. But when we started the experiments, I found those quiet ones still having trouble to conduct their experiments. Somehow the conversation between the teacher and the active ones has blocked the quieter students’ chance to learn. Therefore, I think it is very important to move onto the next topic not only after those happy and active students respond to me but also after I confirm that the quiet ones also understand.!!By my diverse teaching assistant experience in astronomy labs, basic physics labs and applied mathematics courses, I try to reach the goal of each session with out loss of flexibility by keeping the whole classroom interested and at the same pace.