Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Xin (Jessie) Xie
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
-Albert Einstein
My father, who taught at a university in China, always told me that studying something
you do not know is hard, but teaching something you know to others is even harder. During the
past three years of teaching economics, I have realized that my father is right since each student
has his or her own study habit and ability. It challenges me to teach economics in an easily
understandable way. To be able to accomplish this, I find three approaches as my teaching
guideline: good preparation, adequate instructional techniques, and interaction with my students.
Experience has taught me the importance of preparation for a class. I still remember how
under preparation affected my teaching effectiveness for the first time I taught. I made quite a
few mistakes when I explained examples to my students and thus had to correct myself several
times. I worry that such one-time incidence could influence students' perception to the entire
course. Since then, I have been more engaged in preparing with teaching and tried to improve the
way I convey the knowledge. After my adequate efforts, I found that my students like my class
from their concentration on lectures and more active responses to my questions.
In addition to being well prepared, instructional teaching techniques are very crucial to
make the subject accessible. I strongly believe that a teacher should motivate students to connect
the economic theory with daily phenomena. I try to provide day to day examples that students
can relate to in order to better understand the discussed concepts. For example, to introduce the
concept of consumer surplus, I ask questions such as “How do you feel if you paid $50 for a
textbook which you are willing to spend $100 for?” I also discover that the most effective means
for teaching is to promote skill development by active learning rather than passive
transformation of information. As such, I like to bring in group discussion to break up the lecture.
Moreover, short film scenes are used as a vehicle to introduce economic concepts or elicit
questions to students. The advantages of these approaches are increased student engagement and
enhanced ability to apply economics to the real world problems.
Last but not least, interaction with students, both inside and outside the classroom, helps
me develop as an instructor beyond just offering lectures. Connecting with students allows me to
be aware of how students understand class materials. Inside the class, I often ask students
questions and have them share their ideas or comments, since it is far too easy to lose the
attention of a class in a one-way teaching environment. Outside the class, I contact students who
do not perform very well in the course and personally help them as much as I can. In addition, I
make myself easily approachable for student questions before and after classes and often outside
of my office hours.
In summary, my goal of teaching is to make various theories in economics easily
accessible to my students and prepare them to apply what they have learned in my class into their
lives. If my students leave the class with a desire to analyze the world, I feel I have accomplished
my goal.