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I have found in my teaching experiences (and in dealing with people in general) that people rise to the level of expectation set for them. As a teacher, then, it is imperative that I maintain high, but not unreasonable, expectations of those around me. This teaching philosophy, however, applies not just to the expectations that I set for my students. At the same time that I expect excellence from my students, I also assure them that they can expect excellence from me. The following teaching goals help me to establish a mindset and classroom environment which leads to excellence.
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OMMUNICATE
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LEARLY AND
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ONSISTENTLY
In order for expectations to be met, they must be communicated clearly. This communication begins on the first day of class but also continues throughout the semester. One class that I teach, Experimental Psychology, is a labor-intensive, upper-level, lab-based course that is required of all of our majors. Before sharing the syllabus with them on the first day of class, I begin by asking them what they have heard about the course from others who have taken it.
Many respond with comments like, “really hard”, “very demanding”, “statistics-heavy”, and “a lot of work” (although I do also get the occasional “a lot of fun”). I usually end up agreeing with most of the remarks made, and communicate clearly to them that, in fact, my expectations for them are very high in the course.
I have found that an effective syllabus serves as a contract between the student and teacher, reminding each party of the other’s expectations. In order to be fair and avoid favoritism, I stick firmly to the conditions outlined in the syllabus throughout the semester. Although I insist that students take exams when they are scheduled and turn in assignments when they are due, I try to
“build grace into the system” by allowing students to drop their lowest test grade or assignment.
This allows me to hold students to a high standard and be consistent in my grading across all students, while also recognizing and being sensitive to the fact that sometimes “life happens” and things don’t get done on time or to the level of excellence that everyone might hope for.
I am very dedicated to the students I teach and am willing to spend as much time teaching and equipping my students as they are willing to spend learning. Although clear communication on the first day of class is critical for establishing expectations, communication throughout the semester, both in class and outside of class, is essential for maintaining those expectations. I frequently assist students with questions that they have during my office hours or other times that are more convenient for students, respond to e-mail dependably and quickly, and use online methods (mass e-mails, postings on Blackboard, etc.) to communicate information to my students effectively.
Finally, my students can expect me to give them feedback on all aspects of their learning process, communicating to them areas of both success and weakness. I am committed to listen to everything a student says and read everything that a student writes. I have found upholding this promise to be challenging at times, especially when teaching writing intensive courses such as

Experimental Psychology. However, out of respect for the time that they put into the assignment and my firm commitment to the students, I put in the additional hours.
M
AKE
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EARNING
A
CTIVE AND
P
ERSONAL
Learning is not a passive endeavor, but rather, requires the active transfer of ideas. I believe that every student has something to give and get from every class meeting, and strongly encourage class participation. I make it clear in my syllabi that being present in class (i.e., attendance) is not the same thing as participating. Rather, students are expected to come to each and every class prepared to contribute their thoughts, ideas, speculations, postulations, suggestions, theories, and hypotheses. At the same time, students can expect me to not only show up for class, but to also be prepared to deliver interesting, content-rich lectures and teach with the energy, dedication, and positive attitude necessary to turn an ordinary classroom discussion into a learning experience.
In addition, I try to make learning personal. I realize that every student is unique and relates to the material in a slightly different way. I challenge students to personalize their learning experience by connecting concepts and theories learned in class to real-life experiences.
Psychology courses have a wide-range of applications outside of the classroom and even outside the research lab, and I strive to help students see those connections in their own lives. When students in my Psycholinguistics class are asked to write response papers or post comments on a
Blackboard discussion page, they are encouraged to think of ways that the reading relates to concepts that they have learned in other classes or have experienced in their everyday lives. As part of one of the Mini-Projects in Psycholinguistics, students are asked to keep track of all of the language production errors (slips of the tongue) and ambiguous sentences that they come across in interacting with others. This allows them to connect the topics in class to “Language in the
Real World”. Finally, in selecting a research proposal topic in Experimental Psychology, my students are encouraged to keep a journal to outline “things that they wonder about” so that they can ultimately research a topic that is of personal interest to them.
B
E
R
ESOURCEFUL AND
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ULL OF
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ESOURCES
An effective teacher is creative and uses a variety of teaching and assessment techniques.
Learning concepts through a number of means encourages a deeper and more fully integrated knowledge base. Furthermore, since students learn in different ways, it is imperative to both teach and assess learning with a mixture of methods. In my Psycholinguistics class, students are evaluated through the completion of Mini-Projects (which are quite varied themselves), in-class exams (which consist of multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks, short essays, and a long essay that they write the question and the answer for), research presentations, and discussion board postings. Performance in my Experimental Psychology class is also based on a number of forms of assessment (including exams, in-class assignments, lab write-ups, and peer-critiques).
Students in my Statistics class are evaluated based on weekly quizzes, tests, and two take-home projects in which they are asked to analyze real datasets. I also use a number of resources when teaching my courses and take advantage of the technology that is available to me. My first semester at Skidmore, I created a class webpage for each of my two courses which offered links to other helpful resources for deeper or further learning. In Psycholinguistics now, I utilize

Blackboard to incorporate the elements of the course website with another feature: an online discussion board. In my lectures, I often use the chalkboard and take advantage of the in-class projector to present short videos or display a figure, a dataset, or a research synopsis for the class to discuss at length. When I teach Experimental Psychology and Statistics, I incorporate interactive statistical web applets into class lectures and labs and teach the students how to use
SPSS to perform the statistical analyses necessary to draw conclusions from data.
As the instructor, it is also my duty to be the bearer of good educational resources. There is not enough time in a one-semester class for me to physically tell them everything that they should know or might want to know. However, I provide my students with the resources they need to understand the material or want to further their learning. This includes supplying the students with well-prepared and informative lectures, carefully selected textbooks, handouts, supplemental readings from quality journals, appropriate guest speakers, accurate webpages and discussion forums, etc.
T EACH L IFE -L ONG S KILLS
In teaching courses in the field of psychology, my goal is not to turn all of my students into psychologists. Rather, I hope to help them gain an understanding of and an appreciation for the subject matter and its applications in their everyday lives. Psycholinguistics, Experimental
Psychology, and Statistics all have a number of practical applications even for students not planning on pursing a psychology degree. A well-designed psychology course makes all students (even non-majors) better parents, more informed citizens, and more critical consumers of information.
Furthermore, I challenge my students to practice their mastery of life-long skills that are necessary for success in any field that they may go into. These include writing skills, presentation skills, and cognitive skills such as creative and critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. In my Psycholinguistics course, students write response papers to each assigned reading to encourage critical thinking, especially with regards to psychological research. Furthermore, each student gives a presentation to help develop public speaking skills. In my Experimental Psychology course and my Statistics course, students get practice conducting real experiments, and analyzing real (and therefore, messy) datasets in which they must carefully think about the procedures they choose to use. Students in Experimental
Psychology also work on sharpening their writing skills by completing lab write-ups and a research proposal in APA style and participating in peer-critiques of their writing as well.
Finally, I strive to teach students to be self-sufficient learners. I teach the students in my classes how to use online databases to find peer-reviewed primary sources to conduct research on their own, allowing them to explore any topic in further detail. With my enthusiasm for the subject matter, I try to bring students beyond learning only what they need to know to pass the next exam, or even to get their college degree. It is my hope that by the end of a course, I will have succeeded in not only teaching the course material, but will have also inspired a deeper interest in the topics covered. Instilling such interest in the material and providing the students with the resources to continue their learning equips them with far more than a single semester-long course ever could.