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Early in my education, I became a keen observer of my teachers and my parents, looking at how they gave back to the society and comparing their different philosophies and approaches, thinking about their teaching methods, and assessing which methods enhanced my learning. By continuing this analysis throughout high school, college, and graduate school, I slowly and deliberately amassed a collection of effective teaching techniques. The distillation of those years of observation and analysis, combined with the lessons I am still learning from my own teaching experience, yields the overriding principle that I strive for in the classroom: clarity in presenting material, in detailing expectations, and in expressing educational goals.
My goal in both Chemistry and Mathematics is that each student develops a picture of the world at the atomic level and couples that picture to the chemical language by which we study, explain, and predict the chemical behavior and also integrate and amalgamate and predict trend using mathematical knowledge. To accomplish this, the imagery and words I use to explain chemical and mathematical phenomena must be presented leading to the simplification of complex mathematical and chemistry concepts.
Often, I find the most effective method of teaching is writing equations, reactions, and chemical processes on the board and explaining them to the class (chalk can still be a powerful teaching tool!). I find that analogies made to common experiences are also quite helpful, such as comparing the behavior of gas molecules to that of the lottery machine's ping-pong balls. Other material, however, lends itself to more complex modes of presentation. Certainly, chemical demonstrations are a powerful way to illustrate important principles, since they allow students to observe the physical reality and consequences of the mathematical and chemical equations used to describe, explain, and make predictions about the physical world.
Still, another material is more effectively presented using computer graphics and animations with other online platforms. When discussing how to visualize and interpret two-dimensional drawings of three-dimensional molecules, drawing graphs using different online software, these resources are quite helpful, as are actual three-dimensional models that students can physically manipulate themselves.
Online laboratory simulations is another efficient way of triggering scientific curiosity in a learner.
This proves to be a less dangerous endeavor that can allow a learner to learn by I do, We do and You do approach.
Finally, Both Mathematics and chemistry are fundamentally problem-based disciplines that require students to learn how to use chemical and mathematical concepts to solve problems. Thus, a simple but valuable teaching instrument is allowing class time for students to work on problems related to the material just presented.
This allows them an opportunity to apply what they have just learned and provide me immediate feedback as to how successful the presentation was. With this information, I can make real-time decisions as to whether or not the class is ready to move on to new information. In the laboratory, students must understand the chemical properties underlying the experiments. Too often, students perform laboratory manipulations and collect data that they can "number crunch" with little or no understanding of the chemical principles illustrated by the experiment.
