Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Michael Song
My student-focused teaching philosophy is informed by what I have learned by the diametrically opposed, normative pedagogies of the two institutions that have shaped my academic career—the small, private, liberal arts Reed College and the large, public, R1 University of California Berkeley—as well as my experience teaching at community college where I believe better a pedagogy is possible.
At Reed College, I learned that a “student-focused” school can be student-focused for some students but leave others behind—often those that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. When I attended Reed, there were still memories of convocations where the speaker would say, “Look around to your left and to your right: only one of you will graduate,” and while Reed is the third in the nation in producing PhDs per graduate, it had until recently broadly ignored the students who dropped out or—surprisingly!—did not want to become graduate students. However, the attention given to students by professors and the treatment of students as colleagues gives an elect group of students the opportunity to develop as strong thinkers. At Berkeley, no one expects that students want to become academics. The highly competitive, job-focused and atomized undergraduate experience there, historically, has been a positive societal engine of bringing working-class and first-generation students into the middle class. However, with a worsening economic landscape, growing average student loan debt, and the increasing of university austerity measures, it is unclear that this non-student-centered model of education meets either the demands of the market or the satisfaction of the students. At a community college like Skyline, I have found that the smaller class sizes, the individual attention one can afford each student, and the relative inexpensiveness of tuition allows for a more democratic synthesis of both these pedagogies that can center all students instead of just some.
I learned that both Reed and Berkeley have something to offer to the self-motivated and unburdened student. But that student would thrive no matter where they went. What both schools lack in different ways is an emphasis on a student-focused AND equitable learning environment—and that is where I want to intervene as an instructor. My teaching philosophy is that students should be encouraged to participate in the process of learning in order to meet their own goals—but in a structured environment. To this end, I believe that students should know what the learning objectives of the course are and should be given many small assessments and opportunities for feedback to make sure that everyone is on the same page and understanding the material—not to have extremely high stakes “assessments” and “weed-out” classes, which often reproduce class- and race-based inequality rather than test knowledge or capacity. I hold regular office hours and study sessions where we talk about everything from transferring to four-year college to dealing with the stress of home life during a global pandemic. These small-group conversations help build community and provide a space for mentorship.
Throughout my career, I’ve been committed to innovating courses to make them more student centered. During the covid-19 pandemic, I remade and taught a plant systematics course where the students would get off Zoom and instead use the nature in their backyard as their laboratory by using a guided synchronous-asynchronous approach. Students were able to achieve the learning objective of identifying over 100 plant families through hands-on learning experiences and group projects with high student satisfaction. In the group projects, students needed to synthesize the taxonomic names in a critical evolutionary framework by making mini-nature documentaries or other creative projects, which they did successfully. During my first year at Skyline, I introduced group discussion and free-writing assignments into the non-majors biology class in order to build community and practice the skills of synthesis rather than memorization. In the for-majors biology class, I am in the process of developing student-led final group projects where they will have to actively apply their knowledge in developing their own experiments. Many of my students have gone on to work in resource management, the tech industry, health professions, or graduate school, so the most important aspect of teaching for me is to develop abstract critical thinking through tangible skill development in order to meet the needs of all my students. When we can develop both skills, we are giving students the tools to explore what they want from an education and from life.
October 2022