My Teaching Philosophy
Anil Mitra

My teaching philosophy is guided by the following objective: to bring the best ability, capability and excitement out in a broad variety of students. I believe that the keys to achieving this objective are practical:

§ Careful thorough preparation for lecture, problem solving and other classroom activities. Allow for spontaneity within this framework. The material should be exciting in that it should give the student a sense of power over the necessary skills. It should be meaningful in that students should be made aware of origins of mathematics in application and of the ongoing relationship to application.

§ The teacher should be approachable, supportive and available. The learning environment should be warm. Availability includes physical presence through sufficient office hours, listening and addressing students needs, and twenty four hour presence over the Internet and or local networks.

§ The student should know what is expected of her or him from the beginning of the semester. Attendance and late submissions policies should be spelled out with adequate flexibility but sufficient firmness to encourage development of a disciplined approach in the student. Students should know what work would be required and how homework, tests and examinations will be administered and graded – and that the grading will be fair. The examinations should reflect what has been taught and what the student has been led to expect. Students should know that what they learn is important and that the grade will be a measure of learning and the ability to apply the learning. Students should know that the teacher would be available to discuss the actual marking of papers. All work should be returned in a timely way to provide feedback for corrective action and so that the student will know where he or she stands. Good performance and efforts should be praised and encouraged and those in difficulty should be told of the problem immediately – surprises and shocks should be minimized.

§ Respect should be given to the following: the range of student abilities, cultural backgrounds, life situations and learning modalities. Typically learning occurs with good instruction, timely systematic development, and reinforcement through careful representative testing, auditory and visual presentation and use of media when appropriate. Does the student respond to encouragement or a challenge?

§ Modern methods and tools are important in terms of power, currency, and marketability. Adequate attention should be paid to fundamentals – this places the power to learn in the hands of the student.