My teaching style

In order to be successful at anything, you have to play to your strengths and downplay your weaknesses. Being an effective lecturer is no exception. There are several tried and tested styles of teaching that have been proven effective for other people. Unfortunately, none of them are entirely suitable for me.

For example, there is the disciplinarian. These educators lay down the ground rules along with the penalties for breaking them, enforce them strictly, and impress the students with integrity and fairness. The rules usually relate to professionalism issues like punctuality and in-class behaviour. When the students follow the rules, it creates an atmosphere that is conducive to learning. The best practitioners of the disciplinarian approach are also excellent communicators who are able to deliver their material in an engaging manner, so that eventually the students want to listen and following the rules is no longer a chore.

A classic disciplinarian educator. Notice the smouldering glare. Staring deep. Into your soul.
(source: www.imdb.com)

I am poorly suited to the disciplinarian approach. I'm just really bad at keeping a serious tone when scolding someone, so I'm not an effective scolder. It's also difficult to come up with a punishment that is proportional to the crime. Suppose a student is late; other than marking him absent, what else would be an appropriate punishment? Taking marks off seems too harsh, and barring him from the class defeats the purpose of getting him to learn. Me, I just pause the class and greet the tardy student as brightly as possible, and hopefully his classmates will heckle him a bit.

Another method is to be a dynamic educator, to come up with some interesting and innovative hook that keeps the students coming back for more. If you're an ex-marine, you could display your karate skills. If you're an award-winning stand-up comedian, you could teach MacBeth using your John Wayne impersonation. Or, if you're like one of the lecturers here at Ngee Ann Poly, you could entertain the students with magic tricks (seriously - and by all accounts, he's an effective and well-liked lecturer).

Dynamic educators. The fact that a student died in all three movies is probably a coincidence. Right?
(source: www.imdb.com)

Being a dynamic educator is pretty tiring because you need to constantly keep it fresh with new and engaging tactics. There are excellent lecturers who have a complete utility belt of tactics that they employ with ease, including the use of technology, activities, audio and visual materials, etc. I'm trying to be more dynamic in my teaching (e.g., by using games), but I'm not there yet.

Of course, it helps if you look like Sidney Poitier, Michelle Pfeiffer or Robin Williams. Me, I'm a 1.62m (5 ft 4 in) nerdy guy with glasses who looks barely out of puberty. Some educators overcome this problem by being an expert. The expert educator is an authority in the subject, and the students feel honoured just to have the opportunity to tap his wisdom. This works best if you've created a seminal work on the subject, or have a theorem or mathematical constant named after you, or had your life story made into a movie by HBO. Unfortunately, I'm just not that smart.

An expert educator. At everything.
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Hawking.StarChild.jpg)

Therefore, I had to develop my own style of teaching, which I call the excited puppy. Allow me to explain.

One of the main elements of my teaching philosophy is to be enthusiastic when delivering the material. The idea is to try to show the students that the concept being taught is fun and exciting, thereby raising the energy levels of otherwise uninterested students who would much rather be scrolling through Facebook. I do this by giving examples of ways to apply the concepts to real-life situations so that the students can better imagine their applicability. Furthermore, I don't mind overselling the "coolness" of the material and making a bit of a fool of myself if it keeps my students' attention.

My inspiration.
(source: http://www.chumpysclipart.com/)

I suspect I take this tactic to extremes sometimes. I actually use the word "cool." I gesticulate in a way that justifies the use of the word "gesticulate". I have even been known to unconsciously perform a little hopping dance in the midst of a particularly enthusiastic exposition. A good friend of mine, Prof Michael Jahn, once said of my teaching style that "you are so enthusiastic when you teach that the students just get carried along for the ride." Or, as an amused and bemused Computing Mathematics student so succinctly put it last year, "why are you so funny?"

The excited puppy strategy suits me perfectly. My less-than-mature looks are actually an advantage, because if someone who looks like Lee Kuan Yew acted the way I do, it would look incongruous and possibly creepy. This strategy also provides a solution to my inability to scold people; instead of showing displeasure at a transgressing student, I show my disappointment. If I do it properly (I stop just short of actually giving a sad puppy whine), hopefully the student feels enough guilt that he'll correct his behaviour in the future. Nobody likes to disappoint an excited puppy.

"Was it something I did?"
(sources: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/okay-guy; http://www.123rf.com/photo_10120743_sad-puppy.html)

In all seriousness, the way I teach is not a calculated tactic. This is simply the way I naturally act, and it just happens to have some benefits. I think the main difference between my teaching style and most other lecturers is the fact that I de-emphasize the teacher-student divide, i.e., I don't act like the boss of the classroom. I prefer to conduct a lesson as a collaborative effort, where everybody's working together to achieve the objective of learning the material. Nothing would make me happier than giving A-pluses to everyone, and I want the students to know that.

That's why I'm so "funny".