Ban the Burqa links

http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2009/10/islamophobes-urge-canadian-government.html

Read more...

Teaching Philosophy Draft

As educators, we are the intellectual leaders of our fields, cultivating students in the tradition of our disciplines. Our role is to develop students into reflective thinkers who are able to engage with ideas, are effective communicators of knowledge, and are able to sustain a progressive trajectory of learning.

Teachers empower when they model. I believe intellectual leadership is possible only when the leader remains a student. Most importantly, what I want my students to take from me is an enthusiastic curiosity about how we communicate meaning to one another, about how knowledge is created and transmitted, and about how effectively transmitted knowledge produces a domino effect of change. Furthermore, knowledge is never solely produced or contained within the classroom walls.

Learning occurs in a community of meaning, and inevitably communities change and people change communities. Understanding this is essential for helping students develop portable skills that will allow them to communicate in various cultural settings and in their diverse occupational fields. My goal is to develop students’ ability to analyze their communities, become fluent in community communication practices and needs, and be able to continually adjust to the changes that reshape the communities in which they create and share knowledge.

Goals and assessment are the keys to progressive, ongoing learning. Setting realistic and reasonable goals for students’ advancement of knowledge and understanding, experience, skills, reflectiveness, and critical inquiry is necessary for effective teaching. Students should know what they can expect to take away from their learning experience. Furthermore, understanding what they know is necessary for them to realize what they still need to know.

To achieve these ends, my practice is to engage students in frequent class discussions and to encourage them to question everything. I approach group class time as a facilitator who presents information and welcomes challenges to it. My students frequently remark that what they appreciate most about my teaching style is that it appears I am learning along with them, inviting them to engage the ideas with me, not for me, and empowering them to take ownership of the knowledge we discuss and create. For example, joining students in experimentation with new technology and prompting discussion of its usefulness, effectiveness, and impact is one way I have modeled the necessity of ongoing learning and adaptation as an intellectual.

Course assignments and projects focus on texts and ideas that stem from diverse knowledge bases and frequently require students to complete project objectives through collaborative efforts, showing knowledge does not exist in a vacuum. Course requirements provide opportunities to experience knowledge from the various viewpoints of multiple recipients.

Assessment is embedded throughout course discussions, texts, assignments, portfolios, and overall course evaluation. Students are involved in goal setting for their own learning from the start of the course, and they are asked to self-assess their knowledge as individual learners as well as members of their communities of meaning. Additionally, students are encouraged to assess the successfulness of the course learning goals via course-specific course evaluations.

These many opportunities to guide students in their own assessments and finally in their assessment of me as their instructor contribute to my continual development as an intellectual leader. Truly, being an educator is a privilege that deserves constant practice of skills and improvement of techniques. Each semester, I find that of all the people in the classroom I am the one who learns the most: the fresh perspectives of my students on both old and developing ideas, the experience interacting with future knowledge producers, the extent to which knowledge is in constant flux and growth. It is probably true that I make a difference in the lives of my students by making them authors, encouraging them to question and seek understanding, and to realize they are not existing in a single community. However, the reason I do it is for more selfish ends; teaching reminds me how much I still don’t know.

Read more...