Prospective community college teaching positions and teaching philosophy (LONG)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m a math teacher working as an adjunct at two community colleges. I’ve been doing this for three years now. I’ve mostly taught developmental courses (pre-algebra through intermediate algebra); I’ve taught College Algebra and trig a couple of times, but have yet to teach calculus.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to land a full-time permanent position at some community college, whether it’s one I currently work for, or another entirely. Now is the time of year when job positions begin to be heavily advertised, as colleges are looking for instructors to begin this Fall.

Almost every teaching position advertised wants a statement of teaching philosophy included in the application process. Up to this point, the version I’ve submitted with applications is geared more towards What I Think They Want to Hear, rather than How I Really Feel. I worry that How I Really Feel might be too much of a departure from the norm, at odds with the “normal” attitudes towards teaching math.

This is what I want to ask opinions on… I’m wondering if I should take a chance and write the How I Really Feel version to submit with my resume. I worry that I’ll be shooting myself in the foot and they’ll think I’m crazy, and dismiss my application right off the bat. But on the other hand, maybe some colleges would like to see a change from the same old thing.

Some points on How I Really Feel: (skip to the last paragraph if this is getting into TLDR territory)

I think a lot of math teachers and departments have lost sight of the fact that most students in pre-college level math classes are taking these classes because they have to. There aren’t any math majors in my classes. My students do not share my passion for math. They are taking exactly the math classes they need for their degree, or to transfer to a university, and once they have completed the math requirement they are going to avoid math classes like the plague. Therefore, I do not believe that students need to understand, in minute detail, exactly why and how every little rule or process in algebra works. I’m not saying this isn’t important. A student who is majoring in some sort of science might need to get into the nitty-gritty, but not in Introductory Algebra. That can come later. A student who is majoring in history doesn’t need to worry about it at all.

I think humor is an important part of teaching any subject, especially math. I think many people have the stereotypical image of math teachers being humorless and stodgy, lost in their own little world. I try to make my students laugh at every opportunity.

I try to talk to students so that they’ll understand what I’m saying, using informal language rather that the big complicated lingo seen in math textbooks. Many die-hard mathematicians would probably have a stroke if they heard me talking about the “top” and “bottom” of fractions, or “plugging in” a value for x. Whatever.

A good example of this happened last week in my College Algebra class. We were going over properties of functions, and the definitions of increasing and decreasing. The formal definition, as written in the textbook, is long and complicated. I went over this definition, and the students all had this glazed look in their eyes, clearly not understanding a word I was saying. I then said “here’s the translation to plain English: pick two points on the graph where the function is ‘going uphill’ from left to right. That’s an interval where the function is increasing.” I could almost see the light bulbs and exclamation points appearing above their heads as understanding kicked in. They don’t need to fully understand the formal definition, at this point. Getting the basic idea should be good enough.

Another point that I think might not be so popular: I don’t assign daily homework. Many, if not most, math teachers assign 50 or 100 homework problems every day, and then they can’t figure out why students hate math so much. I assign a handful of problems each day to be completed in class, while I am there to help them out. I give them a list of suggested problems to work on at home, but I make it clear that I won’t be collecting these problems, and that they should only work on problems in areas they feel they need it. My students are all adults; it is up to them to decide how badly they want that A. If they want to do well, then they will work some of the practice problems. If they just want to skate by, or don’t care if they fail, then they won’t bother with the practice problems. I don’t see why I should force tons of homework on them.

Then there’s my attitude about word/story/application problems. Most word problems in math textbooks are dumb, boring, and completely contrived: “A train leaves Chicago at 3:00 PM…” Who cares? An example that comes to mind from one of my introductory algebra textbooks: there’s a two-paragraph description about the history of the “I Want You” poster with Uncle Sam, then at the end it says “the length of the poster is x and the width is y. Find its area.” They could have saved space in the book by just saying “here are the length and width of a rectangle, find the area,” instead of this contrived nonsense. This is typical of textbook word problems.

There’s always all this talk about how word problems need to reflect real-world applications. Bah. I focus on trying to make word problems entertaining, with realism being a secondary concern. I won’t claim that many of the problems I use aren’t contrived, but if I can make the students laugh, and engage them, then we have a win.

A few of the problems I’ve done:

Distance-Rate-Time: A few hours after strapping himself to a rocket and lighting the fuse, Wile E. Coyote finds himself several hundred miles from his starting point, after travelling with the wind. Then he orders up another rocket from ACME to get home, and travels against the wind. Use a system of equations to determine the speed of the rocket and the speed of the wind.

Compound Interest: When Phillip J. Fry was cryogenically frozen in 1999, he had 93 cents in his savings account. After waking up in the year 3000 and visiting his bank, what did he discover?

Newton’s Law of Cooling: In The Empire Strikes Back, Han finds Luke in the snow, cuts open a dead tauntaun, and stuffs Luke inside to keep him warm. How long does Han have to build a shelter before the tauntaun gets too cold and Luke becomes a popsicle?

Lastly, and this one is the biggie: EXAMS. The best way to learn math is to get knee-deep into working problems. When I was a student, I got WAY more out of trying to figure out some complicated problem, working in the comfort of my own home, taking all the time I needed, than I ever did from trying to cram a bunch of rules into my head to take some test. I fail to see how this promotes learning.

The standard of giving a midterm and final, with these being the majority of the overall grade, is rubbish. Students try to memorize as much as they can, then many of them are so worked up about the test they sit down and their mind goes blank. How is this helpful? And then, as soon as the test is over, they promptly forget everything they’ve crammed. It’s funny when a student turns in an exam… I can almost hear the hissing sound as all that stuff in their head escapes.

I try to alleviate this pressure by giving short quizzes each week (like, 2 or 3 questions). I drop several of the lowest scores. I am required to give a comprehensive, no-notes allowed, no book allowed final exam; if it wasn’t for that, I would give a non-cumulative take-home exam instead.

Now, PLEASE: I wrote all of this to illustrate why I feel my philosophy is a bit different from the norm. I am NOT looking to debate whether my attitudes and ideas are right or wrong. I’m looking for insight on whether I should gamble on writing my teaching philosophy to reflect my true feelings. I would especially like to hear from those in academia - even better would be to hear from people who have served on hiring committees.

2

This statement is not the place to discuss How You Really Feel. What You Think They Want to Hear is what you should write.

I’m not saying lie, but the Statement of Teaching Philosophy is one of those little documents that is more likely to hurt you (if bad) than to help you (if great). What they want to see is that you’re not a Great Researcher Biding Time with the Plebes until the One True Tenure-Track Job comes in. (Sorry, I’m getting carried away with the capitals.)

Mention your use of humour. Mention the way you make the language accessible, but don’t make it sound like you prefer the accessible terms. Remember that to your department, these are all potential math majors (=more money from the university).

Edit: they’re looking for a colleague who will fit in, not one who will challenge the established way of doing things. You don’t hire the guy who wants to start a revolution. You do hire the young, energetic guy who reaches the kids.

3

I do not work at a college and I don’t hire adjuncts, so take my advice for what it’s worth.

There’s part of your speal that sounds good. Use humor, use real world terms, understand why the student is taking the class, don’t overload the homework so they hate the subject. Those all seemed good to me.

Then you went off the rails.

I get what you were going for with word problems, but you gave horrible examples. “A train leaves Chicago…” is no good, but “A cartoon character rides a rocket…” is ok? A summary of the Uncle Sam poster is out but a summary of The Empire Strikes Back is right on? Sure, there are poorly written word problems, but yours don’t seem any better.

Where you really would have gotten it binned is the exams. You are basically saying that having to do any of the work from memory or under time pressure is no good. It may be for some students, but those students will have an IEP (or adult equivalent). That is not for you to decide unless your college WANTS to try it as an experiment.

If I were to summarize your essay, it would be “I care about my students, but not enough to do what the administration expects if I disagree with my boss”.

4

You should be honest, but you also need to phrase how you really feel in a way that matches what they’re looking for. The key to remember here is that what they’re actually looking for isn’t actually a philosophy; it’s how you express your philosophy. So express your philosophy in their terms, and it’s a win-win.

For instance, don’t talk directly about your sense of humor. Talk about how important it is to keep the students engaged, and to make the subject fun for them. Either statement is true, but they’re looking for the word “engagement”, so phrase it that way.

5

I’m also an adjunct math/science prof.

When I teach my Business Algebra class, I use the beer brewing industry in all of my examples. They seem to like it.

6

I’m tempted to analyze your long OP in detail, pick it apart, and discuss the fine points of teaching math. Maybe I still will, later, but that’s not the main thing you’re looking for.

I would offer one piece of advice: avoid saying anything in your teaching philosophy that could be interpreted by the people reading it that they are Doing It Wrong, or that you know so much better than all the other math teachers, textbook writers, etc. For example, when you say “The standard of giving a midterm and final, with these being the majority of the overall grade, is rubbish,” you run the risk of alienating anyone on the hiring committee who’s doing just that (and maybe they’ve found that it works for them).

7

These examples appeal to Gen Xers. Your typical community college kid probably doesn’t know who Wile E. Coyote is and may only have a passing familiarity with the characters of Futurama and Empire Strikes Back. And “insider jokes” don’t really make for an inclusive classroom. I had a calc professor who always made baseball references. I didn’t follow or play baseball. I was able to figure the material out without his humorous examples, but it’s still not fun not getting the joke all the time.

I wouldn’t try to teach material relying on students’ knowlege of TV and movie characters. I know what a “tauntaun” is (I think). But I wouldn’t trust an average 20-year-old community college student to know. They’re going to already be bombarded with a bunch of unfamiliar concepts in a math class. I don’t know how pop culture references from the 80s would make this easier.

So I would make sure you target your humor to everyone in the audience, not just the nerdy/geeky folks you feel kinship towards.

8

blink blink

I’m 26 and I have a brother who is 18. Wile E. Coyote, Futurama, and ESB are very much popular and well known things to be referencing.

9

I’m not in academia anymore, so take this with a grain of salt, but I agree with other posters – I’d go for something in between What You Think They Want and What You Really Feel, and tempered so that your views come out in their language.

Thus talking about engaging students is good, as others have said. I wouldn’t mention the exams thing at all (like others have said, you risk alienating people), but I would mention your philosophy that getting knee-deep in working problems is the way to really learn material, and you try to teach to that.

I agree with you about word problems – but I’d actually argue that the problem “What is the area of the poster?” is not really a real-world problem at all. I have never in my life needed to figure out the area of a poster for a real-world application. Your Wile E. Coyote problem is actually more of a real-world application, in the sense that figuring out how wind affects speed and time traveled is something one might think about in real life, e.g., it’s something that comes up if traveling in a plane across the country with a tail- or head- wind. So I think it’s possible to frame this in a way where you talk about how you want word problems to engage the students and be relevant to situations they might encounter in real life… that you believe in teaching in a way where the student can easily abstract from your problems methods that will be relevant in her/his life.

ETA: I guess one could maybe imagine tesselating one’s room with posters? But then one would really want to know all dimensions of the room… oh, never mind. There’s probably a problem in there, but “What is the area of the poster?” isn’t it.

10

Okay, I do want to make a few more comments.

Some of the things you say don’t really match my own perceptions/experience, which maybe makes you sound a little out of touch. For example:

I doubt this. I can’t imagine anyone teaching math at a community college who isn’t fully aware that most of his students are in his class because they have to be, and many of them don’t have particularly positive feelings toward math. Or this:

Of course you should be able to use informal, colloquial language when talking to your students. I don’t know many mathematicians who would have a problem with talking about the “bottom” of a fraction or “plugging in” a value for x, and anyone who would fault you for this is the mathematicial equivalent of the type of language prig who would fault you for splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition.

On the other hand, what you’re saying could, at worst, be interpreted to mean that you don’t understand formal terminology and precise mathematical definitions well enough to explain them and make them understandable, or even that you don’t understand the point of having formal terminology and precise definitions, which (at worst) means you don’t really understand mathematics.
I don’t want to be all negative. There’s a lot I like about what you’ve written. It shows that you care about teaching and about what’s effective, and that you’ve put some thought into what really works in practice.

11

I’d scrap that whole thing.
It’s crammed with negativity, which is off-putting. You seem to be stressing that you’re watering down the material because most of the students have no real use for it and can’t manage it anyway. This is not what the math department of a college wants to hear or hire. I’m left thinking it’s YOU that does not like math, not your students.

Every time you refer to the blank looks on your students’ faces, I’m picturing you not inspiring them.
Every time you refer to something you “try” to do, I’m assuming you fail.
Every time you talk about using humor, I’m thinking yours falls flat.
And your “math problems” lack the data necessary to solve them, making me question whether you have a grasp of arithmetic.
Try this: determine who will be reading your statement. Like specifically, exactly who, by names. Google these people. See what papers they have published. Skim any papers you can find and try to determine what their actual fields of interest and pedagogical theories are.

Now craft your statement accordingly. Don’t regurgitate their thoughts as you perceive them, but don’t spend an entire page dumping crap on them.

12

I have two coworkers in their mid-20s who looked at me with dumb expressions the last time I made a Looney Tune reference.

I know several folks my own age who have never watched Futurama (they never get my references) and wouldn’t know what a “tauntaun” is if it jumped up and bit them. So I’m not going to assume that people considerably younger than them would know more.

A professor shouldn’t make allusions that only some of the students will understand. That’s a sure-fire way of making a large percentage of your students feel like they don’t belong in a college setting. Of course, they won’t say so because they will assume it’s their fault they feel this way. Just like I assumed it was my fault for not knowing baseball like the boys in the class did (or pretended to anyway).

13

I agree completely with AnaMen.

Try writing something completely new, with these rules:

Don’t talk about what you dislike about others’ teaching styles.

Don’t disparage other teachers.

Don’t disparage current curriculum.

Don’t talk about students as though you expect them to be uninterested/incapable.

To be totally honest, you sound like someone who isn’t excited about the material, isn’t excited about teaching, and whom I would not want to hire or work with (note: I’m saying you sound that way. This is a comment on your letter, not you as a person :slight_smile: ).

(my strikethrough)

For example, the struck-through portion of your letter above does nothing but say that you don’t like math textbooks, think that mathematicians are all ivory-tower nerds who don’t know how to teach, and that you don’t care if those people (colleagues?) don’t “get” you, because they’re just wrong and stupid.
Seriously, I think you could communicate all the things you’re proud of about your approach and philosophy without framing it against the strawman system you seem so hostile towards, and it would be 1000% better.

14

Thanks for the replies so far.

I did not mean to imply that what I wrote in the OP is what I would send off, word for word, with an application packet. Gawd no. What I wrote in the OP is just a general take on my feelings about teaching. I was only trying to describe how my thinking goes against the norm.

And a note about my word problems… what I present to my classroom is developed way beyond what I wrote here. For some problems I’ll even show a video clip to set it up (like the ESB one). I was merely communicating, in a sentence or two, the basic ideas behind some of my problems. I’m fully aware that not everyone is going to get the reference. There is enough explanation in my presentation that no one is left in the cold. I have yet to see a student get upset because they have no idea what I’m referencing. :slight_smile:

15

I’m not an academic. My college studenthood was decades ago. But I have done platform instruction in industry and also consume it regularly even now.

Your writing is like mine. In an effort to be complete and/or precise, it contains about 4x as many words as are necessary. As such it feels heavy, pedantic, and doctrinaire.

When I do teach, I have to fight like hell to not fall into the trap of talking like I write. I admit I don’t always succeed. Attention spans are short and details & footnotes not only get lost, they get the students lost too.

You may be able to teach without falling into that trap, but I suspect the hiring committees are going to read your philosophy as a sample of your writing, thinking, and speaking style. And I read a style that will turn them off, convincing them you can’t in fact deliver ideas efficiently and effectively.
I’m not competent to address the content of your philosophy. The other folks upthread have done so. But I will say you really need to work the style to be short simple positive sentences. Confidence without brashness. But without wordiness too. Succinct clarity is ideal.

16

I agree with the crowd.

If you are looking for that one-in-a-million school that really clicks with you and will genuinely relish and nurture your teaching style, be bold and free with your statement. But if you are basically willing to work within the bounds of existing systems in exchange for a nice steady paycheck, you’ll want to stick to a more or less broadly appealing version of “true to yourself.”

Remember that these statements are not there because departments are just desperately curious about your personal philosophy. They exist to get you to reveal what you are looking for, as schools don’t want to hire people who are going to be fundamentally unhappy with their approach. So whatever you write, if you’d like to get hired, it needs to convey that what you are looking for is exactly what think they have to offer.

Your ideas aren’t bad, but you’ve framed them fairly negatively. You never, ever, ever want to put anything even slightly negative in this sort of thing, as subconsciously it will make the reader associate that negativeity with you. Focus on what you are and what you believe, not on what you don’t do or what you dislike.

17

Here is my off-the-cuff version:

"Community Colleges are, for many communities, the foundation of opportunity. Teaching for the last three years in East Bumble Community College and the North River School of the Arts has been an inspiring experience that has at once challenged and refined my teaching philosophy.

My students come from various backgrounds, and are striving towards many different goals. I consider it my job to ensure they have a strong foundation in mathematical reasoning as well as exposure to more complex concept that will serve them and prove valuable throughout their careers. I hope to inspire my students to understand the mathematical mindset, provide them with the practical tools they will need in the near-term, and give them a foundation to explore more advanced mathematics.

In my classes, I focus on providing clear, true-to-life explanations and examples. I am a strong believer in introducing new concepts with plain-language explainations. Humor has proven to be a valuable resource for building a positive, safe learning enviornment.

I’ve worked successfully within a number of evaluation environments. Within the existing structures, I focus on formative evaluations at regular intervals in the course, as well as working collaboratively through increasingly complex problem sets. I try to “cram-proof” my courses, ensuring that students have regular opportunities to apply their knowledge."

Etc. You can build in a couple of inspiring story-type examples if you like, but no need to get down in the weeds about exactly why you hate homework.

I’d also like to add that I’m not a fan of your approach to word problems. Your particular set of pop culture references is just a real turnoff for me, and having actual real-world examples, no matter how mundane, really helps me to ground my learning and make it less unreachably abstract.

18

As a person who did most of his college math in a community college I am right on with what you are saying. I only took math because I had to. And I hated it when they piled on homework.

My advice. It depends upon the community college. Some like ours (Johnson County Community College in Overland Park Ks), have more students than they can handle (over 30,000 making it the largest college in the state). They dont need to market and in that case I would discuss your flexibility in being able to teach many courses in different locations (they have satellite locations all over). Plus they do often have real math majors who are taking math courses there just because they are cheaper so maybe discuss working with them also.

However many smaller schools are struggling to attract students and in that case I’d gear your words towards how your teaching attracts and retains students.

In both cases from my experience, many students at a CC are there for training towards a career so maybe discuss working with the other disciplines to where what they learn in math goes easily into the other fields (ex. business or accounting).

BTW: as an adjunct, are you in your states retirement system?

19

The negativity is a big turn off. Don’t talk about what the “establishment” does wrong, talk about what you do right. Knowing that your students aren’t mathematicians, you work hard to connect with them on an informal level, avoid high stakes midterms and finals, and develop word problems that are entertaining and engaging.

On a personal level, I think you’re downplaying the value of math for people who are not employed in a STEM field. The occasional real world example may help your students believe that it would be useful to have the math skills your teaching, instead of just using your class to check off a box on their degree requirements.