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I am overjoyed and honoured to receive the Exemplary Teaching Award in General Education. This award not only recognizes my past efforts, it also brings me great encouragement and confidence to continue pursuing my future endeavors in teaching.
Biology, itself, is a fascinating subject, filled with intriguing concepts that are closely related to our lives. However, many secondary school students often feel discouraged and overwhelmed by the vast amount of memorization the public examinations require. As a result, students tend to drop out of biology and choose alternative subjects in higher learning. Driven by my passion in biology, I resolved to help them revisit the marvelous concepts in biology. I strongly believe that teaching GE courses is a good opportunity for teachers to share their passion in a particular subject.
All living organisms show some common characteristics which enable them to survive, reproduce and evolve on Earth. Some of these can be used to explain my teaching philosophy:
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Complex but ordered organization. Living systems show hierarchical organization, from cells, organisms, populations, and eventually to all ecosystems on Earth. In the same way, I also arrange the topics in my courses in ascending order of complexity and learning difficulties. My goal is to help students interlink all the topics taught for a holistic picture of the subject.
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Balance. Living organisms maintain a balance in harmony with the environment; this is known as homeostasis (穩態). For example, we have to maintain the balance among water content, temperature and glucose level in our body. In teaching, we also need to maintain a balance between the level of difficulty and degree of interest. A diverse array of students is enrolled in GE courses, and hence the course must be finely tuned according to their academic backgrounds. Students are not expected to grasp all the details covered in the courses. Instead, the aim of my courses is to help students build a foundation in biology to enable them to explore areas of interest in the future.
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Response. All living organisms must constantly respond to the stimuli received in the surrounding environment. Similarly, in class, teachers must learn to be aware of students' behaviors and respond to their needs promptly. Empathy is essential for building positive student-teacher rapport. For example, when students begin to yawn or fall asleep in class, I may pause and jokingly share with them an interesting story to lighten up the atmosphere. We must learn to respond to the students' basic needs in order to facilitate effective learning in class.
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Growth, development and reproduction. Every one of us started from a single cell, i.e. the fertilized egg of our father and mother. This cell grows in size and number and then develops into different tissues and organs that form our body. Later, we reproduce to increase the population. In the same sense, I hope my teaching can help students "grow" in knowledge and experience. And hopefully, in the future, they may "develop" new ideas by integrating what they have learned in biology and their own major subjects. Eventually, these students could "reproduce" by "infecting" their friends, parents and relatives, so that more people would learn to appreciate biology and also make wise decisions when confronted with inaccuracies, even outright fallacies on biology-related issues reported in the mass media.
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Evolutionary adaptation. Overtime, organisms evolve in order to adapt to the changing environment. I believe that my teaching strategies must also "evolve" in order to meet the changing needs of students. The world is changing rapidly thanks to technological advancement; therefore, our teaching strategies must keep abreast of the needs of the students. Incorporation of new pedagogical systems, particularly e-learning approaches would certainly raise students' interest level. In-class electronic interactive systems, such as Clickers or uReply, are not really gimmicks, as they appeal to students and foster student-teacher interaction in class. Subject-related online games also allow students to learn and build upon biological concepts after formal class in an interesting way and at their own pace.
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