Teaching Philosophy

One of the most rewarding compliments I have ever received was a comment on my class on Principles of Microeconomics left by a student saying: “Classes like this are in low supply, but highly demanded.” I loved it not only because of the positive feedback to my teaching but also because of my student trying to speak in economics. That was my goal, I wanted to play with their mind, and I did!

I see the teaching process as an alive, dynamic system that only results in effective learning if all parts work simultaneously. The essential elements, the teacher and the students, should be included in the teaching process. My job as the teacher is to make all parts connect and work together.

As an early-career economist, my main objective in all of my courses has been to equip students with accurate knowledge and transferable analytical skills to critically link the economic concepts, and economic view, to real life. Because of these characteristics of my courses, students describe their experience as “very helpful with decision making in the working world” and “a reason to see the world different from before.”

For the last two years, each semester at USF, my quantitative evaluations have been very positive (the rating average scores across sections that I have taught over the previous three semesters were 4.10/5, and, 4.07/5, and 4.55/5), which were above my department’s average (3.8/5, 3.8/5, and 4.10/5). My qualitative evaluations have also been very positive, with students consistently noting that they are impressed with my enthusiasm, knowledge, clarity, communication skills, and respect and care for students.

In the first years of studying economics, students have difficulties understanding the materials because it is difficult to connect the materials to the real world. They need more real-life examples. I have group activities designed to help students understand how economic concepts play a role in daily life. I also use various kinds of games to help them test their knowledge while having fun. I got positive feedback on the games seeing the comments from the students at the end of the semester:

“She did an awesome job of maintaining interest in the course topics. She was creative and jovial, and always explained things again if necessary.”

“Very funny, extremely intelligent woman, she somehow makes a very dull subject something that I can laugh about.”

If you need to know more about my teaching style, I will briefly use one of my student's comments:

“She taught and guided the class at the excellent performance level expected of employed professors despite only being a graduate student, which I found to be an impressive feat. Her assignments were very clear, she was open to questions and respectfully helped students, she broke up the monotony of 3-hour lectures with activities and videos, and she provided plenty of materials to guarantee student success. One thing I particularly loved about her was her teaching style; she took to the whiteboard and drew/wrote everything up there. I find it easier to learn the material if I can see the graphs and diagrams made step-by-step. She also color-coded the graphs and notes and organized them well, which made them easier to understand and easier to write down.”