My Conceptualization of learning 

Learning how to learn is perhaps the most important skill that we can develop. To learn we need to be energized by the prospect of learning and to develop a strong personal connection to what we are learning. Our excitement and personal connection to what we are learning depends to a large extent on our teachers care and concern for their students and the learning environments that they create. I aspire to be one of those teachers that expresses and models care and concern for students.

My Conceptualization of teaching

My goal as a teacher is to create a learning environment in which my students are motivated to become life long learners. I want to create learning environments that make learning exciting, support students in their effort to become successful learners, and provide recognition for their accomplishments. I want to give my students exposure to real world situations and provide them an opportunity to think critically about these situations and to develop practical skills for addressing them. Recently in design and development of my courses I have focused on making them "practice based" and I have been experimenting with ways of bringing "public health practice" into the classroom.

Goals for my students

I trust that all my students will make their best effort to learn in my classes. When my students have finished my course, I expect they will have learned  a set of practical skills that will make them more self confident and more effective as public health practitioners.

I design my classes to make students take responsibility for their own learning. I believe in the old adage “You take out what you put in”. This has led me over time to structure the class in ways that give the student more and more responsibility for the course.

Each year I find myself wanting to do more mentoring and advising and less formal teaching. Consequently, I spend much of my time trying to structure my class in ways that give students the opportunity to take responsibility for the class. For example, in one of my courses, I have created an electronic textbook which students have written, update, and edit yearly. I have assigned a class session to a group of students and given them the responsibility to work with me to develop and conduct the class. I work with students to develop an interactive exercise that they conduct for each class.

I believe that students should develop and practice real world problem solving skills. I try to create situations in which students can improve their competencies by doing. For instance, I work with students to develop and deliver a training program for community health workers, to play a role in a simulation of a developing country health system, or to debate a controversial policy issue. 

I also believe that exchange between students is fundamental to learning and expands the breath, depth, and interest in the course.

I try to structure the course to access and use the collective experience and expertise of the class. I want my students to be motivated to learn because they see the value in what they are learning. I understand that formal assessment can be an important part of learning but I believe that the process of providing feedback and support to students as part of an assessment is much more important than in determining and assigning grades. Teachers must be careful about assessment, because it alters the power distribution of power in the classroom and can change the fundamental relationship between teacher and student.