Five Guiding Principles of Teaching
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I am Joel Teitelbaum. I am an Associate Professor of Health Policy in the School of Public Health and Health Services. I am also the Vice-Chair for Academic Affairs for the department and the managing director for what is called the HERSH Health Law and Policy Program, which is the dual degree program here at GW for students who are taking both law and public health degrees. I teach an introduction to health law course at the undergraduate level and I teach two graduate courses: a seminar on health care civil rights and the other is healthcare law for graduate students as well. I am obviously trained as a lawyer and specifically as a health lawyer.
I tend to teach very small courses. In fact none of the courses I teach are required. But the undergraduate level and the, what we call the BSPH, the Bachelors of Science in Public Health, my health law course is an elective. So it tends to be anywhere between probably about seventeen to twenty-five students and my civil rights seminar is actually quite small I try to keep it at 12 or under. And my graduate health law course is again usually around twenty students.
I realize that this size of my courses makes a huge difference in how I teach. This is the discussion that we had several months ago at the school of public health, was having a faculty seminar series when we were talking about different teaching method and styles and things that you can employ in the classroom and of course it varies dramatically in a course like mine where I might have fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five students verses one where someone may have ninety students. The things that I can do in class and I think the things that can make my classes interesting for students is so very different from someone who is teaching a very large class. So I realize that I am lucky in that sense.
I’ve been on the faculty since 1998. I’ve developed a lot of the courses new that I’ve taught and that’s been a wonderful and sometimes excruciating experience. One thing that I have learned, even though I’ve been teaching now for some time, it’s probably not until the third time that I am teaching a course that I feel comfortable in it and that I feel that I’ve selected the materials properly, that I’ve got it structured properly, that I’ve got it sequenced properly. So even now that I’m comfortable in the classroom, I’m not always comfortable the first time out teaching a course or even the second time out. And for that I employ a lot of student feedback. I tell them that this, for example, is the maiden voyage of the health law- healthcare civil rights course and what is going to be most helpful for me is for you to tell me truly what doesn’t work and what does and help me build a better course, so I do a lot of that.
So while I’ve been teaching for a long time it wasn’t until a few years ago-- that I was asked to do a profile for the Progress, the magazine that we have here on campus-- that I stopped to think about what I was doing in the classroom. I feel like I sort of came to teaching naturally, I think that it is very much based on one’s personality whether you have great success in the classroom or perhaps something less than that. And so I got into the classroom and I became comfortable and I have a good repore with my students and that all came somewhat naturally, but it wasn’t until I stopped to think about what I was doing and why I was doing it that I was able to put some what I call principles together that guide me as a professor.
The first one was being dedicated to and having respect for my students and understanding that I am in the classroom because they are in the classroom, and I wouldn’t have a job if not for them and I’m not in there because I just want to go and listen to myself talk but because I enjoy engaging with the students.
The second one is maintaining my own passion for the subject matters that I teach. I think that it’s obviously very hard to impart some sort of energy or excitement about a subject matter unless you yourself feel passionate about it.
The third thing was inspiring students to become engaged in the subject matter that I teach. And that’s what I talk about in the beginning of the class, that you’ve all self-selected yourself into this course and you may not even understand what health law is but it sounded interesting to you and so I try and sort of impart a sort of excitement about it and tell them that if they don’t feel excited about it that either we can one-on-one explore a different area or perhaps it’s not a course for them and they are free to select another class.
The forth is managing what I call a holistic learning process for students rather than being a teacher. My view of teaching is that it just doesn’t happen for the two hours that we are in the classroom. I think that a lot of the best either learning or teaching or facilitating learning that goes on is outside of the classroom. I consider myself a mentor to a lot of students and I like to keep in touch with them after they leave and hear about them as they move through their professional lives as well and I think at that point it’s becomes a much more a mutual relationship where they are helping me in terms of mentoring students that I now, for example.
The fifth thing is being adaptable, and by that I mean adaptable to students in their varied life experiences, adaptable to changes in my field, and to changes within the academic programs in which I teach. So the first one, obviously, is that I understand that students come to my classes with lots of different life experiences and are currently have things going on outside of my classroom. I say it’s absolutely fine, I understand that you have a lot going on outside of this course and don’t worry about it we’ll find a way to get you caught up is all of that, so it’s not a big deal if that happens once in a while. Changes in my field are big. Health law generally, and policy generally, is sort of an everyday experience of rapid change and so I have to be adaptable in the classroom to those changes. I can’t stay static in what I teach it has to be about making sure I’m as up-to-date as possible. And then finally changes to the academic programs in which I’m teaching. The department of health policy has existed as a standalone department since 2002 and as the academic head of the department I am closest to the changes that go on, and we are constantly updating it. While that has been a challenge as the administrator of the program it is also important that that gets reflected not only in all course but in the ones that I teach.
And finally the last principle is instilling in students a desire to question conventional wisdom and the status quo. I think this is something that was probably drilled into my head in law school. The whole idea of law, well we have this thing in law called stare decisis which is the idea that precedence matters hugely in law because without it things would be constantly changing- no one would understand what the law is, no one would understand what they are responsible to do, and no one would understand what was wrong, or at least illegal. You have to challenge the status quo and the wisdom of those that come before you in order to make lasting societal change and meaningful societal change. So, I try and impart that in the law course to students and teaching them that what it true in law is also true in life and they can use that elsewhere.
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