{"id":87,"date":"2025-12-15T10:31:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T10:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/?p=87"},"modified":"2025-12-15T10:33:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T10:33:25","slug":"my-teaching-manifesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/2025\/12\/15\/my-teaching-manifesto\/","title":{"rendered":"My Teaching Manifesto"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0 retired after 50 years of teaching in universities in 4 different countries with different education systems and pedagogical traditions. This experience shaped my views on our profession. I firmly believe that<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Teaching is not a science, it is an art, and should be treated as such.<\/li>\n
  2. Students are not customers (\u201cpersons who buy\u201d) \u2013 they are clients (\u201cpersons who seek the advice of a professional man or woman\u201d).<\/li>\n
  3. \u201cGood learning experience\u201d means mastering something new and advanced. To help his\/her students, a university teacher has to be able to transform and restructure highly complex material from his\/her subject area into a form suitable and accessible to the learners.<\/li>\n
  4. This cannot be achieved without teachers being experts in their disciplines.<\/li>\n
  5. Successful and inspirational teaching is a highly individual skill. The choice of teaching methods should reflect not only specifics of the target audience, but also the experience, teaching philosophy and individual\u00a0psychophysiological\u00a0characteristics of the teacher.<\/li>\n
  6. Structuring of the learning environment, choice of teaching and assessment methods have to be subject specific.<\/li>\n
  7. Values, standards, criteria of assessment in learning and teaching have to originate in, and be set by, the professional academic communities of their particular subject areas.<\/li>\n
  8. The role of managers is to create an environment which helps professional standards to be maintained; however, managers should not interfere in setting the standards.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This Manifesto was published in a an old blog. I wish to transfer from there a comment from one of the leaders of the math circle movement. It describes a creative learning environment flourishing in math circles but absent in universities.<\/p>\n

    At some point, I have compiled a short list of reasons why I get a lot of satisfaction from teaching a math circle. I love:<\/p>\n

    -the equality and feeling of mutual respect and attention that develops between me and math circle participants
    \n-the democracy\/lack of authority that shows us the \u201cright answer\u201d
    \n-seeing the value alignment and deep intellectual friendship that develops among the participants
    \n-sharing children\u2019s excitement when they realize their own powers
    \n-the feeling of freedom they develop when they get rid of their own mental blocks
    \n-the intellectual stimulation of choosing the problems and personalizing and teaching them to a particular audience
    \n-when children realize that they feel happy from doing a challenging job
    \n-observing their self-discovery
    \n-observing as children come up with amazing solutions and counter-intuitive discoveries
    \n-getting a fresh view of the beauty and awesomeness of the world we observe and create \u2013 thus multiplying my own happiness<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u00a0 retired after 50 years of teaching in universities in 4 different countries with different education systems and pedagogical traditions. This experience shaped my views on our profession. I firmly believe that Teaching is not a science, it is an art, and should be treated as such. Students are not customers (\u201cpersons who buy\u201d) \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}