2007/08/21 Emily's C5 speech

How to be a good teacher?
Two years ago, I became an assistant professor at Kaosuing Medical University. At that time, I was ready to be a researcher because I was trained a lot to do researches. However, I didn’t learn how to be a good teacher for university student. Since then, I kept asking myself: How to be a good teacher. By reading some books, discussing with other experienced teachers, observing from my own classes, and thinking all the time, I find out some ideas. Here, I would like to share with you to share some important ideas.
Firstly, I think the most important thing is to help students develop an interest in the field you teach. You have to love what you do. We all have that kind of experience. If you are interested in something, you can spend a lot of time searching the related information, reading it and learning it. Most important of all, you do it happily. So, I just try to give students the basic knowledge, and tell them how interest this subject is. That’s my first goal.
Secondly, make a free atmosphere for student to ask questions. Encourage them to ask questions, or even force them to ask questions, because every great discovery comes from a good question. For example, do you know who invent airplane? Most of us know Wright brothers did it. But how did they do it? At the very beginning, they just asked a very simple question: Can we human being fly like a bird? Yes, just a simple question. So, the second goal of my teaching is encouraging them to ask questions.
Thirdly, teach them both the ability and the knowledge. Most teachers teach the students “ knowledge”. However, things change very fast in this Age. I told my student all the time “You can’t learn everything from school.” But, you can not tell your boss I didn’t learn it from school, so don’t ask me to do it. So, you need to learn the ability to solve the problem when you face a new challenge. Therefore, I try to teach them how to find the related information, what’s the resources you can find, how to read it and understand it, and finally, how to digest all the information and find out a solution. Maybe I still can’t design the course perfectly. But I do want to teach students the ability. And that’s the third goal of my teaching that I want to share with you.I know I am not a very experienced teacher, but I do hope my student can learn something from me. Today, I am so glad to have this chance to share with you three important goals of my teaching: Help students develop an interest in the field I teach, Make a free atmosphere for them to ask questions, and teach them both the ability and knowledge. Hopefully, those are correct concepts. If you have any suggestions, I will be very happy to have them.