Statement of Teaching Philosophy

I love anatomy. I find the intricacies of the structures captivating, genuinely enjoy the sometimes-difficult terminology, and am interested in all aspects of medical and anatomical history. Although I feel this way about anatomy, I know most first-time anatomy and physiology students do not share my enthusiasm. They are often overwhelmed by the new and seemingly nonsensical words and struggle to cope with the vast amount of information while learning the structures and their functional relationships. To help cut down on the cognitive load of students, I like to prioritize sense-making over memorization. I often find myself agreeing with panicked students who feel it is all just “too much to memorize.” Instead of brute memorization via flashcards, I encourage them to spend their time understanding the naming conventions of structures and thinking through how the parts of the body move and work together. This requires guidance at first but gives students a more solid foundation to reach higher levels of understanding that I believe will benefit them in their future courses and careers.

Another aspect of my teaching philosophy is nurturing intrinsic motivation to learn more about the body by allowing them to explore their own related areas of interest. This past year, I created an online course that provides students with an introduction to each body system and has the students pick an independent research topic each week related to the body system. They then research and discuss their findings. The questions they developed ranged from highly specific questions about molecular signaling to debunking “old wives’ tales.” The explanation of their research findings repeatedly required them to expand on their base knowledge of anatomy and physiology and apply it at a higher level than would have otherwise been required for the course. Allowing the students to choose a research topic that interested them kept them engaged with the material, pushed them to understand the anatomy and physiology content more deeply, and piqued their interest to learn even more.

Going forward, I would like to combine these two aspects of my teaching philosophy by incorporating more student-guided topic exploration projects into a course that requires a higher-level of anatomy and physiology knowledge. I think this combination would help students to build a solid foundation of knowledge while keeping them motivated through the difficult material. Additionally, giving students practice with asking questions and finding their own answers is a skill they can carry forward to many other aspects of their schooling, careers, and life.