Teaching in a Community College

Teaching in a community college is one of the many rewarding services that we can offer to our community. You have to have a passion for people to be happy with your job as a community college teacher. The quality of teaching is not based on the degree that you have but it is based on the commitment for the quality of teaching. You have to have an open mind and an open heart  to help, which is the only way that you can decipher how you can offer the best learning experience for the “people” who are your students.

With the open door policy of community colleges we are inviting people to come to us to help them achieve their dreams. Our students are coming from diverse backgrounds, age, requirements, culture and learning ability. They have jobs, they have other commitments and they have taken the very important decision of educating themselves, to either change or advance in  their career or complete a degree and do something for themselves.

Comparing a “two year college” or more commonly called “community college” to a four year college, we have to determine our roles as instructors and what is required from us to do the best job? We cannot assume the role of “instructors as dictators”, we cannot assume that all students have the ability to take responsibility to excel and we cannot adhere to our traditional format of teaching or being teachers.

The mainstream student body is to attain a degree or skill to entitle them to get into the workforce. Teaching should be the emphasis of a college that claims itself to be a community college.

I would like to quote – “ Although instructors often view themselves as the ultimate authority on the subject matter, it is still up to the learners to determine whether the ideas presented in the session should be incorporated into their work or personal lives. Despite the primary role of the learner, instruction is not a passive, laid-back, go-with-the-flow process for the instructor. As the facilitator and catalyst for participants’ learning, the instructor makes it possible for learning to happen by designing and performing all the activities that the learning process requires. Sullivan, Wircenski, Arnold and Sarkees (1990) assert that the establishment of a positive learning climate hinges on understanding the characteristics of adult learners who will be participating in the instructional process.”

Students who come to our classes are adults. Adults have different attitude towards learning – they have experience; they have a mental model of the topic or the class that they are taking; they have expectations; they tend to decide what they need to learn and they have the need to validate the information and above all they have self respect.

Taking into account all of these premonitions, the teacher/instructor has to think differently.

I have prioritized the requirements as I think will help to be effective.

1. To create professional, caring, welcome atmosphere in the classroom.
2. The teacher has to place himself/herself to the students as a facilitator and guide.
3. As we, the instructors, value student’s knowledge and capacity to learn, the mode of instruction will not be the traditional way of dissemination and assimilation of information.
4. Emphasis has to be on active participation. Instructor has to set a dialogue that instruction will be through interaction.
5. Getting to know the students is essential. This allows to break the barrier between instructor and student, it is respectful and provides for self-esteem.
6. To know their expectations. Asking questions as “What is my (student’s) role in the class and what is the role of the instructor?”
7. To assess their knowledge at the beginning of each teaching unit. A common way of doing that is to have a pre-lecture quiz on the topic or raise a discussion topic.
8. Based on the input from the class, the instructor has to design the mode of delivery of information to make it most effective.
9. To provide students with supplemental material to keep them engaged and connected to the material, when not in class and to create their curiosity or desire to learn more on the topic from relevant research work and web links.
10. Assessing whether their learning has met our expectations. The instructor has to have a variety of assessment techniques to evaluate student learning.

---Samita

1. To create professional, caring, welcome atmosphere in the classroom.
2. The teacher has to place himself/herself to the students as a facilitator and guide.
3. As we, the instructors, value student’s knowledge and capacity to learn, the mode of instruction will not be the traditional way of dissemination and assimilation of information.
4. Emphasis has to be on active participation. Instructor has to set a dialogue that instruction will be through interaction.
5. Getting to know the students is essential. This allows to break the barrier between instructor and student, it is respectful and provides for self-esteem.
6. To know their expectations. Asking questions as “What is my (student’s) role in the class and what is the role of the instructor?”
7. To assess their knowledge at the beginning of each teaching unit. A common way of doing that is to have a pre-lecture quiz on the topic or raise a discussion topic.
8. Based on the input from the class, the instructor has to design the mode of delivery of information to make it most effective.
9. To provide students with supplemental material to keep them engaged and connected to the material, when not in class and to create their curiosity or desire to learn more on the topic from relevant research work and web links.
10. Assessing whether their learning has met our expectations. The instructor has to have a variety of assessment techniques to evaluate student learning.