Sherry Renee Ward
Florida State University
Teaching Philosophy
To teach is to touch a life forever. Teaching is the profession that makes all others possible. If you can read this, thank a teacher. These are clichés have been used to describe teaching in popular culture and advertising Perhaps these are effective ways to convey a short message about teaching. However, one needs to fully articulate a philosophy of teaching in a more elaborate way than what will fit on a bumper sticker. The purpose of this philosophy is to illuminate my thoughts about the nature of higher education and my place within it as a future professor.
My basic teaching philosophy is to guide all students to success, whether measured as a grade or the intrinsic joy of the educational experience. In the future as a professor, I plan to facilitate learning in several ways. First I want to, as much as time permits, get to know the students. This may only mean learning to pronounce their names correctly. Learning names is important and can be done in all but a few class configurations. Obviously, I won't have very much luck learning the names of 300 lecture hall students, however, learning the names of smaller classes are certainly possible. This is a first step because I feel it shows respect for the individual. I want to know some basic biographical information so that I can tailor some of my lessons to peak their interest using their backgrounds, hobbies, national origin, etc. My next strategy for facilitating success will be knowledge about and respect of different learning styles. I will encourage my students to formally or informally assess their learning styles and use effective learning strategies. In addition, I plan to construct my syllabi in a way that provides a variety of readings, experiences and assignments. During class sessions, I plan to show multimedia presentations with color, sound, pictures, graphs and video when possible. These presentations will be archived for students to access later for learning reinforcement. Also, I plan to have a mixture of lectures, discussions, group activities and demonstrations. This is important because I want the information delivery to appeal to different learners.
My views on classroom management center on respect. Since I will be teaching adults, I will encourage them to behave in a way that respects me as a teacher, the educational environment and their fellow students. I will respect my students by clearly articulating my expectations and consistently applying all procedures for all students in a just and unbiased manner.
My position on respect for me as a teacher is based on attention. I do not believe that all eyes have to be on me in order to have the room's attention. As a professor I believe I can, at times, allow the students to multitask as long as they are paying attention and not disturbing others. In the event that the student can not pay attention, participate and refrain from disturbing others, then I will ask them to stop the offending actions. This is a good strategy because since I will be teaching adults, I want to respect them as adults. Respect for me as a teacher also focuses on attendance. I will create natural consequences to handle attendance such as pop quizzes. In short, I want the students to know that they are respected as unique, capable adults and are expected to behave as such.
As much as possible, I believe that the professor should do everything possible to facilitate the growth of successful students. Overall, my philosophy of teaching in college-level courses is in its nascent form. As a professor in the future, I plan to implement my ideas and modify them as university policy, student population and curriculum needs require.
Research Interests
My name is Sherry Ward-Shorter. I am interested in social aspects of computing. My master's and doctoral studies have been focused on subjects such as the Digital Divide, Diffusion of Innovations, Social Informatics, Sociology, and Information Policy. In addition to researching new technology inventions, I focus on the conceptualizations, metaphors and strategies for elimination related to the Digital Divide. Over the course of my career, I plan to create a multidimensional conceptual map of the various causes for the Digital Divide, identify and apply sociology theory to its appearance and trends for acknowledging its presence, create and/or modify instruments for measuring to what extent certain populations are affected by the Digital Divide, analyze the affect that Policy has on mass technology use, and create, implement and evaluate programs which address the Digital Divide and any other related social issues which the continual invention, convergence, divergence and diffusion of new technologies create.
As an adjunct faculty member here at GSLIS at the University of Illinois, I've had the pleasure of teaching Children's Literature and Young Adult Literature, and this semester I'm teaching Principles and Practices in Youth Services for Public and School Libraries. Incidentally, all of these teaching experiences have been in the online context of the LEEP environment. I have yet to teach a class in a face-to-face environment, but I feel certain that the philosophy of teaching I've developed through these experiences will readily translate to the traditional classroom.
In my teaching experiences, my emerging philosophy has been to act as a "trail guide" through varied scholarly terrain, mapping out the route and leading students through a basic understanding while encouraging them to explore their particular passions in more depth. Foremost in my mind is the fact that I am teaching library practitioners, who need as sense of how to cultivate their own professional judgment. I draw on Schon's book, The Reflective Practitioner, to inform my teaching practices.
There are many professional standards that are necessary for practitioners to understand, but every application of such standards requires thought and attention to a particular library and community context. My goal is not to teach my students what to do in terms of professional formulas, but instead to teach them how to assess contexts and situations so that they can generate informed, appropriate, and even creative decisions about how principles translate to practices in particular circumstances.
In pursuit of this goal, I use a number of techniques, such as teaching through demonstration, teaching through use of activities, and using particular cases to illuminate principles. I demonstrate the power of culturally relevant teaching by incorporating their bulletin board postings into my lectures, so that they can easily see how this content is relevant to their lives. I frequently use small group discussions to offer students both a chance to form professional networks and as an analogy to the real world experience of solving library problems in collaborative environments. I encourage my students to bring cases from their own professional experiences, from programs to policy documents, to help explore the ways professional principles inform and improve library services.
Finally, I bring a profound passion for the field of librarianship. I believe that instructor motivation and enthusiasm are key components in teaching success. I take pleasure in the unexpected subjects and issues that come up in discussion and enjoy the challenge of weaving these specific examples into larger pictures of library goals. As a "trail guide," I also bring a profound respect for and interest in the specific goals and accomplishments of my students. The more relevant my assignments are to their professional lives, the more seriously they take the work, which in turn generates an effective learning environment.