TEACHING
My most vivid and fondest childhood memories as a student, were of those teachers who were truly riveting to watch teach.
Their enthusiasm was infectious, exciting and made me consider the deeper ramifications of the lessons. They left me wanting more.
Logic/Math is often described as ``The capacity for inductive and deductive
thinking and reasoning, and the
recognition of abstract patterns."
With this in mind and all teaching theories aside, the old adage that you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink is probably true with respect to the teacher/student relationship regarding mathematics.
That is, a student has to put all their potential into absorbing and appreciating the concepts and constructs of math, but an effective teacher makes this an intoxicating venture.
As a teacher, I have observed that students appreciate and are inspired by the motivations (or obsessions) that created a particular branch of math. Moreover, I think it's important for students to see that mathematics is not only sublime, but is derived and taught by people who have an emotional attachment to it.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
University of Western Ontario, Canada
- I was a full time Teaching Assistant for all first year courses covering Calculus, Linear Algebra, Geometry, Algebra and Finite Mathematics (Combinatorics and Probability theory) from Fall 2001 to Spring 2003
and for the two second year courses 222a and 223b covering Introductory logic, set theory, functions, group theory, coding theory, number theory, modular arithmetic and graph theory from Fall 2004 to Fall 2006.
- In the Winter term of 2007, I was the Instructor for the second year mathematics course 223b - Discrete Structures II .
- For the Winter term of 2009, I was an Instructor for the first year mathematics course 1228b, (Finite math) for 200 plus, first year social science students.