My overarching goal is to teach with kindness for all students, with the understanding that not all students are going through the same life experiences, beginning with the same background, or approaching the material with the same perspective; each student is an individual, and all students should have the opportunity to learn and succeed. With this goal in mind, I have a strong focus on reducing student stress levels, since stress detracts from learning, can alienate students, and takes the joy out of learning. Furthermore, I promote a compassionate and empathetic learning environment by viewing learning as a collaborative shared goal rather than a competition, and I have a strong focus on helping students through their individual challenges so everyone can succeed.

I aim to focus my courses on learning rather than assessing. Past student evaluations have highlighted my patience in helping students work through difficult concepts, which illustrates one of my common teaching strategies—I make sure to reassure my students when they ask questions that struggling and working hard to get past sticking points is a part of the learning process. I also emphasize collaboration and peer support because many students feel, from their past experience, that homework assignments are a place to show your knowledge (like exams), not a place to practice that knowledge, and I want to change this mentality. While my students are all expected to write and turn in their own code, I make sure they know they can discuss, diagram, plan, and debug with their classmates during this process. I also use ungraded (by completion only) "check-your-knowledge" quizzes so that students can practice the concepts without pressure and find out what they need to focus on, and had a student comment that it helped them know I did not expect them to get the concepts right away. My goal with these steps is to show my students that I care about their learning process and help them rediscover the joy of learning.

Correlated with my focus on learning is my goal of reducing stress—stress in a learning environment has been shown to inhibit learning [1], and while I cannot eliminate all sources, I can take some actions to mitigate common sources of classroom stress. I aim to emphasize to my students that I understand they are human beings, and treat them as such.

One notable source of stress I have observed in students is the feeling that they cannot ask for what they need. For example, students often ask for extensions with apologies, as if these extensions are an inconvenience to me—early on in my courses and in my responses to these requests, I do my best to assure my students that asking for an extension is not a big request (so long as the work is done by the end of the term), nor is it a limited resource. With extensions in particular, I also work to find ways for students to get extra time without needing to explain why as I am an authority figure in the classroom and students may not wish to divulge exactly what is going on in their lives. For other accommodations beyond extensions, this approach of both pre-emptively and responsively assuring students that I am here for their learning and willing to support them in that process is essential to making sure my students know I care about them—about their success in the classroom, and also about their well-being in all areas of their lives.

Another source of student stress arises from feeling that they have to understand and succeed instantly. In my courses, I want to help students see that struggling, including failure, is a part of the learning process. Within the realm of computer science, it would be absurd to expect your code to always work correctly the first try, so I take time in lectures to go over error messages and debugging strategies (and make errors of my own in live demos) to make sure students know this is part of the learning process. I also provide detailed feedback on missed points on homework and lab assignments so students can learn from those mistakes rather than viewing losing points as a judgment. One student review from my Problem Solving in Computer Science I course states: "she gave fair feedback whenever I missed points on assignments or the midterm. . . I really appreciated it and it helped me learn and improve for my code in future assignments," which demonstrates student receptiveness to accepting mistakes as a necessary part of learning and engaging with feedback to actively gain from the experience.

As an educator, it is my job to teach to all of my students so that every student can learn the material. Therefore, I make sure to grade students without comparison to each other—this avoids the competitive atmosphere of grading on a curve, which also directly counteracts my encouragement of collaborative learning. Students should help each other to understand the material, not feel as if their help is harming their own success. By making this point within the first day of each course I teach, I emphasize to students that I want all of them to succeed, opening the door to greater resilience when encountering tough concepts, and letting the students know that I am there for all of them, not just the ones graded at the "top" of the class. I believe that all students can succeed, and my goal is to facilitate everyone's success.

I continue to evolve my curriculum, explanations, and activities for students to allow them to learn and practice course material with the goal that every student leaves the class with a deep understanding of the topics we have covered. I elicit feedback through anonymous midway surveys and end of course evaluations and have made concrete changes to my courses due to this feedback. For example, I now post my slides before lecture so students can follow along, and I made major additions such as adding detailed diagrams to my teaching of C++ pointers between my first and second offering of the course to clarify how pointers to arrays work. I will always continue to evolve my teaching as I learn more about what helps students learn, and enjoy learning, in my courses.

I have employed this teaching philosophy in two courses as instructor of record—Problem Solving in Computer Science I, taught in Summer of 2022 and Summer of 2024—receiving excellent student evaluations in both offerings.

[1] M. C. Pascoe, S. E. Hetrick, and A. G. Parker, “The impact of stress on students in secondary school and higher education,” International journal of adolescence and youth, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 104–112, 2020.