I am very honored to be nominated for this award and would first
like to give credit to two persons at Penn who have helped me
become a better teacher. First, I have benefited from Professor
Larry Robbins (Wharton Teacher Development Program) for inculcating
the importance of managing the lesson down to every minute - this
has helped me shape my lessons so that students are engaged at
all times during class. Second, the faculty member in charge of
the course I am teaching, Professor Barbara Kahn, has been very
generous in sharing her teaching notes and experiences, which
have helped me improve the content of my lessons substantively.
She is also a great motivator and cheerleader.
I taught (and am still teaching) the recitation sections of
the introductory Marketing course at Wharton. These recitation
sessions involve leading and facilitating discussions of Marketing
case studies. Initially, I was a little apprehensive as I am an
international student and had never taught in an American classroom,
and so had very little idea about the “correct” protocol
in class. However, I decided to give my best shot by preparing
a thorough lesson plan (down to every 5 minutes) and simply “be
myself”. I would say that my teaching philosophy consists
of one main goal - in every lesson, I hope my students will learn
at least two marketing insights or strategies that they can apply
later in their careers. To achieve this, I needed to structure
the lesson in such a way so that every case discussion will generate
good insights, and in a way that students can remember them easily.
I try to accomplish this goal via a mix of strategies.
First, in preparing a lesson, I always put myself in the shoes
of my “customers” (my students), and ask myself for
the best way of illustrating a particular marketing concept so
that it can be easily grasped and encoded. I believe that the
concepts will be more salient and digestible if students have
practical experience in the classroom. In this respect, I find
the use of 5-minute classroom “experiments” particularly
expedient. I would like to share two quick examples here.
