TEACHING
It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. It is also venturesome to think that of all these illustrious coordinations, one of them -- at least in an infinitesimal way -- does not resemble the universe a bit more than the others.
"The avatars of the Tortoise", Jorge Luis Borges
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Hi, this is my secret identity. When I'm not fighting for justice, I teach college level math at UIUC. Here you can find a link to my current course and comments about other courses I have taught. My teaching philosophy is "I don't stick to teaching philosophies"... However, I must say that I like teaching courses where I can directly interact with my students creating a somewhat relaxed learning atmosphere. I think that it is very important to show the students that math is not as hard as their teachers tried to convince them back in high school. I also like to show them that math is not a memorizing game, actually I try to show in class that it is quite natural (or, as a dear friend uses to say: "it's been certified organic"). More than teaching math, I like to teach my students some discipline and love and interest for what they are doing. And well... having the chance of doing it is one of those things that makes me really happy.
Currently Teaching
Given that I'm living in Barcelona since December 2005, I had to stop teaching. I hope to go back to blackboards and classrooms soon. I miss the game.
Previous Teaching Assignments
- Math 242, (Unit One) Fall 2004: I wanted to try Allen Hall, an interesting educative experiment, and so I offered myself for teaching anything there. It was great, I really liked the students and the whole Allen Hall environment (sorta a small liberal arts college inside this huge university and exploiting the best of both). Students are open minded and they are really interested on learning and being challenged. There is a sense of community that I enjoyed very much. I recommend the experience to anybody who likes to teach and enjoys alternative methods.
- Math 124, Spring 2004: This is a strange course. Basic probability plus basic linear algebra for social sciences students. I tried to encourage the students to read in advance and do tons of exercises. I'm not sure if I was successful teaching the material. One of the biggest problems of this course is convincing the students that they really need the stuff we're trying to teach them. With engineers you have the same problem but the solution is simpler: you can always talk about physics. With social sciences students is not the same, they don't care at all about physics. I felt unconfortable teaching this course, I hope my students didn't hate me so much...
- Math 120 (Merit Workshop), Fall 2003: It requires a lot of work but is a lot of fun! The only thing I didn't like was the fact that the course was attached to a big lecture and so I didn't have total control over the way they were covering the syllabus. Besides that, I really liked it. I'd like to try 130 in this format.
- Math 242 (Calculus and Mathematica), Spring 2003: I didn't like this course. I think the format doesn't help much and students don't learn as much as they should. I would increase the number of lectures and turn the mathematica labs into weekly workshops. For Math 120 the C&M format is OK because it is an introductory course (and so, developing intuition is the issue) but for Math 242 (Vector Calculus) the C&M format avoids a lot of conceptually interesting topics putting instead nice plots to show off mathematica's graphical skills. I felt like teaching a cutting/pasting course. That pissed me off.
- Math 120 (Calculus and Mathematica), Fall 2002: Interesting... The system
still has some problems but it is in general fun and full of "new issues".
Amazingly, students managed to learn something in that disorder (Specially,
produced by my sometimes chaotic behavior...).
- Math 120 (Small Groups Techniques), Spring 2002: Great experience
if you're interested on interacting with your students really close. I strongly
recommend this kind of courses to people looking for better ways to teach
calculus. I had a great time that semester.
- Discussion Session Math 120 (Calculus and Analytic Geometry), Fall 2001. Lecturer: Prof. Paul
Schupp.
- Grading Math 315 (Linear Transformations and Matrices), Fall 2001.
Lecturer: Prof. Iwan Duursma.
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