The document is a teaching statement from an applicant named Mengdi Zheng. It discusses their teaching philosophy and experience. Some key points made include: - College students are able to think independently but class time is not enough to fully cover material, so the goal is to inspire interest and emphasize key points. - Teaching and research are related activities that both involve collecting information, asking questions, and problem solving. Teaching enhances research skills. - It is important to engage all students, not just active ones, and ensure quieter students also understand before moving to new topics. Flexibility is needed to reach learning goals.

1. Teaching Statement !
Applicant: Mengdi Zheng!
Teaching Philosophy With experience of teaching and tutoring mathematics and physics to children to adults, I think
of teaching as an audience-oriented experience: teaching college students has a different focus
than elementary school students. College students are active adults that are able to ask
questions, collect information, and conduct group discussion on their own. At the same time,
the time they spend in classroom is no longer enough to cover the materials and exercises for
them to understand a mathematics or physics college course thoroughly. Therefore, as far as the
limitation of time in class and the learning ability of college students are concerned, my goal in
teaching is to deliver inspiring ideas, arouse their interest to the subject, and emphasize the key
points during a college level class.!
As a Ph.D. student, I think teaching and research highly related. When we speak on a
conference in research, we are teaching; when we conduct discussions with our students during
teaching, we are researching. Both teaching and research are comprised of collecting materials,
remembering facts, asking questions, discussion, and solving problems. Therefore, I think of
teaching as an enhancing experience and practice to research.! !
Teaching Experience I would like to mention a few things I realized through my teaching experience.!
⭐ Limit of compromising!
Although teaching is student-oriented, there is a limit that a teacher can compromise in order to
reach the goal of a course. The students often want to hear what they are interested in but the
teacher must deliver what is basic and useful. When I taught in astronomy labs, some student
came to the dome where the big telescope was and asked me, ‘Can we look at the Pleiades
tonight? That is my favorite constellation.’ We shall not kill their enthusiasm to what they love
but at the same time we shall make them understand that there will be some interesting parts
and some boring parts. I think it an important skill to stay on the track and help them to
postpone their tempting distractions.!
⭐ Engaging the whole classroom!
Often, there are active students in conversation with the teacher and quiet students in a class,
but we shall try to keep the quiet ones also active in thinking. We shall not force the quieter ones
to speak up but we can still keep them interested and thinking. When I taught in the basic
physics lab, there are students who came with prepared minds and developed forms only to
come to fill out the data, and there are also students with blank minds. Whenever I asked a
question, it was always those few active students answering. But when we started the
experiments, I found those quiet ones still having trouble to conduct their experiments.
Somehow the conversation between the teacher and the active ones has blocked the quieter
students’ chance to learn. Therefore, I think it is very important to move onto the next topic not
only after those happy and active students respond to me but also after I confirm that the quiet
ones also understand.! ! By my diverse teaching assistant experience in astronomy labs, basic physics labs and applied
mathematics courses, I try to reach the goal of each session with out loss of flexibility by
keeping the whole classroom interested and at the same pace.