We are pleased to announce that three of our graduate students have recently won the Graduate Students’ Teaching Award (GSTA) for Semester 1 AY2019/2020!
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- Hou Minzheng
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- Lee Sze Chi
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- Lim Chun Hui
Congratulations to all three winners, who have done our department proud!
Since Chun Hui and Sze Chi are first-time winners, we also took the opportunity to find out what makes them such effective teachers.
Chun Hui
1. What inspires you to teach?
Probably the understanding that teaching is a position where you can have a tremendous impact on someone’s future.
During my undergraduate years and even now, there are professors and lecturers who have guided me closer to my goals because of their advice and teaching. From that perspective, teaching is a lot more than just a job or delivering some curriculum. They certainly don’t teach you that in workshops. I’m glad that I do get occasional emails from past students about how to best proceed towards their academic/career goals. And I’m always more than willing to help, because that’s what my NUS professors and lecturers have done for me.
2. What are some of the major challenges you face as a teacher?
One major challenge that I think all tutors face is in trying to get students to voice their opinions. I try relating concepts back to relevant real-world examples that students feel strongly about. These include social class and inequality, rights and empowerment, and miscellaneous things on reddit. Part of that helps students to expand their worldview and become better critical thinkers.
3. Why do you think you are an effective teacher?
I try my best to break down difficult concepts, especially when it comes to statistics (as a psychology student, you can’t hide from it for long, tee-hee). Or provide as many examples as I can for the more complicated theories. As a student before, I found it helpful for concepts to stick if I could relate them to real-world examples. While it takes some preparation on my part, it’s nice to hear your students go “Ohhhhhh”.
Sze Chi
1. What inspires you to teach?
Do you know that awestruck moment when things suddenly make sense, when a new perspective is revealed right before your eyes? Those were the moments that left the greatest impact on me by inspirational teachers whom I had the blessing to be taught by.
They inspire me and I aspire to be like them some day (in the distant future)…
2. What are some of the major challenges you face as a teacher?
It is not always easy to engage students to speak up in class. I am an introvert who relates to this very well, because I have problems with public speaking as well. I try to be encouraging, friendly, use humour to lighten tensions, use group discussions, etc. (Suggestions for improvements from readers who have read the above are most welcome.)
I do not believe that learning should just be for the sake of good performance in exams. Sometimes, it is challenging to escape the shadow of being merely “the person who prepares students for exams”. Hence, I always try (keyword: try) to value-add to their learning and challenge them (and myself) to become astute consumers of knowledge, applying a healthy amount of skepticism to scrutinize theories or integrating information for the bigger picture.
3. Why do you think you are an effective teacher?
I think I am a more effective student than an effective teacher. I always try to approach teaching from the perspective of a student. “What does this theory mean?” “What can help me understand this better?” “Why is this confusing?” By trying to understand students better, hopefully it can help my students understand better.
