Mehar M.

With my experience of teaching and being a student myself, I have observed that a significant problem in understanding subjects like biology is being able to retain/learn the information taught. As a teacher my philosophy is to fix the problem right at its roots i.e., I do not ever encourage my students to learn information because forgetfulness is inevitable. I begin with building a solid foundation of knowledge as a strategy that initially provides students with all the necessary elements to be able to imagine and acquire the tricky processes and cycles. After I fix the foundation, I help them develop a map from the foundation to the complete process with an extremely detailed and interesting explanation. This process in the subconscious mind aids them to imagine and picturizing the process. Bead by bead, when they are able to draw a coherence of their imagination, I introduce the scientific terminologies and keywords that IB looks for. This way, there is next to no chance for them to forget the highlights of a process, and they only have to brush up on the scientific terminologies once in a while. Conclusively, this kills the fear that biology is subject to humongous memorization.

I always like to know the expectations of the student. It is essential to know what they need help with. Once I know the improvement points, I introduce the student to an enchilada of methodologies, examples, and explanations to help them. After the explanation, I follow a small exercise, i.e., I ask them to summarize the learning of the day's concept in their language. This helps me to identify their strong and weak points. I correct them and work more on the points where I identify the concept's ambiguity. This exercise ensures that the student has had a take-away from the lesson and gives me the benefit of molding my future teaching sessions according to the student's needs. So, a typical first session is always about understanding what works for the student.