My interest in teaching came from my mission in life. Because if I can give to my students enough tools and skills to think and choose the right decision, improving the situation, blending theory with practice, especially in benefit of the neediest, growing into the students more values and principles, using the science for a better world, then it will be worth having lived. How do I identify this as my mission? Well, I noticed the real situation in this world and past decades, especially with some people working in government positions. Their incompetence, corruption, wrong decisions, ambition for power and money brought a high division into the societies, growth the distance between rich and poor people, develop new wars and in some countries racial discrimination. Thus, I had a question rounding my mind, “How can I positively influence the society?” well, the answer became in 2010 when the University of Azuay based in my experience in agri-business market called me to teach as a professor.
My role is to be a facilitator, where the exposition of ideas from students is the base to select the way and strategy to share knowledge. It means recognize and identify that every classroom is a unique combination of students, with a variety of capacities, different goals, motivations, intelligence, behavior, and socio-economic level. This is what converts the classroom in a big motivation for me to step up to existing material with appropriate examples focused on the audience of that course. My strategy with the students is to keep them participating actively constructing their knowledge, asking me questions and encourage them to guess an answer. In the meantime, because most of my courses are related to business topics, I play different roles: neutral stance, as employee, as employer, as a government, as a company and finally the role of Devil’s advocate. So, the question could have many good answers, depending on the goals to pursue, points of view and status quo at the moment of the question. My role of facilitator, rather than an authority, lead me to find particularly enjoyable and compelling about teaching. Students can take their own position regardless of my own, hence, the discussion is developing through an exploration and learning new opportunities and innovative answers are more than welcome. We are not only looking for the unique and right answer, because it could not be good enough for every group involved in the field. I have only one condition for the class: the respect from students to each one of the classmates and their ideas, questions, positions, supports and conclusions.
Furthermore, the theory is important as a fundamental support. However, it is not always easy to apply in the practice. The reason is that the mix of variables participating could alter the results. Consequently, my aim is developing in the student enough tools and skills to assess the different options to solve the situation through a critical thinking, and using holistic analysis of the environment. Finally, my objective is former students not only envision getting a job as an employee, but developing their own company, their own business. I hope that they could be their own boss, hence, the students could become a job creator. All these realities are the basis of my philosophy: the students learning based on their own skills, using their own motivation, blending theory with practice and real cases, listening many different likely solutions from classmates and discussing my feedback and analysis from the science and reality.
To achieve these goals, I share with students the course material at the beginning of the semester via Canvas. I start the class from the question of what they understand of the topic through a brainstorming exercise. From there we go in-depth, evaluating the theory and giving practical examples. Usually, they have a weekly homework to present, group projects need to be exposed and evaluated, final group project where all the lessons of the course are collected, and finally two quizzes and one final exam are expected through the semester. Feedback and suggestions are shared in the classroom, because one additional objective, is to help the students develop and increase the ability to talk and expose in front of the audience reducing anxiety and gaining confidence. The groups are formed by them at the beginning of the semester. After some weeks, usually I change the members of groups bringing an equilibrium in the group skills. This could enrich and raise the level of the discourse among the groups, at the same time allowing them to develop empathy when working with different people, as it is in the reality of the environment.
Indeed, I believe this is my best opportunity to influence young minds, develop the student’s skills to see problems from multiple angles, generate critical thinking for decision-making assessing the cause-effect. This is how I contribute to change the world, making a person a better person, making a manager a better manager, committed to and responsible for their own decisions building a better world.
marcelocalle 