My teaching philosophy

My students are my priority and I am aware that each student is different from another. As an educator, I have the utmost confidence that a humanistic approach to education is a necessity if the aim of the teaching/learning process is durable acquisition and development. As a teacher, it is my duty to respect my students as human beings and help them to exploit their capacity for learning through meaningful experience. The most important aim of this humanistic approach is to engage the students affectively and cognitively, to help them become more responsible for their own learning and, above all, to provide them with the necessary knowledge and skills to achieve their academic and personal success.

As an educator, one of my priorities will be to encourage excellence in my students. I will strive to start and finish each lesson in their mind by constantly connecting the new learning experiences with their previous experiences. Course materials should be challenging, interactive and relevant to current issues and events; for this reason, I also believe that using multimedia materials like videos, slides and the internet is an effective way to complement traditional course lectures. 

With regard to the teaching/learning of Italian as a foreign language, since it is crucial to create an environment as similar to immersion as possible, I make every effort to use the target language and encourage my students to realize that communication is the key. The use of technology also helps me to achieve this goal, and to make the class enjoyable for the students as well as to get all of the students involved. This is important, because I believe that if a student is bored and disinterested in a class, he or she is more likely to daydream, not pay attention, and even not care – such a student is probably less likely to learn and acquire the foreign language. 

As a teacher, I always do my best to create a communicative environment in which all the students can participate and be involved in active communication. I am very committed to helping my students teaching themselves by dealing with differing opinions, by discovering things and striving to solve problems by themselves. To achieve this end, I use to propose many activities based on group discussions and presentations. As a teacher I myself am particularly open to new ideas and suggestions, this is why I like to be involved in educational activities, attend educational talks and participate in forums and conferences to further expand my knowledge.

Last but not least, I  am very committed to providing a learning environment that is both exciting and rigorous, one that empowers both student and teacher in pursuing learning. I devise various assessment strategies that allows me to fairly assess student learning regardless of the student's learning styles. Above all, I treat my students with the utmost respect, creating an environment where students feel safe to candidly discuss topics which they might otherwise be hesitant to address. For all my classes I pride myself on treating each student as an individual. Students reward my commitment to them by committing themselves to the class as a whole as well as to the furtherance of their own education.

G. Kuitche, Ph.D