Speaker 1: So to apply for a faculty position, there are three important things that you need to submit. There is a research statement, there's a teaching statement, and then there's also the cover letter. I've already talked to you about a research statement in a previous video, and today I'm going to talk to you about a teaching statement. So there are a lot of things that have changed for what you need to put into a teaching statement in say 2022, and so I want to talk to you about a general idea of what a teaching statement is, what needs to go in there, and what these new items are. So a teaching statement is a document that is about one to two pages in length. It is a terribly large document, but there seems to be very few constraints that go into it. When I first approached a teaching statement, I wondered what the heck I'm going to put on there other than say yeah I've taught a few classes. So the first two things is one, you're going to want to have a statement about your teaching philosophy and your objectives. And then you're also going to want to have a paragraph in there talking about how you're going to achieve these objectives. And then if you have examples in your own teaching, include those in there as well. So for example, as a math professor, I want my students to come out of the mathematics program with a good facility for proof and also working with equations and calculus and things like that. And I would also like them to have some facility with coding, either say Python or MATLAB. And so in my numerical analysis class, I actually go into the proofs for every single one of the theorems that we talk about. I also demonstrate how you can arrive at remainder formulas. But then I also want my students to go in and actually implement the tools from numerical analysis. So in that class, it's very clear on how I would get some of my ideas across. But then when it comes to a more standard class like differential equations, there's another place where I like to introduce students to a lot of these same concepts. While I don't expect my differential equation students to come out with a facility with coding, I like to show them how to actually use this stuff in a coding environment. And so I'll have extra lectures that they can watch where I give a demonstration on how to resolve some of their problems using MATLAB and other programming languages. Now, the next thing is a little bit trickier. So when a department is hiring you, they are wanting you to fit into the department and also serve some sort of critical role. In your interview, you will be asked about teaching very specific classes. And in my interview, I was actually asked if I could teach mathematical statistics, which is technically a statistics course. Now, it's actually a little bit outside of my own domain of expertise, but I mean, it's not too far out there. And so I said, yes, I could teach that. But in your teaching statement, you're not going to really know exactly what they're going to be looking for. So it's important to go through the department's catalog and see what classes that are on the books and are actually still taught that you would actually like to teach. So if you are an analysis faculty member in a mathematics department, then you'd say, I'd like to teach Intro to Analysis or Advanced Calculus. And make sure you include in your list courses that are both graduate courses and undergraduate courses that you feel that you can teach confidently. They aren't going to expect somebody who is coming in with, say, a PhD in one field, say analysis, to teach a course in a completely different field, such as combinatorics. I would definitely not feel comfortable teaching a combinatorics class, but I could manage if I was really pressed for it. So that basically gets the idea of what a teaching statement is. You basically need to cram all that stuff in there in about, say, one page to two pages. You can always pare things down a bit until it really fits in. But there's a couple items I want to talk about that are newer and maybe a little bit less typical or less typically prescribed, especially if you watch some of the older YouTube videos on teaching statements. And that's two things that really came up during this sort of pandemic and quarantine. One, you need to have a facility with technology. So you want to talk about how you can teach an online environment, at least to some extent, because it has become readily apparent that online courseware is a tool that you're going to have to be very familiar with. It used to be that a lot of professors could get away with not really knowing anything about, say, Canvas or anything else. Then during the pandemic, it blindsided a lot of professors where they even went to the point of not being able to do anything. Talking about technology and how you can use technology in classroom is something that would definitely help you stand out. And I imagine a lot of people are going to be putting that into their teaching statement as well. This next thing has actually always been important to include, but hasn't really been recommended as much. And that is a matter of inclusivity. There are going to be all sorts of people in your classes that have varying levels of preparedness. And it might come from them coming from an underfunded high school, or just maybe they came to mathematics later. And so it would be important to make a few statements about how you can include some people from a diverse classroom, or maybe include some examples where you have actually worked with a rather diverse classroom. So in my own teaching statement, I include my experiences there and how I had to adjust my teaching, my typical approach to teaching. And if you really want to hit the ball out of the park, I'm probably not the best person to ask about this. But if you reach out to your university diversity officer, they will probably have a good list of items that they think would be good to address in a teaching statement, and probably a lot more specific than what I really have in mind here. Now, of course, they aren't in your own field, so you need to make sure that it actually fits in the things that you're actually doing. But don't be too prideful. Some of the advice is actually good advice. I found that the things that they were saying were actually already things that you should be doing in your classroom, including adjusting your language so you don't feel like you exclude people too much. So for instance, I've been trying to get rid of the use of clearly or obviously from my language, which is something that mathematicians tend to say a lot. And things aren't always as obvious or clear to everybody else. That immediately excludes a whole group of people who feel like they don't really get it. So finding little things to do like that can actually help encourage interactions in the classroom and make people feel less alienated. So these latter two things, I feel, have become much more important. It was important before, but I don't think people really talked about it too much. So that's what should go into a teaching statement. And I would share you my example, but I think honestly, now that I've talked to you about this here, I would totally rewrite it from the ground up. And you really shouldn't look at an example before you try to write your own. So if you found this advice valuable, please like and comment down below and, well, subscribe. This is The Mathematics Channel. If you want something fun, I also have this one talking about squid game and mathematics.