Teaching Initiative Award
Abigail Chipps Stone, Ph.D.
- Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Illinois State University.
- Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2015.
Teaching Philosophy
I strive to engage students in anthropological thinking through discussion and reflections and by making academic questions relevant to my students' lives.
I want to continue to improve my teaching in the following ways …
Cutting down more on content and bringing in more discussion and reflection. I already do a lot of this, but it is a continuing process.
Regarding my teaching accomplishments, I am proudest about …
Designing assignments that students actually learn from. I poll my students about my classes at the end of every semester and am consistently surprised by the number of students who remark that various essay or reflection assignments actually got them to reconsider how they thought about certain topics.
Regarding my teaching accomplishments, I am proudest about …
Students say that my enthusiasm and warmth are what makes me a good teacher. I think when I started teaching, I wanted students to find my lectures interesting and entertaining. I wanted to be the kind of teacher who could keep a lecture hall rapt throughout a 75-minute lecture. I have come to realize that this isn't really my teaching style at all. I keep my students engaged in the material through my own interest and enthusiasm about the concepts at hand and by bringing in more opportunities for discussion and reflection during class time.
The best moment/event in my teaching career is … and from it I learned …
Spend more time in class letting students talk. In my experience, profound ideas can come out of small group and class discussions, even in a lecture hall with over 200 students.
“I keep my students engaged in the material through my own interest and enthusiasm about the concepts at hand and by bringing in more opportunities for discussion and reflection during class time. “