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Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is based on the belief that
the beauty and the most important contribution of economic analysis lays in
the combination of theory, quantitative testing and critical intuition
applied to real business and economic problems. My goal as a teacher is not
limited to providing students with the knowledge necessary for their future
studies and career. More importantly I try to stimulate their interest for
the approach of economic analysis. To do so I always strive in class to
show how complex economic problems can be effectively examined by breaking
them down into their basic components and studying their connections.
In the presentation of economic models I always
start with real world examples taken from newspaper headlines. This helps
to provide intuition and motivation for the model and serves as
encouragement to use the tools developed in class for the analysis of the
most current economic problems. I believe that an extensive use of graphs
helps students to visualize problems and their solutions, and drive their
interpretation of the basic equations of the models. I always make sure the
fundamental economic intuition is delivered by the model and not hidden in
its formal details. My students are constantly encouraged to detect
possible inadequacies of the theories in describing real world problems and
pin down what might be missing or the assumptions that make them
unsatisfactory. This helps them better understand the theories and develop
a critical approach to their study.
Experience
During my doctoral studies at New
York University, I was
teaching assistant for Intermediate Macroeconomics every semester, with the
exception of Fall 2003 when I was the instructor for the same class. As a
teaching assistant my responsibilities included holding two weekly
recitation sessions and grading exams and problem sets. As instructor I was
responsible for preparing and giving lectures as well as setting homework
assignments for a class of approximately one hundred students. Even though
it was my first experience as an instructor, I obtained remarkable results.
85 percent of the students said that they would recommend me as an
instructor to their friends, and many wrote enthusiastic comments about my
teaching style. As a teaching assistant I have consistently received
evaluations above the average of the school and in the last two semesters I
ranked among the top TAs in my department.
Above
all, I believe that enthusiasm for a subject is contagious, and I am especially
heartened when my own passes on in class or in one-on-one conversations.
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