Celine Zipfel
This year Celine was nominated by her department for the LSE Class Teacher Award and received nominations from students for the LSE Student Union Teaching Awards.
What do you enjoy most about working with students?
I like that the students I teach are young adults – they’re only about seven or eight years younger than me, which means I can relate to their experience as undergraduates.
They’ve also chosen to be here - so tend to be more motivated than say high school students - which is part of why they’re so enjoyable to teach. I get to share my passion for development economics with people who are eager to learn about it and understand the ins and outs of each topic. And that is simply wonderful…
Your colleagues say you create a friendly engaging classroom environment. Why do you think it’s important to build rapport with students and how do you do this?
I’m happy to hear that! I think rapport is very important – it helps me identify the areas students struggle with the most so I know which concepts to put more emphasis on in class.
I’m not sure how to describe how I “do this” – I guess I try to be as friendly and inviting as I can, but without blurring the lines. I try and use humour whenever possible - I’ve noticed that people like it when you make fun of yourself, which is never difficult for me!
Also, I think empathy is a big part of the job. I will often acknowledge that some of the concepts discussed in class are not easy, and try and let students know that no question is ever too trivial. Asking questions is how we learn!
In your nominations, your use of follow up emails and additional materials was appreciated by students. Why do you think it’s important to encourage students to explore beyond the realms of the course?
First, I think fifty minutes a week is never enough – there always seems be more material I’d like to discuss in class than we have time for.
In EC307, each class centres on a rather complex academic paper and students can sometimes struggle to draw key takeaways. Follow up emails and the like tend to be a good way of either emphasising concepts we’ve not spent enough time on in class or complementing the work we have done by taking a step back and thinking “what exactly have we learned here?”
I think this type of encouragement is worthwhile. Firstly, it hopefully incites students to spend more time reflecting on and digesting what they have learned.
Secondly, I think it sends a good message about how much you care about your students’ learning – maybe the fact their teacher is still thinking about the subtleties of a topic covered in class at 9pm on a Friday helps validate their efforts, and makes them feel a little bit more supported.
You ask students for feedback on your teaching. How has student feedback helped you develop as a teacher?
I asked a lot of students for feedback last year, mainly because I was a first-time GTA and really wanted to do a good job. I also asked for feedback as part of the PGCertHe training, which was great for self-evaluation and self-improvement as a teacher.
My students’ feedback was immensely helpful – it helped me identify the areas I needed to improve on whilst providing encouragement and reassurance.
Sending students a quick online survey to fill in by say week four or five shows you’re willing to work on anything they flag as a potential impediment to their learning as soon as possible.
Have you used any innovative/unusual teaching methods? If so, what methods have you used and why?
I’ve alternated between very ‘free’ class discussions where I try and write on the board as little as possible – typically just diagrams and equations to clarify econometric concepts - and using slides to guide and structure the class discussion.
I think slides may be the best way to make the structure and ‘thought process’ of academic papers clear, but at the same time I have to be careful not to spoon-feed answers to the students. EC307 is a third year course that aims to help students develop critical thinking and ask the right questions rather than memorise answers or concepts.
What would you say is the hardest part of being a teacher?
Teaching is hard! I tend to struggle finding the right depth to go into when dealing with a very heterogeneous group of students with varied knowledge backgrounds.
In EC307, I teach both people who have never really done economics before and students who have very maths focused backgrounds and like to reason only with equations and numbers.
I also find that explaining complex concepts in intuitive terms is challenging – but I imagine this applies to the entire teaching profession…