Teaching Statements

A teaching statement is used in job applications for academic positions, teaching positions in K-12, charter schools, and private boarding schools, and sometimes for training positions in organizations. The Teaching Statement should be 1-2 pages and give a vivid snapshot of your teaching. Use the first person when you write this document to explain your central approach, articulate your impact, and outline specific examples of strategies, assessments and evidence of outcomes from your teaching experience. A teaching statement can also be part of a more robust teaching portfolio for some applications, so it is important to keep a record of all teaching experiences, including evaluations. The teaching statement introduces and contextualizes the materials in a portfolio when a portfolio is requested.

Developing a Teaching Philosophy:

Teaching statements are sometimes called teaching philosophies because ideally they present an integrated vision of your teaching values and methods, motivated by a well-developed understanding of how students learn best and how your teaching methods facilitate this learning effectively. Many pedagogical principles work across disciplines, and you should be proactive about learning pedagogical best practices as well as pedagogical techniques and debates that may be field specific. There are also growing opportunities for training at UCLA through the Office of Instructional Development (OID), the Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences (CEILS), and the Center for the Integration for Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL). We encourage you to take advantage of the TA conference that occurs right
before fall quarter every year, the TA training program, as well as other resources and programs available through OID. In addition, CEILS and CIRTLoffer workshops and teacher training.

Developing as a Teacher:

While training in pedagogy is very important, you can promote your own development as a teacher by regularly reflecting on your teaching. Like ethnographers, you can take notes regularly after teaching sessions as a way to process how well instructional practices are working. We encourage you to take notes when things go well, when things don’t go well, and when the unexpected or interesting happens. These notes are for your development and never need to be shared, but this reflective writing facilitates productive thinking about your teaching methods and provides a record of examples that can eventually be used when you need to develop a formal teaching statement or portfolio for the job application.

Getting Started: Questions to ask yourself before you begin:

  • What are your goals for yourself? Your students?
  • What was your best teaching experience? Your worst?
  • What is an example that demonstrates learning from a teaching mistake and implementing what you have learned?
  • What are your strengths as a teacher? Weaknesses? How can you improve your weaknesses?
  • What do you believe about how students learn best?
  • How do you implement your philosophies on teaching and learning in the classroom? What strategies do you use?
  • How do I know the strategies I have implemented work? How do you assess student learning?
  • How does this relate to your teaching philosophy?

Writing Tips:

Use vivid language but use words with emotional connotations sparingly. It is better to convey passion through evidence than through literally saying words like “passion.” While we recommend writing in the first person pronoun, try not to overuse “I”, and keep the focus of your description on what your students are doing and learning in the classroom.

Download a sample teaching statement below from Tasheen Shams, who received a PhD in 2018. Dr. Shams is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto.

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