As a social psychologist, I'm in the luckiest position a teacher could be in. I say this for two reasons. First, the subject matter we teach is inherently interesting to students, and it's relatively easy to encourage them to apply what they learn to their own lives. (What other field comes with such an array of dating tips?) Second, because new answers are being found to psychological questions every day, it's an ideal way to get students excited about research methods and the process of empirical discovery.
In class and discussion sections I try to draw students out as much as possible, getting them to generate hypotheses from their own life experiences. Once students care about the questions it's easier to get them to care about the study design and data analysis techniques necessary to answer those questions.
Another benefit of social psychology is that the experiments are well-suited for this drawing-out process, because we can run many of them in class or discussion section so students can experience the processes we study first-hand. My goal as a teacher is to increase the interest of the students as well as their knowledge, so that they're motivated to continue this process after the class is over.
Teaching Experience
University of Chicago Student Teacher (fourth grade) and Inner-City Tutor, 1998-1999
Harvard University Teaching Fellowships:
Pragmatism (Profs. Cornel West and Hilary Putnam, spring 2000)
Thinking about Thinking (Profs. Alan Dershowitz and Stephen J. Gould, spring 2002)
Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program English Teacher, 2002-2003
University of Virginia Teaching Fellowships:
Introduction to Social Psychology (Prof. Robyn Mallett, fall 2004)
General Psychology (Prof. Chad Dodson, spring 2005)
Introduction to Social Psychology (Prof. Shige Oishi, spring 2006)
Introduction to Social Psychology (Prof. Tim Wilson, fall 2006, grader)
Research Methods (Prof. Nancy Weinfield, fall 2006, grader)
Psychology of Happiness (guest lecturer on humor, summer 2005)
Moral Politics and Terrorism (guest lecturer on moral extremes, fall 2007, spring 2008)
Implicit Social Cognition (guest lecturer on ideology, spring 2008)
Student Testimonials
"In four years at Harvard this is the best discussion section I've ever had."
" I liked Jesse's presentation of the information and the mini experiments (sometimes secret) that we all participated in to get the message across. It was hands on, and even though I had an early morning time, I was always looking forward to it."
" Jesse is a funny TA who explained theories of social psychology well. He is also very helpful when needed."
"His sections were fun and he really helped to further clarify the topics and studies from the discussion section and class readings."
" I liked the activities we did in discussion. They stimulated conversation, made class more enjoyable, and furthered my understanding of the material."
"It was an excellent class. Jesse was one of the best TA's I've had. His understanding of psych was almost inhuman. He was a lot like a sophisticated psych teaching robot, while the other TAs were limited by their feeble human minds."
"You did a great job as a discussion leader. Definitely made the discussion fun and worth attending (even though we were required). The other TA's seemed like robots, Jesse, you kick ass."
"More experiments with chocolate."
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