Why am I taking...PHIL 102?

This is the first in a series of posts on, "Why am I taking...?"  written by your PALS.

Often times when you find yourself sitting in that 3-hour lecture once a week, you often wonder, “When am I EVER going to use this in my teaching?” In Philosophy 102 you will learn basic concepts of critical thinking and be able to identify and evaluate arguments. As a teacher the most important factor of teaching is assessment, this is where the students’ understanding will be reflected. During assessment it is important to ask for explanations and evidence.  If we are capable of evaluating a student’s argument, we can then distinguish whether or not the student understood the content that was taught.  In this class you will learn that there are various manners of creating a reasonable argument, and you will be presented with an abundance of these ways in this course.  Ultimately, you learn that there can be more than one direct answer.  This understanding is vital to future teachers because we will be teaching students who have very different thought processes and methods of explaining an idea.  I really enjoyed this class not only because I am more open to different types of responses, but also because my teacher (A. Mirvish) had a really awesome accent that I always looked forward to hearing!