by Igor Fulman
October 1999
I have the total teaching experience of 6 years. I taught in three countries -- Israel, the United States and Canada. I used to teach in two languages, Hebrew and English, both are my foreign languages. (My mother tongue is Russian.) I taught Calculus, Vector Calculus, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis to engineering and math-major students.
I began teaching in 1992. By that time I was a doctorate student at the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology. I worked as a teaching assistant for 3.5 years.
After finishing studies toward my doctoral degree, I continued teaching as part of my academic job. I spent 2 years in Iowa City as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Iowa. By that time, I was quite independent as a teacher. The program was mostly fixed, but I could choose conditions of study, level of the problems solved etc. For example, I let my students use a special formula sheet on the exams. I prepared this sheet myself, so as to equate the chances of all students.
Then I did teaching as part of my job at the University of Calgary. I taught both lectures and tutorial classes. Here, I was not independent. In fact, I followed instructions of the course coordinator. Also, the classes were very large in size: my lecture class was about 160 students, while my tutorial class was about 80. Contrary to this, both in Israel and in Iowa the classes were about 30 students.
I have noticed a big difference between Israeli and American/Canadian students. Israelis never hesitate to ask; when they don't understand something, they ask at once. On the contrary, American and Canadian students do hesitate very much. I don't quite understand the reason. Maybe they are afraid of looking foolish. Or maybe they think that I would decrease their grade for a question showing lack of understanding. (Which is not the case, of course.) For me the most difficult thing in teaching American students is to understand whether or not they understand my explanations. Although I always try to keep in contact with the students and encourage asking questions, the students almost never ask questions in class. It's difficult to see: whether the material is very easy for the students (maybe they studied it at their high school courses) or, on the contrary, it's too hard for them.
Still, I think that my teaching is mostly successful. The average grade in my classes is about 70-75, most of my students pass the course and hopefully gain knowledge of the material.
