Ramakant Vats

My aspirations, goals, and objectives as a teacher are to encourage mastery, competency, transformational and life-long learning, general skill transference of skills (application), and critical thinking. As a science teacher, I knew not every student would be a scientist; not every person NEEDS to be a scientist. But, every person, in my opinion, needs critical thinking skills.

My aspirations, goals, and objectives for you as my student is that you will gain that mastery, confidence, and competency to take what you've learned from me and continue to apply it in new and wonderful ways. Selfishly, I hope that in helping you to become a competent handler with excellent critical thinking skills, you can turn around and help me by questioning me and my methods, and by suggesting better ways of doing things in a collaborative way! I don't want you to just do things because I told you to â?? it's important to me that you ask why, and it should be important to you as well.

I prefer to assess understanding through a continuous feedback loop with you, the student. Of course, it's fun to give out grades and gold stars, but since we're not working for grades or degrees or certificates here, understanding itself is the primary objective. I'll ask you questions. I'll ask you to submit videos. I'll ask you to fill out forms. I'll ask you to clarify what you've submitted. I'll ask you to explain yourself.