My early teaching experience began in middle school when my teachers selected a few top scorers in each class to tutor the challenged students. At the same time, my parents expected me to tutor my little brothers and sister at home. Although I continued tutoring, especially during my undergraduate studies, I was never a successful teacher. Perhaps the main reason was that I used to consider teaching merely as a process of disseminating information and knowledge, not as a mutual collaboration between the teacher and the student. It was not until my last year in undergraduate that I realized that not only I need to adjust my teaching strategies to my students needs, but also I need to create an active learning environment in class. Then, I stopped merely pouring information into my students’ minds, and instead helped them think analytically by favoring more class discussions and case studies which demand student participation.

    In my second semester at the University of Georgia I was assigned as a teaching assistant for the “Introduction to Personal Computing” course. Having the experience of tutoring during my undergraduate, I spent the first two sessions assessing my students by paying close attention to the questions each individual asked. This helped me to adjust my answers to the level of each student.

    At the same time, I was the TA (grader) for another course called "Software Development" which was an intermediate programming course. Every two weeks the students had to hand in a programming assignment. I found it very beneficial to meet each student in person and grade the assignment in his presence. As a result, I was able to discuss different aspects of each assignment with the students, and possibly show them a better way to design and implement the programs. Again, since these meetings were on an individual basis, it was easier to communicate with each student and make sure he fully understood the concepts.

    To be successful in the field of computer science one needs to have strong problem solving skills and analytical thinking ability. I highly value and encourage independent thinking among my students. Independent thinking is the foundation of their problem solving skills. If they always ask "why?" and "how?" when learning about new concepts, they will not just memorize but will understand them. Students don’t always ask those questions when they should, so to stimulate their curious minds, I sometimes ask them why they think what I am saying is right, or whether they can think of any better solution or explanation. This makes them reason and infer based on their prior experience, or sometimes even speculate.

    In computer science, teamwork is a significant factor. Now-a-days, nearly every paper published in the field is the result of collaboration between a group of scientists. Thus, being able to work effectively in a group is of great importance to every student in computer science. For this purpose, I encourage my students to cooperate on class projects, divide the tasks in each project and have a plan to meet the deadlines.

    To me, a good teacher is one who not only has a sound knowledge of the course he is teaching and has up-to-date information about the subject, but also helps the students learn how to reason about concepts, be analytical thinkers, and be able to perform well while doing teamwork. I learned the above through experience. Although this is the hard way to learn how to be a better teacher, but the valuable lessons you learn stay with you throughout your career.