Akil Narayan

Online Teaching Portfolio

Welcome to my online teaching portfolio. I am a graduate student at Brown University in the Division of Applied Mathematics.

Teaching is an important aspect of an academic career and the goal of this portal is to familiarize the reader with my teaching experience, strategies, and outlooks.

To summarize my experience, I have tutored extensively in mathematics, sciences, and engineering; I have served as a teaching assistant for three academic semesters in a differential equations course and have co-taught a one-semester course in introductory scientific computing; and I have served as a teaching consultant for the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University.

I try to employ a reflective teaching practice in my classroom and in my interaction with students. I believe that instructors have a defined role to teach students some block of material, but are granted the liberty to employ a fluid teaching style. I choose to exercise this limited freedom by tailoring lectures, homeworks, handouts, and even sometimes smaller details of the curriculum to better serve the varied learning styles of students and to ameliorate the ubiquitous stigma of the dry and boring math class.

I am always looking for ways to improve my teaching style. Whether this involves constantly requesting feedback from students or reasonably experimenting with novel teaching practices, I try learn from my students as they learn from me.

The reader will find more detailed accounts and material evidence of the above summary inside this portfolio.