My Teaching Philosophy

I believe in student-centered learning that requires addressing students’ distinct strengths, needs, interests, and goals.  As a teacher, my goal is to facilitate opportunities for developing critical thinking skills so that students can make informed choices about their own learning experiences.  My experiences as a woman of color have demonstrated the importance of reflexive practices regarding our own and others’ positionalities so that we might challenge norms and engage with an increasingly diverse community in more caring and ethical ways.  Thus, my teaching philosophy is guided by a student-centered approach that emphasizes critical thinking, reflexivity, and an attention to cultural positionings.

When I teach, I am delivering content, but also providing tools students can use toward achieving their own goals in and out of the classroom.  I must be prepared to meet students where they are academically, professionally, and emotionally, which means providing ample opportunities for us to dialogue in class so that we can come to know each other and nurture respectful relationships.  I consider what students want to get out of the class, how their prior experiences shape their current understandings, and provide multiple ways for students to engage with the material and each other so that they can be successful in terms of class objectives as well as their own goals.

As part of student-centered learning, I believe students must take ownership of their education.  They cannot passively accept all information as equally valid.  Thus it is incumbent on me as their teacher to help them develop the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate arguments, consider the appropriateness of certain modes of inquiry to answer particular questions, and analyze theoretical approaches in different contexts.  In order to think critically, I encourage students to open themselves up to the possibility of thinking differently.

Thinking differently demands that we recognize and reflect on our own positionings in relation to others.  My training and background in socio-cultural anthropology, relational communication, and disability studies foregrounds our encounters with others.  These encounters are central to how I encourage students to reflect on their own practices and assumptions. I select readings that are authored by people of different genders, races, abilities, and sexual orientations and written in traditional academic genres as well as more experimental approaches so they can learn from different vantage points.  I invite students to practice the qualitative inquiry method of participant-observation where they attempt to describe cultural practices in which they are embedded.  The latter example is an especially significant, and sometimes difficult, exercise in which students must step outside themselves to recognize what we take for granted and challenge unspoken norms.  Reflecting on their struggles to describe and discuss such experiences, students come to value the importance of decentering their own worldview.

We all come to the classroom with different and valuable experiences from which we can all learn.  Just as I expect students to reflect on their experiences and positionings, I continuously reflect on our classroom exchanges and request students submit feedback on the course and their interests at various intervals so that I might consider possible course shifts and improve my teaching to better suit students’ goals along with my own goals for the class.  While my teaching philosophy emphasizes student-centered approaches, critical thinking, reflexivity, and attention to cultural positionings, my philosophy is always in process, shifting and developing with each new experience.

In this regard, I facilitate learning opportunities that put us in dialogue with others through small group discussions followed by class debriefings where students can practice sharing and fine tuning their ideas before addressing the entire class.