Teaching Philosophy

At the heart of my teaching philosophy is the sincere belief that every student can succeed in my class to improve their reading and writing skills and that all students can learn how to communicate effectively and ethically in public spaces. From the first day of class, I let students know that I am a resource on their path to success and that I’m available to meet with them during and outside of office hours. Students often met with me to work through their writing, an assigned reading, or discuss personal issues. Effective instruction begins with recognizing and teaching to the diverse and unique needs of students, who always deserve a professor who teaches with kindness, empathy, and a commitment to supporting diverse modes of learning. While maintaining high expectations for my students and rigorous academic standards, I understand that students have struggles outside of their academic lives, and I connect them with the appropriate resources on campus. I will work closely with those students to help them succeed, and I collaborate with faculty to ensure students use the resources available to them. I believe that reading and writing are intertwined, so my classes always incorporate critical reading—including verbal texts but also visual and cultural texts—with critical writing using modern and contemporary literature, art, film, and other media to engage students based on their interests. Every class, I begin with some kind of freewriting activity related to the day’s topics, and students share what they wrote to help ensure that each student speaks at least once during each class session. It’s important that students make connections between their personal experiences and course assignments, hence creating the opportunity for expressivist and contextualized learning. Additionally, I incorporate a social constructivist approach to learning by encouraging collaborative learning and using different technologies such as Zoom, Canvas, and Prezi alongside short lectures and class discussions to ensure that students can interact with one another in impactful ways. My teaching philosophy is also one of adaptability, in which I adapt to students’ diverse needs and learning styles, working to recognize the conditions of each class.

            Another important aspect of student learning occurs outside of the classroom. I regularly meet outside of class time and on weekends in whatever ways work best for students: Zoom, in-person, or via email. Since learning is for life (for a career, yes, but also for life), I make it a habit to connect them with college resources like counselling, service learning, the writing center, and student clubs and organizations so that students feel supported, get help when they need it, and feel a sense of belonging on campus. As the research shows, students who feel connected to their professor, their peers, and their college achieve success at higher rates and live healthier lives when often balancing school, work, and social commitments. I often incentivize writing center visits to help students understand writing as a process and to normalize multiple rounds of revision. Especially during a time of isolation (like the COVID-19 pandemic), I see the importance of connecting students to one another through extracurricular activities, lectures, art exhibits, and poetry readings on campus; I love attending and helping organize such events as well. Student success not only happens through their extracurricular activities but also through instructors’ willingness to stay up to date in their professional development. I constantly work on my own research and writing, attend and present at conferences, and seek out opportunities to expand my understanding of students’ needs on campus. The work done outside of the classroom, by instructors and students, directly impacts student success. I engage in such activity in a keenly and critically-reflective spirit, using professional development, student feedback, and feedback from my colleagues to continually improve my teaching methods and efficacy.

            During a time when misinformation and disinformation spreads rapidly, I find it crucial to teach students how to identify accurate content through academic and popular sources when conducting their own research. Furthermore, I encourage students to be accepting of and respectful of difference when engaging in discussion about controversial ideas, as I explicitly teach the etiquette of engaging in academic argumentation in ways that are important to our community and democracy. My own writing and research often deal with social justice issues that can bring out passionate debates. Reading content related to these social justice issues allows students to respect and empathize with those different from them. Some of the best learning happens when students confront new ideas, even if that confrontation with alterity produces a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. Effective instructors know how keep students in, as Vygotsky termed it, the Zone of Proximal Development when encountering new ideas, skills, and cultures. Collaborative learning activities, in-class reading and writing, peer review, larger class discussions, and the incorporation of videos, film, music, and art engage students and motivate them to think critically about the world around them, including the vast inequities in our society. On multiple occasions, students have shared their struggles surrounding their identity, and on those occasions, I was able to offer students validation and affirmation. My office is a safe space for LGBTQ+ students (and colleagues), as I support and accept them being who they are. Also, I suggested they consider joining the LGBTQ+ alliance group on campus to feel connected to a community and receive the support they deserved. I approach all diversity this way, whether related to gender and sexuality or religion, ethnicity, disability, race, age, or socio-economic status. Literature, writing, and art offer an abundance of lenses to see the world, and exploring those areas with students in research-based ways is important for a well-rounded humanities education.

            As a first-year writing instructor, I recognize the importance of connecting disciplinary lines whenever possible; the pursuit of knowledge, ethical relations to others, and social equity, in fact, require it. The ability to read and write critically are transferable skills that are relevant across disciplinary lines and career paths. I make it a part of my teaching practice to contextualize the importance of every lesson that students learn and how this will help students throughout their lives. To repeat an important point, learning is for life, and the best learning affirms life, including the lives of others, which I understand as also including nonhuman animals, our natural environment, and the figurative lives of ideas. My teaching, therefore, takes advantage of Cleveland’s outstanding cultural institutions to help teach them to communicate, write, and research effectively. By mentoring and supporting students’ individuality while also preparing students for working in diverse and inclusive career spaces, an efficacious education requires mastery of a rigorous curriculum but also the ability to reflect critically about one’s own habits of mind, action, and relations to others. Such is the task of those of us who have dedicated our lives to teaching and learning.