Teaching Philosophy

My emancipatory teaching philosophy has been heavily shaped by my own learning journey and is reflective of my overall commitment to challenging and deconstructing systems of power through humanization, community empowerment, and relationship building. As a fellow learning partner, I seek to collaborate with students in developing learning experiences that recognize their unique needs and interests, directly connect with their lives, and encourage growth through shared formative feedback. 

Students have recognized my efforts in developing an “engaging” and “judgment-free” learning experience in which “everyone was involved and had a say in the discussion”, and I have received multiple awards and recognitions for creating inclusive and welcoming learning environments.

As an educator who incorporates critical perspectives into my teaching approach, my primary objective is that the lectures, discussions, activities, and assignments I offer lead students to engage in the process of perspective-taking. I do so by encouraging them to reflect on how their social locations impact their meaning-making process as well as how their words and actions may be perceived by others. Through leveraging such an approach, I create content that facilitates students’ critical examination of their values and beliefs while helping them develop skills that will serve them in their academics and beyond. 

As a student affairs practitioner who has been teaching at the college level since 2018, I strive to cultivate a learning environment where students feel valued and supported holistically. However, as a critical qualitative scholar I am also aware of how higher education practice, structures, and policy have centered dominant narratives in a way that privileges certain ways of being and moving in the world while problematizing others. I recognize that, as someone who holds multiple privileged social positions as a white, cis-gender, straight-presenting man, I have directly participated in the perpetuation of these systems, even while seeking to deconstruct them. Each new teaching experience brings with it an opportunity to re-examine how my privileged roles, in concert with my multiple minoritized identities, continue to inform my teaching approach and relationship with students. Thus, I incorporate multiple forms of assessment and opportunities for student feedback throughout the semester in recognition that, while I may formally be the instructor of record, learning is a collaborative partnership. I base my teaching approach on three overarching tenants, which I outline below. 

Recognizing Students Holistically

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and Ungrading practices form the foundation upon which I develop my facilitation. Both approaches promote a flexible learning environment that is responsive to students’ needs and interests while accommodating multiple learning styles. Such a teaching style necessitates a familiarity with the students I seek to guide. One exercise that exemplifies this perspective is the incorporation of weekly reflection journals into students’ coursework. As part of the journaling process, I ask students to reflect upon questions such as “What wonderings do you have as a result of the weekly readings” and “Whose voices are centered in the weekly readings?”. Reading students’ responses gives me an opportunity to understand where students are in their meaning making process and allows me to adjust my teaching approach to meet students where they are at. 

Make Course Content Relevant

I believe students learn best when they participate in a collaborative learning experience, enjoy the critical thinking process, and are able to connect course content with their personal and professional lives. With this belief in mind, I integrate several activities that focus on group collaboration and encourage student agency in their learning journeys. As an example, when teaching student affairs at the graduate-level, I have asked students to take on the perspectives of various professional roles and respond to case studies based on real-world events. Through working together in small groups to develop their responses, students learn to work collaboratively to connect the theories and concepts we learn in our readings to their practice. Further, by sharing the approaches they developed to the larger group, students have the opportunity to learn from their peers who may have different perspectives. During these activities, I also encourage students to think about how their own positionality, held identities, and contextual influences - such as systems of power - may inform and even alter how they may approach different situations. 

Offer Formative Feedback

As someone who adheres to a constructivist approach, I recognize my role in being ‘good company’ in students’ learning journey. In addition to engaging collaboratively with my students in the learning process, I also incorporate multiple opportunities that allow for reciprocal feedback. I begin each course with an activity in which our learning community works together to develop a set of guidelines that structure our interactions together as well as set clear expectations for everyone, including myself. During the course half-way point, I ask students to reflect back on the guidelines we developed together and engage in a self-assessment activity in which they give themselves a grade based on how well they believe they have adhered to our community agreement. These reflections are collected through Qualtrics and give me the opportunity to offer additional feedback and opportunities for growth. Both the midpoint reflection and the final reflection at the end of the course will be incorporated into their final grade to reflect the reflexive and iterative processes of life-long learning. Moreover, I always share customized, thorough, and formative feedback on students’ work to encourage them to build upon their strengths, offer ways in which they can engage in perspective-taking, and nudge them along in their own professional and scholarly development.

Summary

While I continue to hone my approach through collaboration with other facilitators and engaging in professional development opportunities with the Center for Teaching, these three principles serve as the foundation for my teaching practice. Recognizing and supporting students’ agency in their learning journey while serving as a guide for developing leaders and scholars has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. I look forward to continuing to do so for years to come.