Teaching Philosophy:  

I believe that education is an evolving and never-ending process in which students and teachers work collaboratively to learn how to learn. Yes, of course, we as teachers should be dedicated to the scholarship of our field/s, knowledgeable about our subject/s, and kept abreast of current theories and pedagogical practices; but in my view, the ‘subject’ itself is as much an educational tool as a potential goal. 

Our students are coming of age in a world characterized by exponential proliferations of communication and media technologies, consistently challenged by a virtual flood of ‘information,’ and struggling to make sense of the ambiguities inherent within increasingly fluid and malleable boundaries between (previously disparate) and ever-expanding academic fields of study. Any two-dimensional approach to education in this, arguably, four-dimensional landscape, would provide little more than a flat, limited, confining, and ideological effect.  

Real learning is dynamic, complicated, messy, loud, personal, imperfect, often experimental, and potentially life-altering. I view my role in and outside of the classroom as that of student/facilitator, one who guides my students through a shared journey into the often chaotic process of discovery, inquiry, the construction of meaning, and the application of concepts. This duality underscores my belief that being an educator is to be, simultaneously, a life-long learner, a concept illuminated by Søren Kierkegaard when he wrote that “to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student.” Indeed, the more “experienced” I become, the more I realize just how little I know; and as contradictory as this admittance may seem in an environment that calls for me to teach, it is precisely this emphasis—on the life-long collaborative learning process—that becomes both the purpose and greatest instrument of education. 

I go into the classroom with the understanding and strong belief that each student can provide new insights, raise questions, present challenges, and have an equally profound educational impact on me and their student colleagues as any I might expect or hope to have on them. No matter what the topic or subject, I seek to highlight the contradictions, underline the dichotomies, and emphasize the paradoxes so that students leave my courses with more questions than answers. For I believe that it is only through this type of learning process that students really learn how to learn, and thus enter the next phase of their lives with the tools they will need to become effective life-long learners, pose significant inquiries, and become creative, thoughtful authors of their own life narratives. 

While numerous educational theories attempt to explain the "how" of teaching, I have found that no single strategy fits all situations or all learners. Learning is both academic and experiential; it takes place both within the classroom and outside of it, in the “real” world. And the best of learning, in my view, addresses both simultaneously and offers students opportunities to put theory to practice, as evidenced by this sample of student projects. I also believe that many students learn best when they are able to apply or overlay new concepts onto an already existing cognitive framework or set of experiences. Many students, for example, often inquire into the relevance of any particular concept to their daily lives, particularly when it comes to any given historical method, event, tradition, and/or text. I often try to make relevant the concepts, ideas, or issues being discussed and explored by drawing parallels to contemporary culture, finding interesting analogies, or inviting metaphors that resonate. While I often incorporate historical models, I resist a purely linear method of teaching historical concepts and events (whether literary, cultural, etc.). I will therefore often move back and forth within any given range of historical texts and contexts, in an effort to highlight connections, interventions, and disparate practices in such a way as to make them consistently relevant. 

As a facilitator of learning, I am also sensitive to the many possible ways in which one may learn, as well as the variety of approaches one may take to any particular topic or assignment and the cultural nuances that may inform any particular learner. And I’ve been teaching long enough to already know that what works beautifully in one class may totally bomb in another. For these reasons, I believe that flexibility and adaptability are two of the strongest and most necessary components of a successful learning environment.

Additionally, I promote an environment of mutual respect and collaboration. I also make myself highly accessible, both in and out of the classroom, for continued dialogue, questions, and concerns. And I incorporate a mix of teaching methods in an attempt to include everyone in the process and encourage a cooperative, at times even interdependent, learning environment. Students have found my teaching methods to be empowering, challenging, and engaging, as evidenced by numerous testimonies collected within student evaluations, via email, and on notes accompanying final papers. Though lectures are sometimes necessary, I attempt to make my classes as interactive and engaging as possible through class discussions, guest lecturers/speakers, media and visual aids, group activities, experiential or field-based learning opportunities, when appropriate and accessible, and the use of technology. 

I am a strong proponent of the use of technology in education, as I often find it to be an invaluable tool for not only addressing diverse learning styles, but also interactively engaging students in the learning process and opening up the world of the classroom beyond the four walls in which we sit. However, I also encourage students to challenge its perceived benefits and draw their own conclusions. For example, I have regularly used class blogs since 2005, in nearly all of my classes. I have become convinced that when students have access to this highly interactive, public, and less formal mode of writing and collaborative discourse, they are often better able to articulate the connections they make between class discussions, readings, and the ideas generated by others. Furthermore, class blogs also provide a conducive and relaxed atmosphere in which students get to know one another outside of the classroom, thus assisting in the formation of a more cohesive group of students within the classroom. Students are also encouraged to dialogue with one another and work out questions, issues, and concerns online, which then often fosters deeper conversations within the classroom.  

Though class blogs certainly invite informal methods of writing, including text-speak, which no doubt seems counterintuitive to the teaching of writing in the formal setting of a university or college, these online interactive spaces nevertheless allow for greater freedom of expression and promote more intuitive, contextual connections and dialogue. Students seem to deepen critical thinking and argumentative skills almost seamlessly when uninhibited by form; they then incorporate these skills more effectively and powerfully within their formal papers. It is also significant that these blogs are public; this public forum gives students a sense of writing to a much larger and potentially broader audience (map stats at the half-way point of a semester inevitably show the class that they have many outside readers from around the world). Additionally, I have often had authors (of a work they’ve read and discussed online) write into the class blog to add to the conversation, allowing for a richer engagement with the text. 

I also encourage my students to take risks; and I often model that “lesson” by taking a few risks myself, whether through introducing a new technology, an unusual or controversial text, or trying a new teaching technique. Most significantly, I make my process, of simultaneous learning and teaching, transparent. If I’m trying something new, I let them in on the experiment and then encourage their honest and thoughtful feedback. If I take a new approach and the results fall short, I admit its failure, but elicit possible alternatives. As a result, I believe that students feel empowered and recognize their significant role in the collaborative learning process, in part because they recognize that I, too, am within their learning community, not merely outside it or somehow above it. These moments, along with others, also provide significant opportunities for reflection, synthesis, and action, which I believe are all important components of life-long learning. 

Someone dear to me, having entered the formal educational process at a later stage in life, early on tapped into the metaphor of a tapestry to describe her educational journey. Symbolically, what she learned was consistently being weaved together. Previously independent strings of knowledge began crossing interdisciplinary boundaries to create colorful patterns of understanding, and various learning experiences offered a sort of tying together of the themes and threads of theory with practice. Whenever asked to talk or write about her educational experiences, this metaphor of a tapestry inevitably surfaced, so much so that it became an inside ‘yarn,’ something predictably imagined and repeatedly articulated. As cliché as the metaphor became, it was often profoundly apropos. I, too, can easily envision this constant weaving of a sort of tapestry within the learning process, one which creates identifiable knowledge landscapes, so to speak; and yet, I would add that one of our most crucial jobs, as student/facilitators, is to consistently unravel these tapestries, pick at the edges, and challenge its integrity.