Teaching and Pedagogy

My Teaching Philosophy

As a teacher, my philosophy is one of constant learning, adjustments, and evolutions. I realize that because every student is different – because all students bring unique experiences, perspectives, and skills to the classroom – I cannot be complacent in my teaching, regardless of how many years I have been doing it.

Of course, I did not have this outlook when I first began teaching. A planner by nature, I was very much under the belief that a well-planned class is a good class, and that by coordinating my courses to the inch, I would ensure that the class was engaging, informative, and even transformative for my students. Except, things do not always go as planned: certain students may be absent, throwing a wrench in planned group activities; a student may be grappling with some issues outside of class, and they therefore bring that energy into the classroom; or most likely, a classroom agenda that sounded perfect on paper is very different when let loose upon students, and what I spent so much time planning falls down like a ton of bricks.

And that is where my ethos of learning, adjustments, and evolutions becomes so important. Even if a lesson plan does not work perfectly the first time around, I can now recognize the adaptations I have to make in order for it to work better the second and third time I employ it – and even then, there will be further tweaks and accommodations with those unique collections of students. To teach, I believe wholeheartedly, is to be surprised by your students – to learn from them in ways you cannot anticipate. One’s deepest learning, I am reminded everyday, comes as a teacher, and that is why teaching excites me so thoroughly.

My Teaching Experiences

I worked as a graduate student instructor at Columbia College Chicago, where I taught three composition courses for college freshman. In that capacity, I crafted a dynamic curriculum that emphasized multi-modal communication and the themes/goals of the English department’s composition courses, which teach students about two central tenets of the humanities: classic rhetorical concepts; and how to contribute to an intellectual conversation.

In addition to creating a syllabus and Canvas course page, my responsibilities included assigning readings and designing agendas for each class around the concepts of sourcing, ethos, plagiarism, assemblage, and multi-modal composition, among others. Through my class facilitations – which featured the works of such writers as Isabel Wilkerson, James Baldwin, Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Kolbert, Kathryn Schulz, and Lorraine Hansberry – I worked very hard to show my students that rhetoric and composition were relevant foundations of their lives, regardless of their interests and academic majors.

For instance, we might discuss how the advent of social media has placed our communication tools in the hands of an increasingly small (and increasingly wealthy) cohort of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. We might engage on how limiting most writing pedagogy is at the high school level, and how liberating it can be to write without ceaseless rules and restrictions hovering over one’s head. We might discuss the way American journalists cover U.S. wars and invasions, and how they enable imperial conquests. And we might go through engaging group exercises about how to write compelling introductions and conclusions. Through it all, my teaching is involving, equitable, and deeply democratic, with a radical emphasis on expression and voice.