Teaching

The best teaching creates an atmosphere where students not only have the opportunity to become better writers and thinkers, but also become intellectually independent critics of culture. Good classroom practices ensure that students have the opportunity to articulate non-dogmatic interpretations of culture that account for ambivalence and ambiguity. In other words, the finest learning experience fosters an environment that encourages self-reflection and self-questioning. In this spirit, my students develop critical skills in refining and complicating the cultural knowledge they already possess. Students’ individual understandings of the role of technology, media, and information in society are at the center of my pedagogy, which actively resists the institutional imperatives that place instructors in a position of absolute authority in the classroom. 

In my experience, the voices of even the quietest students can take center stage when I stay in active dialogue with the class, make time for students to be heard, and allow students to work in small groups. When I was an undergraduate, I realized that I learned best from professors who created an environment that allowed me to discover knowledge for myself, where I felt compelled to work through intellectual issues of my own volition. Now, as a teacher, I realize just how much effort it takes to displace myself from the center of students’ academic experience. This effort is absolutely essential, however, to create the conditions that can enable students to transform themselves from passive receivers of knowledge into active and autonomous cultural critics.