3. Teaching

Teaching Philosophy

A website with information that reflects my beliefs about teaching and learning

I believe in equity of education. My teaching strategy is centered on connecting the classroom to the world, which includes the reality of the past and the present, connecting the student and the content to the community, local to global.

The roots of abstract ideas are experientially-based concepts. A teacher's role is to bridge fundamental experiences with language that expresses the essential concepts needed to understand those experiences. Sometimes learning feels like fun, sometimes a struggle. Sometimes you recognize your limits, sometimes you push yourself beyond them. That's learning, that's life. I believe that as much as possible a teacher should help prepare students for learning in the real world they go into when they graduate.

Sometimes I have had to do research to inform my teaching and that research cast my primary research in a new light. Sometimes, in teaching, I need to reformulate fundamental questions that I can use as building blocks for research questions. There could be fruitful connections, depending on what an individual does to "balance" teaching and research.

Teaching Competencies and Interests

Geomorphology, Sedimentology/Stratigraphy, Intro/Physical Geology, Global Environmental Change, Global Warming, Quaternary Geology