Teaching

Teaching is one of the most rewarding and gratifying experiences in academia. As a former K-12 educator whose experiences in the classroom sparked an understanding of education's transformational capacity, I view education as the key to unlocking agency within individuals and groups so that they can become stewards of change within their communities. Approaching teaching from the perspective of critical pedagogy, my teaching philosophy is premised on the notion of education as an emancipatory force granting access to equity and a life of dignity. In a society permeated by structural injustice, education can provide the path toward liberation by addressing the inequities embedded within the social fabric of the nation and the world at large. 

My teaching philosophy is anchored in three core concepts: a) fostering an understanding of oneself as a social actor and one's positioning in the social world; b) teaching for social justice by incorporating asset based strategies such as culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 2014), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), and Youth Participatory Action or YPAR (Walsh, 2018). The third component of my teaching promotes a strong sense of community building and learning. I model learning as a collaborative practice where educators and students come together to construct knowledge which reflects and validates students' backgrounds, positionalities, and lived experiences. 

I also adopt a dialogic mode wherein reciprocal conversations with students are premised on understanding the nature of social reality as a constantly shifting and evolving terrain to which students can lend meaning. This understanding is key to unlocking student agency through an interrogation of the social conditions of their own lives and the realization that they can engage in transformative action contributing to a more just society. 

Below, you can find a list of courses for which I developed my own curricula and have served as an Instructor of Record: 

The Cultural Foundations of Education (ELC 381) at UNC Greensboro (since Fall 2019).

Educational Policy & Practice (EDU 201) at Wake Forest University (since Fall 2022).