As a learning guide, I help students design educational pathways that account for their unique needs, provide relevance to their lives, and allow them to learn from and share formative feedback. My students have noted that I work to foster “safe,” “stimulating,” and “open” learning environments through developing a community of acceptance and mutual understanding.
My main objective as an educator is that the course lectures, discussions, activities, and assignments I offer lead students to critically examine their values, actions, pursuits, and societal contributions while concurrently developing actionable skills that will serve them in their academics and careers.
As a journalist-turned-higher education scholar and educator who has been engaging in student leadership roles for more than a decade, I have long aimed to accurately and thoughtfully disseminate knowledge. However, I realize that my educational background, institutions I attended, and privileged identities (white, middle-class male with a doctoral-level education) have shaped distinct, and not always equity-minded, ways of receiving and generating information. Accordingly, my perspectives, which derive from systems that have long oppressed minoritized perspectives, may differ from students’ frameworks and priorities. With each new teaching experience I re-examine how my privileged roles, in concert with my more subtly expressed minoritized identities (regarding disabilities and sexual orientation), inform my pedagogy and rapport with students. I discuss my iterative roles, complemented by salient and subtle identities, with great transparency to share how that while I may be the formal educator in the space, ultimately we are all learning from and alongside each other. I cultivate inclusive, meaningful, and intellectually invigorating classroom environments through following three objectives.
Meeting Each Student’s Needs
I draw on the tenets of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which promote providing students with various tools and means for expressing, engaging with, and representing their knowledge. One exercise that exemplifies this practice is by understanding each student at the start of each course I teach. I distribute blank notecards and ask each student to write down – anonymously, if they choose – how I can best support their learning experiences. This practice prompts students to reflect on and share their objectives, challenges, and identities. Upon gathering input, I work to ensure each student’s needs and goals are met by providing a variety of activities and forms of assessment. Hence, students possess agency in demonstrating their unique capabilities that reflect how they process and communicate information (e.g., of individual written reflections, small group discussions, large group dialogues, videos, guest speakers, and kinesthetic activities).
In online contexts, I implement these same principles. For instance, recognizing that students can further benefit from videos that possess closed captioning, I make sure that all visual media features this tool. For example, in the synchronous “Inclusive Teaching” course I taught, I developed a video-based PowerPoint presentation with the captions for students to follow (and read separately, if they preferred). I also design breakout rooms that enable students to learn with and from one another as they would in person, and provide opportunities for them to channel their knowledge in a multitude of ways. Case in point, students in the aforementioned course shared presentations, brainstormed ideas, exchanged feedback, and debriefed materials in these smaller virtual spaces, as well as could use our discussion board, email groups, and other platforms for engaging in such dialogue.
Make Course Content Relevant
My philosophy is that students grasp information best when they can create collaborative learning experiences, enjoy the process, and find meaning in the content. To facilitate this, I integrate three activities that build new connections across course material and empower students to be in charge of their learning. For example, using jigsaw activities enables agency and analysis by having each student read a journal article, communicate with peers who were assigned the same article, and finally serve as an article representative in a group consisting of students who read distinct articles. Ultimately students gain new insight on a specific content area, disentangle how articles are constructed and argued, interrogate the material, learn from peers, and explain to their classmate about the article’s takeaways. Through this collaborative learning experience, students develop their teaching and research skills simultaneously. I assess the learning outcomes through listening to the group reports issued by “article representatives” and deconstructing how students individually interpret articles in their subsequent course projects.
I facilitate student contemplation through activities such as individual reflections. These activities work in-person and online courses. Reflections lead students to take time to make meaning of how particular concepts may have implications in their personal and professional experiences. While students are not mandated to turn these in, they provide a space for contemplation before leaving the classroom and guide further dialogue during subsequent classes. Later in the semester, whether through conversations with students or in the course evaluations, I seek their feedback on how the reflections encouraged metacognition and make modifications to prompts if warranted.
Offer Formative Feedback
I develop collaborative approaches with my students to ensure that we create a fruitful course climate and engage in mutual growth as learners, building spaces that allow for reciprocal feedback. Through developing “class guidelines,” for instance, we ensure that each person shares and recognizes their expectations of one another, and of me as their instructor. Later in the semester we reassess these policies in an effort to hold everyone accountable. I also welcome input from my students, providing channels for them to safely and anonymously communicate their feelings about the course.
Moreover, I always share customized, thorough, and formative feedback on students’ work that pushes them to capitalize on their strengths while likewise offering recommendations on how to enhance areas where they lack comfort or confidence. Such constructive comments reinforce to students that I see the best in what they can contribute to their own development, classroom experience, and even society more broadly. For instance, in the first-year seminar I taught, students completed scaffolded assignments that culminated in their end-of-semester presentations and papers. With each assignment I offered specific feedback on how they could leverage ideas and concepts into their final projects. Clear rubrics illustrated how students were being assessed.
Summary
These three principles guide my teaching. Through motivating students to take ownership of, and hold one another responsible for, their shared learning experiences, we build a cooperative learning community. Witnessing that unfold is most rewarding for me as an educator.