Teaching Philosophy

I became a teacher because I have always loved school. Growing up, school was a safe and happy place for me. Growing up, I turned to teachers and to school when I had questions big and small—about assignments, about subject matter, about life, and about how the world works the way that it does. For me, school was an endless well from which to draw. I never felt alienated in school, and I never distrusted my teachers. However, I realize this is not the case for many students, and so my teaching philosophy is one that strives to welcome and engage not only the students who remind me of myself, but also the students who are underprepared for college, who are underserved in society, or have feel like outsiders to formal education. I hope to reach a hand to them, to show them my authentic self, and to meet them where they are.

I believe that teaching is personal. I strive to create a sense of immediacy with my students. I encourage my students to call me by my first name, as I use and remember their first names. We learn each other’s names to create a sense of community. I remember being in college classrooms where it felt anonymous and I didn’t know anyone by the end of the semester. That is not the case in my classroom. My belief is that simple gestures like this can provide an anchor point for students who are feeling like outsiders or “just a number” inside the college campus. Additionally, I strive to bring my personal and authentic self to the classroom, hoping that my students will feel comfortable doing the same. Teaching public speaking is one of my primary job responsibilities. For my students, I frame public speaking is an art form that rejoins “personal” and “public” as seeming opposites. Public speaking is extremely personal: it requires speakers to voice their personal experiences, values, and beliefs in a public forum; it requires speakers to put their private bodies on public display. I believe the most compelling public speakers and the most compelling teachers are the ones who model for audience members how to stand in their own truth. I strive to communicate this belief to my students by modeling it in my own teaching practice.

I believe that what I teach is political. I don’t mean political in the sense that I use my classroom as my personal soapbox. More so, I mean that effective public speaking skills are part and parcel of the proper functioning of a liberal democracy. Citizens who can speak persuasively and ethically—through open advocacy of their values and beliefs, as well as civil criticism and debate—are absolutely critical to the proper functioning of a just and equitable society. For me, the classroom is where I cultivate those skills in my students so that they can contribute their own thoughts and opinions to our liberal democracy.

I believe that teaching is a balancing act. There are many tensions to balance in a classroom, but most important to me is balancing the hierarchical with the horizontal, and the structural with the creative. I don’t enter my classroom as an authoritarian leader. Doing so can shut down dialogue, creativity, and fresh ideas—all of which are especially important within the Liberal Arts. However, I believe it is crucial that creativity and egalitarian relations be balanced with a sense of structure and control. I create structure in the classroom by beginning class with an overview of the lesson, by ending class with a reminder of what is coming up, and by commanding undivided student attention during class time. I create structure in my assignments through clear assignment prompts and assignment rubrics that clarify relevant grading criteria. These constraints do not foreclose on creativity, as I believe that clear structure and frameworks for how class time and course assignments work are comforting to students. Moreover, I believe that inviting creativity within constraints is productive to critical thinking.

I believe the classroom is “the real world.” In this regard, I strive to make class examples, lessons, and assignments as applicable to my students lives as possible. I encourage students to understand communication concepts through the lens of their own lived experiences, and encourage empathy by asking them to actively consider how their experiences may differ from others, and how those discrepancies might contribute to communication differences and issues. I do not believe that making a class applicable to students’ lives means that theory should be ignored, nor do I believe that it means job training should be my sole focus as an instructor. Rather, I see my classroom as a microcosm of “the real world”—how we interact with each other in it and what we learn about communication functions to constitute our larger social worlds.

Our students can access information more quickly than any generation before them due to fast-paced advancements of digital technologies and unprecedented exposure to the World Wide Web. In my classroom, I aim to provide students tools for weighing that information, for critiquing it, and for communicating it to others in ways that benefit themselves and their audiences. In my classroom, I strive to cultivate communication skills that complement technology, while still valuing face-to-face dialogue and honing these skills to carry out such communication effectively. I believe education can change lives—by way of the knowledge we absorb and the relationships that we create. Every day I strive to forward those goals, and so many others, in my teaching practice.

My philosophy on teaching is a work in progress, as I will continue to change as a teacher throughout my life. This growth and expansion is a gift to me, and I am thankful each day for encountering students who change and teach me as I also change and teach them.