After Teaching Statement

Compassion and human centeredness are central to my teaching philosophy. These values guide me to take a culturally responsive, humanistic approach with learners. By modeling this in my teaching and educational relationships, I am both explicitly and implicitly demonstrating the therapeutic alliance I want students in the DPT program to create with patients in their future clinical practice.

I consider students’ personal backgrounds, to the extent to which I know them, as well as the effects of the learning environment. That can include using aspects of Universal Design for Learning. I consider sources of information for course content, questioning if I have incorporated voices from non-dominant identities, cultures, and social characteristics and whether I reflect a variety of points of view. I include examples of how physical therapy, or the scientific underpinnings for physical therapy practice, may be affected by and interact with culture, power, and the social determinants of health. Those topics are important for students to understand relative to clinical practice since health is not just a biological phenomenon. Additionally, it may validate learners’ life experiences.

Universal Design for Learning includes Restorative Practices as a method for engagement, emphasizing relational skills and emotional intelligence. I was first exposed to restorative practices three years ago. It was an easy fit within my already humanistic approach to teaching and learning due to being grounded in relationship-centeredness, empathy, accountability, and collectivity. I now consider restorative principles and communication as essential to developing and maintaining relationships with students for community building and addressing conflict. It has transformed my view of behavior and complicated how I view the more traditional methods for managing learning relationships.

Overall, the approach I take with teaching and learning serves as a model for therapeutic relationships and creates an environment of vulnerability for deep learning. My expectation is that the students I work with are influenced by these approaches in clinical care as they address the myriad of factors, beyond just the biomedical, that affect their future patients’ health.