You can find my full teaching portfolio here. 

I have served as instructor of record for both introductory (100-level) and intermediate (200-level) philosophy courses, including Introduction to Philosophy, Logic, Chinese Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Ethical Theory. I have also taught a first-year writing course focused on Daoism. 

My goal as a philosophy teacher is to help students engage in philosophical conversations that direct critical attention inward rather than outward. Rather than training students to score points against opposing views—a habit increasingly normalized in contemporary discourse—I encourage them to question their own assumptions and conceptual frameworks. As one student observed, “Sally makes you think a lot about the material and challenge your own preconceptions.” 

I pursue this emphasis on self-critique through comparative course content. For example, in Introduction to Ethical Theory, I assign not only Western classics such as John Stuart Mill and Aristotle, but also selections from the Analects of Confucius. Because most students are unfamiliar with Chinese philosophy, I frame Confucian ideas as responses to ethical questions that cut across cultural and historical contexts, encouraging students to reassess assumptions they often take for granted. Similarly, in my Aesthetics course, I assign Yuriko Saito’s work on everyday aesthetics, which challenges dominant Western frameworks by introducing elements of Japanese aesthetics. This comparative approach helps students engage with unfamiliar traditions as philosophically serious alternatives rather than as distant or exotic views, while also prompting them to reflect critically on their own conceptual starting points. As one student noted, “this class called me to think beyond a euro-centric lens.” 

This emphasis on self-critique is built into the final project. Rather than asking students simply to defend a position, I require them to identify and respond to at least one serious objection to their own view. Because students often devote significant effort to defending their initial positions, this requirement shifts their attention toward carefully considering stronger objections and the limits of their own views. I make clear that the goal is not to arrive at a definitive conclusion—students may even conclude that they remain uncertain—but to demonstrate sustained self-critical reflection by engaging with the best possible objections, revising their views when necessary, or acknowledging unresolved uncertainty. For many non–philosophy majors, developing this habit of self-critique is more important than retaining the specific details of any single argument.

To support this emphasis on self-critique throughout the semester, I assess student learning using a combination of summative and formative methods. For most courses, a scaffolded final project serves as the primary assessment: students develop their work in stages, typically beginning with a project proposal and outline, followed by a one-on-one meeting with me, then a class presentation with a Q&A session, and finally a revised final paper. This structure provides multiple rounds of feedback, both from me and from peers, and encourages students to refine their views through sustained reflection and dialogue. 

Alongside the final project, I use a range of lower-stakes activities that vary by course. Depending on the course, these may include short Kahoot interactive quizzes at the beginning of class to check reading comprehension, weekly response assignments that encourage careful reading and serve as a springboard for discussion, and student presentations on required texts prepared through guided rehearsals with me. Together, these assessments make students’ learning visible at multiple stages, allow me to adjust instruction in response to their progress, and often serve as a source of inspiration for the final project, as many students develop their presentations or weekly responses into their final work. Over the course of the semester, I often see students move from strongly defending sweeping intuitions to articulating more tentative, hedged, and reflective positions that explicitly acknowledge their limits.

I treat teaching as an ongoing reflective practice. I have participated in the Certificate in College Teaching, the Philosophy Department’s teaching philosophy seminar, and the Writing Program’s teaching writing workshop, all of which have provided sustained opportunities for reflecting on my pedagogy. These reflections have shaped how I design assessments and respond to student learning. For example, as generative AI increasingly affects take-home writing, I have begun to rebalance assessment toward presentations, project meetings, in-class discussion, and in-class writing, which allow me to better observe and support students’ independent thinking. Student feedback—both informal midterm feedback that I administer in class to collect students’ perspectives and end-of-term course evaluations—also plays an important role in how I refine my teaching. When students in my Logic course reported difficulty keeping up with the pace midway through the semester, I slowed instruction, adjusted the course schedule, and added additional scaffolding for complex material.

Looking ahead, I aim to build on my experience in small and medium-sized courses by further developing strategies for teaching larger classes, particularly in scaling scaffolded assignments and discussion-based activities to maintain student engagement.