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Teaching

My pedagogy is deeply energized by metacognitive learning and teaching, reflexivity, SOTL, the scholarship of educational development, higher ed history in the US, hybrid pedagogy (critical and digital paired pedagogies), the pedagogies of compassion/care and hope, trauma-informed pedagogy, alternative assessments (such as ungrading and contract-based grading) and the ever-evolving research on teaching and learning (especially metacognition, bandwidth, and recursive praxis). My classes focus on adaptability and community (specifically, engagement, process, and action within and between communities), and they foster an inclusive environment of active learning, collegiality, and intellectual vigor to prepare students for lifelong learning and participation in future academic or professional communities. The "themes" of my composition classes often have something to do with college: its hidden curriculum, surviving it, making sense of it, and writing in it.

In my composition classes, we focus on developing 

  • Adaptability: How can we learn to adapt to any writing situation? What are the expectations of academic writing situations?

  • Adaptability, part 2: How can we adapt to the "hidden curriculum" of college?

  • Community: How can we see specific communities as audiences for our composing ? How can we create a generative writing community? How do we build inclusive writing & learning communities?

  • Engagement: How can we engage what we're reading with what we're writing? How does that engage the larger world beyond the classroom?

  • Process: How can we understand writing as a recursive process that we improve through practice and sharing?

  • Practice: How many different composition and revision strategies can we “audition” as we build for ourselves a responsive and working writing practice?

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In my literature classes, we focus on these questions:

  • How can we see writing, reading, and textual analysis as living practices that make sense of the world?

  • How do pluralism, hybridity, and adaptation shape art and shape our reception and analysis of art?

  • What are the major discourses at play in our study of literary texts?

 

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All my classes use a mix of pedagogical praxis to:

  • Build mutual respect, collegiality, and intellectual vigor 

  • Build healthy & sustainable writing practices

  • Embrace different student backgrounds, experiences, and expertise

  • Become active agents in our own learning (rather than passive consumers of educational “products”)

Special Project SY 23-24

This year, I'm facilitating the "Lunchroom Initiative," a collaborative effort to develop a faculty commons focused on fostering conversations about teaching.

 Credit: Bill Roa, Perimeter College, 2022.

*For sample assignment sheets and syllabi, see my resources page

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