Teaching & Socratic Circles

Teaching Philosophy

My interdisciplinary training has prepared me to teach anything from first-year composition to special topics courses. Over the past twenty years of teaching, my pedagogy has become primarily student-centered, and I design my courses to encourage student participation, intellectual growth, and self-reflection. I do this by creating opportunities for students to share responsibility for course content.

My favorite method of building a culture of thoughtful engagement is through student-led, text-based discussions that emphasize the collaborative exploration of ideas. Debriefing the activity helps students improve their participation, while short reflection papers ask students to connect the ideas in the text and the discussion to their own lives and the broader world. By inviting collaboration in the classroom and in the learning process, I help students to see their education as an intellectual journey, not as a series of boxes to check.

My teaching in the classroom is informed by (and informs) my research, which focuses on forms of social protest in education. My research shapes how I design some of my courses, such as the argumentative writing course I designed around current debates in higher education (e.g. free college tuition, sanctuary campuses, and campus gun policies) and an interdisciplinary course titled Higher Ed, Pop Culture, and You.