Teaching Philosophy & Approach
My mission as an educator is to move the world towards equity and justice by empowering myself and others to develop and use the skills, understanding, and drive they need to continue this work. I firmly believe that there are several essential skills and understandings people, including myself, must develop and continue to hone over a lifetime of learning:
Approaches to Teaching
With all of these ideas and core values in mind, I also work diligently to infuse the following in my school-based teaching practices:
- Critical Thinking - We must learn to question everything and critique ideas genuinely. I think this skill set of evaluating and synthesizing information is absolutely essential, particularly in a world of increasing technology and new modes of communication. We need to be able to evaluate information and sources to help us understand the world and our roles in it.
- Inquiring - Connected to critical thinking, an honest investment in inquiring and questioning is crucial for our world. I value asking questions, considering creative solutions to complex problems, and consistently wondering why and how we can make life better.
- Growing - With all of the learning that stems from critical thinking and inquiring, we must also be committed to constant growth. Whether a concrete set of skills, a new set of knowledge, or increased access to diverse perspectives, we are all responsible for continuing to learn and grow throughout life.
- Listening to Learn - Because I recognize how much we all have to learn in life and the important role of different perspectives, I also believe that the concept of listening to learn is essential. Too often people "listen" to only figure out how to next respond with their idea or opinion. Instead, I strive to practice and teach the idea of listening to learn as a way to be fully present and honestly considerate of new information and perspectives.
- Loving Deeply - Perhaps most importantly, I firmly believe in loving deeply: loving those around you, loving yourself, loving the world in which live. These acts of true love will enable us all to work diligently towards a better, more equitable, more just, and more inclusive world that embraces and celebrates our rich diversity.
Approaches to Teaching
With all of these ideas and core values in mind, I also work diligently to infuse the following in my school-based teaching practices:
- Amplifying Student Voice & Choice - Although I still occasionally use the word "empower" when talking about my students, I much prefer the term "amplify" to highlight the fact that my students already have voices, ideas, and significant power when I meet them; my role as a teacher with some level of institutional/societal power is to support and amplify their voices and choices. This looks different at each grade level and with each individual student, but it means that I work diligently to scaffold learning spaces and activities so that students are making their own decisions. For some students who are used to having a teacher tell them exactly what to do and how to do it, this can be a shock, but I think this approach greatly benefits students in the long run as they practice and improve in their own critical decision making, effective communication, and self management.
- Fostering Critical Inquiry - As I have grown as an educator, I believe it is important for students to clearly recognize and question the structures and powers around them, recognizing that everything will have some kind of bias so that they can better understand what works and what needs to be changed. In line with this, I work to design units and lessons that challenge students to recognize the biases I bring into their education as their teacher as well as the biases of our school, our district, and our entire school system . From there, we then strive to consider and evaluate these different levels of biases and ask questions about our own understandings of the world.
- Prioritizing Relationships - Many teachers, especially secondary social studies teachers, get into this line of work because they are so passionate about some particular part of their content. This, however, was not the case for me; I am all about the relationships. While I do love social studies content now, I am a teacher because of the relationships that build within my classroom. As such, I dedicate significant time to the work of establishing and maintaining those connections, which may including dropping "required" content for a day of class in order to better support the social-emotional needs of the relationships in the room.
- Standards Based Learning/Grading - There are significant limitations to and inequities embedded into traditional grading systems where students receive a certain percentage of their course grade for homework, classwork, tests, etc. When my school shifted to standards based learning (SBL), I encountered challenges, but I firmly believe this is a better way of evaluating students for their skills and abilities that are developed and demonstrated throughout the course. My existing experience with SBL comes while at an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, so the IB program provides the following categories of skills/standards for social studies, which would likely align closely to my own vision of SBL in a different setting:
- Knowledge & Understanding - effectively using relevant evidence and vocabulary
- Investigating - developing research questions and following through on a full research investigation, including reflecting
- Communicating - clearly and effectively communicating information in a variety of forms for a specific purpose/audience
- Thinking Critically - evaluating a variety of types of information, sources, & perspectives to develop a clear conclusion