Teaching Philosophy
My primary intent as a teacher is to create an open learning community where students are able to learn to be critical thinkers. I believe that engaged pedagogy highlights the importance of independent thinking and each student finding her or his unique voice. This recognition is usually empowering for students because engaged pedagogy assumes that every student has a valuable contribution to make to the learning process.
Learning how to critically read various sources of different cultures, be it of visual, aural, or textual nature, can teach students to reflect critically and to ask questions about their own cultural frame of reference. I help students identify their strengths, and I ask them to exchange this knowledge with their peers. Through the study of culture and media, I want my students to become capable of questioning aspects of identity formations, gender biases, the power of media representations and the construction of historical narratives.
By including new media and multimedia resources in my courses, I want to show my students that skills of critical inquiry have to be equally applied to the surrounding visual culture. I believe that in using current and popular media, students are better able to grasp difficult concepts, remember the examples, and subsequently think about and apply abstract concepts more concretely.
My own research draws heavily on pop culture texts, which keeps me immersed in current trends and relatable to many of my students’ media interests. I frequently use online collaborative learning sites (such as Moodle, WebCT, My Courses, Blackboard, or blogs) to facilitate classroom discussions and collaborative projects. I also create blogs or websites that are easily accessible to students.
Education, in my view, is a holistic practice; I recognize that the work of a teacher extends beyond the classroom to include other activities that enrich the students' experience. I believe in making each student’s learning experience as positive and enjoyable as possible. Laughter is an important tool for learning; “when we shift our minds into laughter we move from the left brain to the right brain creating a whole new place for thinking and dreaming, for creating great ideas” (bell hooks).
I believe that teachers have to inspire multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary learning, and to use their resources and skills to make the learning experience as pleasurable as possible because the path to knowledge is just as valuable as the destination. I see every day as an opportunity to make someone's day and learning experience better, fuller, richer. I believe that teaching and learning experiences are not about a hierarchical value system of exchange, but rather, they are about coming together to create (in the form of a conversation, ways of thinking and analyzing, ways of assessing values, or in the form of a project) new grounds of collaboration and mutual intellectual growth.
I like to encourage my students to think beyond the classroom and to extend their work to collaborative networks, presentations, exhibitions, conferences, and (online) publications. Allowing the students not only to grasp the course materials and themes, but to make their own research and creative contributions valuable and applicable in various ways equips them with practical, organizational, and digital skills that can be applied in various fields. Moreover, it fosters a stronger departmental community as well as larger community-building and sustainability skills. I encourage my students to be in touch with and develop their social and emotional intelligence skills, and to help in creating an engaged learning environment that is based on the values of respect, creativity, curiosity and personal growth.
Learning how to critically read various sources of different cultures, be it of visual, aural, or textual nature, can teach students to reflect critically and to ask questions about their own cultural frame of reference. I help students identify their strengths, and I ask them to exchange this knowledge with their peers. Through the study of culture and media, I want my students to become capable of questioning aspects of identity formations, gender biases, the power of media representations and the construction of historical narratives.
By including new media and multimedia resources in my courses, I want to show my students that skills of critical inquiry have to be equally applied to the surrounding visual culture. I believe that in using current and popular media, students are better able to grasp difficult concepts, remember the examples, and subsequently think about and apply abstract concepts more concretely.
My own research draws heavily on pop culture texts, which keeps me immersed in current trends and relatable to many of my students’ media interests. I frequently use online collaborative learning sites (such as Moodle, WebCT, My Courses, Blackboard, or blogs) to facilitate classroom discussions and collaborative projects. I also create blogs or websites that are easily accessible to students.
Education, in my view, is a holistic practice; I recognize that the work of a teacher extends beyond the classroom to include other activities that enrich the students' experience. I believe in making each student’s learning experience as positive and enjoyable as possible. Laughter is an important tool for learning; “when we shift our minds into laughter we move from the left brain to the right brain creating a whole new place for thinking and dreaming, for creating great ideas” (bell hooks).
I believe that teachers have to inspire multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary learning, and to use their resources and skills to make the learning experience as pleasurable as possible because the path to knowledge is just as valuable as the destination. I see every day as an opportunity to make someone's day and learning experience better, fuller, richer. I believe that teaching and learning experiences are not about a hierarchical value system of exchange, but rather, they are about coming together to create (in the form of a conversation, ways of thinking and analyzing, ways of assessing values, or in the form of a project) new grounds of collaboration and mutual intellectual growth.
I like to encourage my students to think beyond the classroom and to extend their work to collaborative networks, presentations, exhibitions, conferences, and (online) publications. Allowing the students not only to grasp the course materials and themes, but to make their own research and creative contributions valuable and applicable in various ways equips them with practical, organizational, and digital skills that can be applied in various fields. Moreover, it fosters a stronger departmental community as well as larger community-building and sustainability skills. I encourage my students to be in touch with and develop their social and emotional intelligence skills, and to help in creating an engaged learning environment that is based on the values of respect, creativity, curiosity and personal growth.
Inspiration:
CJ (to President Bartlet): "We have at our disposal a captive audience of school children. Some of them don’t go to the black board or raise their hand because they think they’re gonna be wrong. I think you should say to those kids, “You think you get it wrong sometimes, you should come down here and see how the big boys do it.” I think you should tell them that you haven’t given up hope and that it may turn up, and that in the meantime you want NASA to put its best people in a room and you want them to start building Galileo VI. Some of them will laugh and most of them won’t care, but for some, they might honestly see that it’s about going to the black board, and raising your hand." (The West Wing, Season 2, Episode 9, Galileo)
