Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is influenced by my commitments to student-centered learning, philosophical praxis, and increasing diversity within the academy. As such, I strive to create curricula that promote active participation and investment in reaching course outcomes, application of theory to real world cases and cross-disciplinary practices, and accessibility and confidence in learning for students from a diversity of experiential and educational backgrounds.

Commitments to student-centered pedagogy
While my role as an educator is to provide a solid foundation in historical and contemporary philosophical training, I also view my role in the classroom setting as a facilitator. In my capacity as instructor, I provide the technical and methodological background necessary to work through difficult texts by offering lectures, guided readings, and exercises in practical skills, such as analytic reasoning and application of theory. In my capacity as facilitator, I encourage active listening, critical thinking and reading, and careful reflection through moderated discussions and activities that allow students to teach one another while discovering their own learning styles and processes. This might take the shape of a jigsaw activity where students work in groups to lead one another through a passage, an activity that asks students to set learning outcomes and for an upcoming paper or peer review session, a case study where students apply ethical theories to real-world cases, or discussion wherein question and response are used to generate a complex outline of the central argument of a text. When serving as an instructor and facilitator to undergraduates, I consider my job to include sharing knowledge of historical and contemporary philosophical movements, guiding students to develop and hone a skillset in critical thinking, reading, and writing, and helping students form a broad set of social literacies that prepare them for success within and beyond college.

One of my favorite parts of teaching is learning, and by blending firm guidance with flexibility of approach and application, I find that I continue to learn from each and every class I teach by inviting students to become co-educators. Because students bring a plurality of experiences and knowledges to the classroom, I work to dispel the myth of the “ideal” student and use learning reflections that help students discover their unique learning styles and assets as they grapple with difficult texts and questions. My teaching experience at DePaul University and University of New Mexico (UNM), both of which serve extremely diverse populations, have taught me that helping students feel comfortable when they encounter difficult ideas or gaps in knowledge that may initially cause them discomfort is a catalyst in boosting student involvement and learning at every level as well as fostering ethically responsible epistemic humility. That is, in philosophy we can learn, following Socrates, that knowing that you don’t know is an asset rather than a disadvantage. While many students come into the philosophy classroom with anxieties, my students tend to leave with competencies they carry into their daily lives, and often tell me that my courses reinspired a passion for education that propelled them toward career and life goals with newfound purpose.

Commitments to philosophical praxis
Because I believe that philosophy springs from and remains tethered to the world we share, my courses stress an understanding of philosophy as that which is essentially related to praxis and thoughtful action. By employing a combination of theoretical reasoning and examples, I encourage students to link all of our work to their own lives and to draw on their own lived experience where appropriate. When teaching ethics or multiculturalism, this might result in a case study project wherein students apply philosophical skills and theoretical knowledge to case studies through analysis of events or policy. By testing application of various theoretical approaches, students discover the value of philosophical methodology and the immediacy of impact thought can have on action. When teaching existentialism or affect theory, this approach might result in assignments that solicit reflections on connections between theory and art, or when teaching Descartes or Locke, this might result in running thought experiments. I use a three-step method in all of my courses that encourages students to develop a tripartite skillset in reading, questioning, and analysis. Students are encouraged to focus first on active and charitable reading, then on formulating questions to clarify and dissect the argument, and finally on assessing the argument through an analysis of its logical structure and worldly implications.

While philosophy can easily fall into esoteric rumination, I believe that philosophical methods are critical for students working toward many degrees and career paths. Rather than tell students that philosophy is relevant to their own lives, I show them that it is by prompting ethical and practical deliberation and encouraging the use of everyday examples. My assignments reinforce this by requiring students to define and provide illustrations of technical jargon and problems rather than rely on obscure generalities. I find that this not only reveals the indispensability of philosophical education but strengthens student investment and fosters a respect for diversity of perspectives as well. Moreover, this approach often calls attention to the ethical, social, and political implications of philosophical work, inviting students to carry thoughtful praxis into civic engagement.

Commitments to diversity in the academy
My commitment to diversity and inclusion as well as my own experiences as a first-generation, non-traditional, low-income student are reflected in my syllabus design and lesson planning. By encouraging students to draw on experiential knowledge, I work to make complex theoretical material accessible to and relevant for students with a variety of educational experiences. My approach to syllabi-building is historical insofar as I aim to demonstrate that philosophical work unfolds as a dialogue by highlighting direct lines of influence and critical development within a given problematic. I am, however, aware that the traditional canon often excluded important contributions to the history of ideas. To mitigate this and decenter emphases that result in further marginalization, I bring in thinkers that have historically been marginalized while calling attention to areas of scholarship and questioning that may have been left out of more traditional summaries of the topic. I also make a point of covering contemporary philosophers working on current issues to remind students that philosophy remains a vital and vibrant undertaking today.

Online teaching pedagogy
While online courses, especially those that are asynchronous, may not present as many options as face-to-face courses for community-building and discussion, I utilize a number of technological resources to build flourishing online learning communities for and with students. I completed DePaul’s Online Teaching Series (DOTS), a multi-week course on online pedagogy and professional development, in winter of 2020 to better build my toolkit for online teaching and continue to build my knowledge of innovative online teaching resources. I utilize a combination of Video lectures with slides to create tutorials that target both audio and visual learners and create exit activities for tutorials that use Google forms, interactive slides, voice threads, and/or discussion platforms to reach hands-on learners. During synchronous online sessions, I use collaborative Google slide decks to run group activities and allow students to contribute to the development of course materials.