Teaching

The first teaching position I held after my undergraduate years was as a teaching assistant working with autistic students at Escalante Elementary School, a multiethnic public school in a low-income neighborhood on the west side of Salt Lake City, Utah. This experience had a foundational impact on my pedagogical philosophy. It helped me see the tacit forms of knowledge that students express about the realities of disability, race, immigration, and class, knowledge bases that can only be truly appreciated if one listens as much as one lectures.

During my graduate years, I served as a writing instructor at UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall Dimensions of Culture program. I joined the faculty at the Department of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island in 2013, where I have taught upper-division courses in political communication, journalism, advertising, and popular culture. I also teach graduate courses at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Film and Media Cultures program and have served on dissertation committees at Columbia University, Temple University, and UC Irvine.

Dialogue is the most important driver for intellectual growth at every level of academic study. But creating dialogue in a classroom is largely dependent on the rapport a teacher has with their students. I have found that when lines of mutual identification and respect are established, it is far easier to challenge students with new ideas and ask them to produce a higher level of work.