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 recognize the tacit forms of knowledge that students express about the realities of disability, race, immigration, and poverty, knowledge bases that can only be truly appreciated if one listens as much as one lectures.

Dialogue is the most important driver for intellectual growth. But creating dialogue in a classroom is largely dependent on the rapport a teacher has with their students. I believe relationship-building and mentorship are some of my greatest strengths as an educator. In the classroom, I lean heavily on humor and storytelling as tools for fleshing out theories and concepts. This teaching method encourages students to lower their guard, open up and begin to see how their own life experiences connect with the course material. 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.