Teaching Philosophy

I believe in a classroom built upon collaborative learning and universal accessibility.

While I was an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, I received training and certification in Strategic Alternative Learning Techniques, a program that qualified me to tutor undergraduates with learning differences or obstacles to their college education. This program was originally intended to allow me, a peer tutor, to reach my fellow students in engaging and accessible ways. I gained the tools to coach dyslexic students in reading, use assistive software with visually impaired people, map ideas with students facing attention difficulties, and more.

As I began pursuing my graduate-level degree and career as an educator, I saw immediately that these collaborative and inclusive learning strategies are urgently needed in college and university classrooms. To me, working with students collaboratively means that I meet them where they are—for example, encouraging them to use technology to further their education rather than prohibiting laptops or eBooks, and asking them to work together with their classmates rather than cracking down on talking or texting during class. I encourage horizontal learning, where each student to brings their own fonts of knowledge to the classroom and shares that expertise (whether consciously or not) with their classmates by working and learning together. I choose to actively combat a top-down, outdated model of disseminating one “correct” way of thinking, which has historically privileged white, male, upper-class perspectives.

Similarly, universal accessibility is a term that comes from disability advocacy, and simply means that a system is built with accommodations already in place, so that it can be used by people both with and without disabilities. For example, a rounded curb is accessible to a person in a wheelchair, and just as easily used by a person walking on foot. In the classroom, implementing a wide variety of learning techniques and texts makes the material more accessible to as many students as possible. For example, instead of solely assigning a traditional book in an English class, I also include auditory materials like a podcast or audiobook, and creative projects when possible.

In my pedagogical philosophy, a universally accessible course pairs a low lecture ratio with a wide variety of interactive activities and low-stakes assignments that engage students with all levels of ability, experience, and learning and attention needs. For example, I have assigned students to create mock Social Media accounts for characters and authors of the books we are reading; to conduct research about key authors or texts during class time, and create a poster to teach their classmates what they found; to present their ideas or analyses in the form of an internet meme; and my favorite assignment, to re-write a section of a text through the perspective of a character who was marginalized or treated unfairly by the original author.

These strategies not only benefit learners who face certain obstacles to a “traditional” college education, but they also elevate the critical thinking skills of every other student in the class by challenging them to critically analyze images, sound cues, nonverbal language, and more.

Though these are only a few examples of activities I use in my classroom, I have implemented these strategies in classes that teach topics ranging from reading and writing, literary and cultural analysis, film/television, and Women’s & LGBT studies. In every case, I have seen firsthand that when I run a classroom in a collaborative and accessible way, my student attendance rate is high, my drop rate is low, and students feel comfortable approaching me when they are facing challenges, whether personal or academic.

All three of the schools where I have taught (the University of California, Riverside; California State University, Los Angeles; and Moreno Valley College) are Hispanic-serving institutions — schools that welcome a diverse and dynamic student population in every sense of these words. Developing my teaching philosophy side-by-side with my students at these schools has enabled me to empower a new generation of thinkers, scholars, and citizens, both in higher education and beyond.