Teaching Philosophy

It should be the goal of every educational system to create responsive, empathetic human beings who possess well-rounded knowledge, critical thinking capacity, and more specialized skills and insights in a field of their choosing. A largely digital COVID-19 society necessitated changes in the ways we approach teaching. The increase in reliance on social media and other more secluded or detached forms of social interaction increasingly impacts the mental health of students and the ways they participate in community. As a clinical Social Worker, I have seen first-hand students battling issues of depression, anxiety, addiction, substance abuse, bullying, trauma, alienation, suicidality etc. It is imperative that we strive to create well-rounded, present, and compassionate students through the educational system we situate ourselves within. Mentoring, counseling, and teaching must be interconnected in our classrooms. There can be barriers to a student receiving new information that need to be addressed in order for a student to fully participate in the learning process. It is important for students to feel validated and listened to in a classroom; they must have agency over their own educational destiny. This is partially achieved by allowing as many opportunities for collaboration and student-led curriculum building as possible. This does not mean, however, that students shouldn’t be challenged and held to high standards as they learn to navigate managing competing needs and the demands of intellectual and professional life in school and beyond. These lessons can be imparted with attention to the before mentioned goals. 

I center student needs in my teaching practice by giving multi-faceted collaborative assignments that students select the components of, ask for consensus in planning, and create a social etiquette contract with guidelines for respectful and responsive discussion. I also work to establish strong mentor/mentee relationships between upper-level students/grads and beginning students when possible. In addition to giving students agency over their intellectual and creative experiences in the classroom, I am also fully committed to the diversification of all course material, visiting artists, and professional case studies to better engage with the identities of every student in order to engender a more inclusive classroom. These strategies not only ensure that students most accurately learn course material, but enable me to better advise students on future curricular and co-curricular endeavors. I have begun to explore centering “resistant knowledge projects” (coined by Black Feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins in her book, “Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory”). These practices legitimize less traditional ways of learning and seek to build community/outside-of-the-classroom partnerships that complicate what knowledge production and dissemination get to look like. Resistant knowledge projects also acknowledge inherent bias in canonized/institutionally valued and verified arbiters of knowledge and celebrated ways of knowing.

As an individual who holds intersecting marginalized identities, I posit that representation is crucial to a student’s ability to dream. We all need to see people who look like we do, talk the way we talk, and navigate identities that are similar to our own in order to feel a sense of belonging in places where we hold space and contribute our experience, knowledge, insights, energy, time, labor, compassion, understanding, discussion etc. Therefore, acknowledgment of, and intentional engagement with identity should not be optional in a classroom. When teaching ceramics studio or seminar classes, I actively excavate examples of artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, LGBTQIA+, and international artists, particular those who are members of cultures that are non-Western or part of the Global South. When teaching the seminar “Source Presentation: Intersectionality in Contemporary Ceramic Art” my lectures consisted exclusively of non-white artists, including Indigenous Native American and International artists. In whichever institution I find myself, I will continue to amplify the voices of people from marginalized communities. 

I acknowledge past oppression under various systems of power privilege and inequity that serve to disenfranchise and dehumanize certain groups of individuals. I believe in the healing power of empathy and connection, and in the strength of acknowledging when we make mistakes that serve to further entrench harmful ideals on which many American educational institutions were built. I am moving away from a safe space model or a brave space model of collective engagement as those models have been shown to either inadequately ensure necessary cultural humility, self-reflection, and advocacy or place the onus of education, harm management, and capacity overextension, respectively, on the most marginalized members of a community. I have instead moved towards preferring an accountable space model that acknowledges positionality, holds space for inevitable harm and strategies for reconciliation, as well as privileges self-reflexive proactive and retrospective compassion sharing around individual experiences over gaining definitive cultural “expertise”. Disagreements are allowed and encouraged as they often lead to fruitful conversations that push the boundaries of thought and belief in new and even healthy ways. Even though students need not agree with one another or myself all the time, or ever, students must maintain a respectful demeanor and ensure a “safe-enough” space for all other students present as set forth in our collective establishment of community standards for acceptable interactions, respect, inclusivity, and behavior.

The work of anti-oppressive practice happens on 3 levels--whose categories I will borrow from my clinical social work education: individual/communal (micro), programmatic (mezzo), and policy (macro). While these levels have nuanced social practice explanations, in a classroom setting specifically, they can also be understood as representation (micro), day to day interaction/class structures and dynamics (mezzo), and syllabus/agreed upon studio and course policies (macro). Through utilizing each of these opportunities for critical DEI engagement, a more equitable classroom, studio, and department becomes inevitable.