Teaching Philosophy

In my years of teaching, I have come to believe that true learning engages the heart as well as the mind, and accordingly the two most important qualities for a historian are empathy and curiosity.

I seek to nurture those qualities in my students who face vital responsibilities as citizens in a democratic society. If history is a collection of people’s stories, we must question those stories even as we seek to understand them. In this way, I hope to guide students away from the notion that history is a list of facts and dates, and to lead them instead towards seeing history as open to interpretation. This approach has been integral to my own academic and intellectual development. By guiding students to the realization that disciplines evolve and change over time, we embolden them to reassess the silos that often exist within the ivory tower as constructions. As schools incorporate multidisciplinary approaches, continuing to emphasize empathy and curiosity will allow us to cultivate the best parts of discipline-specific teaching while also fostering young minds that seek to break through new boundaries while engaging thoughtfully with the world around them.

To promote students’ active engagement with their learning, I seek to provide them with both “windows and mirrors” since I believe student-centered learning hinges on an inclusive approach that recognizes diverse identities and experiences.

Primary sources engage students by casting them into the role of the historian as they learn to interrogate sources’ various perspectives and form interpretations themselves. I am particularly passionate about developing students’ abilities in analytical thinking and writing, and I stress the importance of argument and interpretation to developing more sophisticated understandings of how knowledge is constructed. Engaging students in this process puts them in the driver’s seat and builds on the legacy of progressive educators who have come before us. Class discussion not only allows students to build their communication skills but also to benefit from hearing other perspectives and questioning each other. Being aware that students have different ways in which they learn best, I occasionally challenge them to convey their ideas through visual representations, such as infographics and cartoons, or make connections between texts with idea maps. In addition to emphasizing writing as a process and developing handouts to guide students through the stages of writing a research paper, I also try to create assignments that illuminate the historian’s method, such as a “Footnote Scavenger Hunt” in which students connected citations in an academic text to the primary sources on display. Incorporating experiential, multimodal instruction – beyond the familiar structures of writing and revision – leads to students’ best chances to develop their own ideas and effectively communicate them. I am continually looking at ways to advance and diversify my pedagogical approaches and remain interested in how my colleagues and I can support each other in honing our craft, whether that be through trying new techniques or refining well-rehearsed methods.

My educational philosophy also reflects my beliefs about the importance of critically examining and asserting our own agency as learners.

I believe that students should see themselves as historical actors and interpreters – that they too can be changemakers. My approach encourages students to visualize and empathize with the experiences of people in the past, but also to consider issues of equity and agency in how those people’s stories are told and understood. For example, in teaching about the Civil Rights Movement in my US history course, I found an online worksheet that creates a simplistic one-sided comparison between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. As students read, they are asked to compare and contrast the two men’s views on the use of violence and are guided to quickly conclude that King supported nonviolence and Malcolm X endorsed violence. I then ask them to reexamine Malcolm X’s words on their own and reevaluate whether he truly advocates for violence or calls for self-defense. We take time to discuss why they came to their first conclusion despite using the same evidence to possibly reach a second conclusion, and we unpack why someone might have constructed the worksheet to elicit that first conclusion. We then address the sanitization of King's legacy and brainstorm how the worksheet could have been formed differently to elicit other interpretations or greater nuance. In this conversation, I emphasize that they need to think critically about the ways history is told to them, even when they are hearing it from me. Through such exercises and discussions, I aim to have students connect with the experiences of the past and think carefully about how the way experiences are represented to us can affect our responses and decisions to act.

Just as I believe the field of history must evolve, so must we as educators and the field of education itself.

As I look to the future, I am excited about the potentials for my own growth as a historian and teacher. Furthermore, if “leadership is taking responsibility for what matters to you,” I am thrilled about the opportunity to lead in reimagining education for the twenty-first century. This definition of leadership really resonated with me when I heard it in the CATDC Department Chairs Program led by Tom Malarkey, as did the program’s emphasis on how much change is actually possible when one has built strong relationships and trust, but how difficult change often is when those facets are neglected. I believe that if we want to change education, we need to start by grounding ourselves in our values as we also open ourselves to possibilities. The Department Chairs program, as well as David Barkan’s Mastering Group Facilitation, really pushed me to think beyond my core strengths, which involve planning and being detail-oriented, and to focus on developing my listening skills, patience, and empathy. I still believe in having a vision, but I now recognize that less direct paths with greater time for transparent communication and collaboration often create the strongest results, which might also be quite different than what I initially had imagined on my own. To reimagine education, we will need to grow together in an environment that holds respect for what works and encourages risk-taking and vulnerability as we explore the edges of progressive practice.