Teacher, Researcher, & Administrator
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
Providing Everything You Need
As a lifelong un/learner, my teaching honors Black queer feminists, who urge us to reimagine teaching toward justice-centered futures. Teacher-activists– like Audre Lorde and June Jordan– have unapologetically demonstrated how teaching, particularly the teaching of writing, always represents political commitments. To disrupt oppressive ideologies of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and classism, among others perpetuated in higher education, teachers must make space for students to develop critical habits of mind, interrogate the world, and expand their professional toolkits to disrupt inequity.
As a white queer man committed to equitable institutional transformation, I recognize that it is the shared responsibility of white people to labor toward justice in coalition with our multiply marginalized students and colleagues. To this end, my teaching is designed around un/learning and coalition for students to better understand and practice writing and rhetoric as meaningful tools for change. Across my teaching in first-year writing, writing pedagogies, professional writing, community literacy, writing centers, and faculty development,
A photo of a mindmap on a chalkboard , including the words literacy, cultural hegemony, social, and mythos.
I commit to the following:
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Language Justice and Accessibility: I engage language and disability justice in building curriculum and engaging pedagogy to center those most impacted by systems of power, particularly students of color and students with disabilities. In my first-year writing course, for example, we study the impacts of language ideology and discrimination in workplace contexts and practice accessible composing, such as designing screen-reader-friendly documents, to anticipate the varied needs of audiences. My assessments are trait-based, meaning students are evaluated on specifically defined rhetorical moves, emphasizing accessibility while deprivileging white-mainstream English. As a teacher of teachers, I mentor others toward asset-based teaching methodologies in staff and faculty professional development programs.
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Structural and Identity Interrogation: I deliberately invite students to dwell in paradox and multiplicity to unsettle singular, white-male-centered approaches to knowledge and writing. In a co-taught 400-level community literacies seminar, students interrogated, through Black feminist and queer perspectives, the intersections of interlocking ideologies (racism, capitalism, hetronormativity, etc.) with literacy learning in community-engaged contexts. Students turned to their own experiences to analyze how systems implicated their own literacy practice and developed takeaways for reciprocal, reflective community-engaged practice. In doing so, students engaged multiple ways of knowing through systems-level analysis and interrogate the historical impacts of structural legacies on their identities, worldviews, and practices.
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Writing and Skillset Development: In order for students to work toward success across their personal and professional lives, I build in moments of participating in multiple genres and technologies that respond to authentic audiences and contexts. My 100-level workplace writing course invites students to respond to a series of email communications that center readers’ needs, build goodwill, and manage ambiguity. They also develop a report of communication practices that employ primary data collection (e.g., interviews and activity system analysis) for a local workplace. Further, in my co-taught 400-level antiracist writing pedagogies course, students develop curriculum plans and teaching philosophies. As such, students learn transferable literacies and build a competitive portfolio to showcase their rhetorical flexibility to future employers.
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Un/learning and Reflective Action: I invite students to set and refine goals for un/learning and future action. Across my courses, they return to individually set goals to name and assess their learning. For many courses, including my 200-level women’s studies course, the final activity is to take stock of what they learned and what they have yet to learn and practice to be equitable in their future contexts. By doing so, students develop recursive habits of un/learning that transcend any one course, name continual plans for un/learning, and apply what they learned to their potential next steps.
My teaching ultimately seeks to engender equitable action and writing, by balancing systems-level critical analysis with reflection and skill development. Ultimately, I hope students and faculty develop deeper understandings of how writing and rhetoric can affect meaningful change in the world.