Teaching Philosophy

As a teacher, I believe in my role as a facilitator in the student’s learning. My job is to support learning through providing the tools and resources the student needs to access, process and absorb knowledge. This is largely dependent on how one is able to connect with students to determine challenges and obstacles a student may face both in and out of the classroom. I believe in being a “guide on the side”, rather than a “sage on the stage”. I think the best teaching occurs when students are able to make real world connections to the material. I feel that the most lasting learning takes place through active engagement rather than rote memorization. 

My teaching approach is largely informed by cultural standards of teaching. My first experiences with learning were rooted in Indigenous pedagogical approaches to acquiring traditional knowledge and practices. These approaches center the acquisition in the learner through carefully guided practice and consistent assessment and feedback. It is commonly believed that the learner is best able to acquire the material when the learner is allowed to explore and experiment and learn from their mistakes. I view the learning space as a place where such exploration and experimentation can take place without fear of negative repercussion. I believe this allows the student to gain confidence in their acquisition of knowledge as their familiarity and mastery of the topic grows. 

My professional teaching experience comes primarily from the instruction of language courses as lead instructor, and from a variety of linguistic courses in a supporting role – both at the college level. These types of courses require flexibility in how student learning is approached. For my language courses, most of my students are heritage learners. They are learning a language that their families and ancestors speak or historically spoke. In these cases, taking language courses is intimately tied to student identity, which can be negatively affected when a student’s performance is grade based. I believe in making mistakes and learning from them. I also believe that is impossible for anyone to acquire language without making mistakes – even one’s first language. As such, it is important for me to allow students to make mistakes in their production of a language they have largely never spoken before. In giving detailed feedback and the opportunity for students to correct their mistakes, I can provide students with a chance to increase their confidence in their ability to learn their language.

In linguistics courses, it has been especially important for me to allow students to explore the material in a low-stakes experimental environment. In these courses students are learning about abstract aspects of human language and its applications. This requires students to think about language in ways they may have never thought of language before. I often allow students the opportunity to “play” with the concepts they are learning before they apply them in their assignments. This allows students to feel more confident in their ability to execute the tasks assigned to them. Depending on the course topic, this could be as simple as providing a time and place for students to record their or others’ speech on computer software for phonetic analysis, to jointly inventing societies with varying languages, writing systems and sociolinguistic situations to better understand how these aspects of society interact to determine language health. 

I actively encourage students to feel open and free to communicate with me to discuss course material and ask questions. I want my students to be aware that they are in full control of their educational journey, and I am available to assist them in that journey. I also encourage my students to challenge what they learn. It is important to me that students not just acquire new information, but that they interact with that information in such a way that they question it when applying it to problem solving and feel confident to propose new solutions in academic research. I strongly believe that teaching is an essential aspect to any society to further the promulgation of societal knowledge and to further our understanding of the world within and around us. As such, I believe in my role as facilitator to my students to help them accomplish this.