My teaching philosophy includes principles of authoritative teaching, evidence-based methods, and a healthy dose of real-world practicality. At its core, my pedagogical philosophy is student-centered, flexible, and collaborative while still enforcing firm behavioral guidelines. The foundation of this ideology requires me to engage students, create a sense of community in the classroom, set high expectations, and be warm, accepting, involved, and trusting of students all while continuously monitoring them. I also believe it is imperative that an educator exhibit traits, characteristics, and attributes which students find relatable and believable, as I was once told students can “sniff out a fake.”

It is healthy for students to see me as a human, someone who does not have all of the answers, who must deal with contradictions in life just as they do. An injustice is done to students if we merely fill them with rote facts. We need to make the principles, ideas, and concepts of what it means to be a knowledgeable and active citizen relevant to students so that they may embrace contradictions with resilience, make evidence-based decisions, and create opportunities for new global understandings.

By engaging students in dialogue and putting students into dialogue with each other—I create a classroom which requires my students to dig deep, not just to regurgitate facts. I structure class time around discussion, which frequently centers on challenging questions derived from the content area. Questions which demand the students fully engage with the text, with peers, and wrestle with their own worldview. Although lecture is inevitable and it has its place in providing theoretical frameworks, the point of teaching for me is to make content relevant. I believe content can best be made relevant during the fertile collaborative learning process fostered in group discussion.

I am most interested in fostering critical thinking and problem-solving strategies.  This is why I strive to structure my process around bringing the discipline alive. I embrace backwards planning in developing lesson plans. For example, if I want my students to develop a logical argument, I design exercises that help them determine what constitutes deductive reasoning, evidence-based research, and analysis. It is more important to teach students skillsrather than things, and students learn best through interactive learning. I want my students to use their research papers to explore issues that are relevant and important to them and their communities. It is also important to internalize that all students learn differently and that differentiating instruction is the best way to address the full range of skills and abilities in the classroom.  Differentiating instruction could look like utilizing graphic organizers, creating skits, making a vlog, designing a poster, building a diorama, as well as more traditional work.