Teaching

My primary goal for my teaching is that students leave my courses with a nuanced understanding of course content, an enthusiasm for ideas encountered in the course, a sense of teaching as an intellectual endeavor, and a desire to inspire learning in their own current or future students. The theoretical commitments that guide my work as a researcher also influence my approach to teaching in my university courses. Therefore, my teaching reflects grounding in sociocultural, critical, poststructural, and feminist theories. In all of my courses I attempt to model practices that recognize learning as a social process, influenced by social and cultural contexts, providing opportunities for students to critically examine their own assumptions about literacy, learning, and students, as well as the assumptions embedded in the language surrounding children, youth, and schooling. In each course I strive to build a sense of community and collaboration that facilitates the exploration of important and complex ideas.

Courses Taught

EDUC 8210 Perspectives on Classrooms, Teaching, and Learning (this course is part of the doctoral core requirements and is taken first semester of the first year of doctoral study)

EDUC 6964 C&I Capstone: Teacher Inquiry in the Content Areas (this course focuses on teacher research and is the required capstone course for the Curriculum and Instruction Masters programs in math/science and humanities. Students complete an intensive research project that serves as their exit requirement for the degree)

EDUC 4800 Education in Film (undergraduate course focused on analysis of films that portray various aspects of education)

EDUC 6804 Gender and K-12 Literacy (graduate course focused on theories of gender and the complex ways that gender is manifest in K-12 Classrooms)