In her groundbreaking book Babel, R.F. Kuang writes that if we "push in the right spots" the "future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn't a premade tapestry that we've got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it." I choose to be in the classroom—and so do my students. 

This choice, this commitment, deserves to be honored; our presence deserves to be seen as the world-making, world-changing dedication that it is. Choice lies at the crux of my teaching philosophy: through thoughtful, adaptive, and compassionate teaching modalities, I aim to engender a sense of agency, empowerment, and responsibility in my students. This is how we make a better world; this is how we push in the right spots.

As a community-oriented, justice-centered educator, I believe in the power of learning to break barriers, create ties, and change lives for the better. Like any true Deweyan, I know that learning is for everyone, and everyone can discover themselves and their position through education. I consider myself a lifelong learner and incorporate non-directive, open-ended, and synthesis-based Socratic questioning to put forth a classroom ethos of curiosity.  

Teaching and learning is a bedrock of communicative practice, and as such, is the bedrock of our relationships with one another. To this end, I employ care-centered and culturally conscious pedagogical strategies to create a learning environment where participants feel safe, engaged, and empowered. I am dedicated to making a strong classroom community, and work with students to create the kind of educational space we need, not the kind of space we are used to. 

In this way, I see my role in the classroom through a lens of guidance, support, and illumination. I prioritize class preparation to create needed space for compassionate flexibility and work to restore student encounters with agency in their education. In the classroom, my pedagogy functionally looks like an emphasis on group conversation strategies, personal reflection techniques, and nervous system awareness and regulation. 

As a neurodivergent and disabled educator, it is of utmost importance to me that my courses are accessible and accommodating. I regularly incorporate feedback from folks in my class to ensure they find course content easy to understand and navigate; I also support students on an individual basis through check-ins and one-on-one meetings. The body belongs in the classroom, and I advocate for student autonomy through modeling somatic knowledge.

After Paulo Freire and Bell Hooks, I see educative spaces as potential sites for oppression and silencing, but also as primary loci for justice-oriented discourse, deliberation, and change. I encourage students to integrate their experiences and values with course content by making space for reflective dialogue, both in the classroom and in class assignments. As a justice-oriented educator, I believe that only through knowledge- and experience- sharing can we create the world we want to inhabit.

Ultimately, I focus my classroom in a way that facilitates my students’ personal and communal growth, confidence in their ideas and intentions, and understanding of diverse and complex perspectives. I care deeply about my students’ empowerment, not just because they are the future, but because we—students and educators—are the present.