Teaching
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
While my priority, in the “before-times,” has always been to foster an environment and community that allows for a productive and open sharing of ideas and constructive feedback, the COVID-19 pandemic challenged me to re-envision what that means for my classes and to re-imagine possibilities for student learning experiences. The pandemic and its resulting shifts between in-person and online teaching have necessitated that I recursively assess and adapt to continually changing classroom modes, spaces, technologies, and student needs in this “new reality.” With the shift to online instruction, for example, I began incorporating consistent small group teams called “learning pods” within our larger classroom community to build internal networks of peer support, promote connection in an isolating time, and increase opportunities for collaborative learning.
I view the classroom as a place of practice with my primary role as a facilitator of shared knowledge construction. Rather than lecture frequently, I find that students engage more deeply and critically with our course materials and with their own work through the synthesis and articulation of ideas during class discussions, workshops, and experiential learning. As an example, I began designing an interactive digital curriculum for each course during the pandemic, including daily activities, individual and team projects, reflection spaces, peer feedback and revision tasks, and team discussion prompts which in turn contribute to larger group discussions and activities. As we collectively work as a society to recover from the devastation of the pandemic and to reconcile with how we can move forward, I continue to adapt and adjust what class engagement and active learning looks like in response to our shifting sociopolitical realities.
Telling our stories through a range of mediums and in relation to different rhetorical situations can help my students to understand writing, multimodal composing, and storytelling as tools for enacting social and political change. In their personal, academic, and professional lives, students are expected to compose their stories within many different contexts using several different mediums. In my classroom, I scaffold activities and assignments to challenge students to compose in a variety of contemporary rhetorical settings, including audio and video texts, zines, and digital writing, in addition to traditional formal papers. By asking students to analyze rhetorical situations, make choices regarding medium, audience, purpose, and content, and to craft across multiple modes, I aim to help prepare them for the work that they will be doing both in and outside of their academic spaces.
As I believe that assessment must align with my critical pedagogy and praxis, conventional merit-based grading is replaced in my courses by “ungrading,” adapted from assessment models of Susan Blum, Asao Inuoe, and Jesse Stommel. Depending on the course, this typically involves labor-based contracts for seminar or lecture-designated courses but may look like portfolios for production courses. These “ungrading” summative assessments are supported by emphasis on formative assessments with consistent and guided peer feedback, instructor feedback, and process reflections. By decentering grades as the primary metric of success, students are more empowered to take risks and to engage with their work without the anxiety of points or percentages.
Centered on themes of story, land, embodiment, relations, and environment, my courses are guided by the cultural rhetorics praxis of rhetoric and composition scholars such as Malea Powell, Christina Cedillo, and Andrea Riley Mukavetz that affirms rhetoric as cultural and culture as rhetorical. One of the projects that I assign in my first-year writing courses, for example, asks students to examine their cultural connections to foods that are meaningful for them. By investigating the culture of their foodways, students engage in rhetorical analysis of the social, political, economic, and ecological issues of their cultural communities.
As an interdisciplinary scholar, I tend to teach courses in and across multiple disciplines, primarily in my home discipline of rhetoric and composition, but also in the areas of Indigenous studies, literary studies, and digital storytelling. At the intersection of these disciplines is story. My background teaches me that stories are who we are and how we know. I aim to teach students that sharing our stories empowers us as private and public rhetors, citizens, and humans. As an educator, I strive to cultivate an inclusive classroom community that welcomes all of our cultures, identities, and stories.
While my priority, in the “before-times,” has always been to foster an environment and community that allows for a productive and open sharing of ideas and constructive feedback, the COVID-19 pandemic challenged me to re-envision what that means for my classes and to re-imagine possibilities for student learning experiences. The pandemic and its resulting shifts between in-person and online teaching have necessitated that I recursively assess and adapt to continually changing classroom modes, spaces, technologies, and student needs in this “new reality.” With the shift to online instruction, for example, I began incorporating consistent small group teams called “learning pods” within our larger classroom community to build internal networks of peer support, promote connection in an isolating time, and increase opportunities for collaborative learning.
I view the classroom as a place of practice with my primary role as a facilitator of shared knowledge construction. Rather than lecture frequently, I find that students engage more deeply and critically with our course materials and with their own work through the synthesis and articulation of ideas during class discussions, workshops, and experiential learning. As an example, I began designing an interactive digital curriculum for each course during the pandemic, including daily activities, individual and team projects, reflection spaces, peer feedback and revision tasks, and team discussion prompts which in turn contribute to larger group discussions and activities. As we collectively work as a society to recover from the devastation of the pandemic and to reconcile with how we can move forward, I continue to adapt and adjust what class engagement and active learning looks like in response to our shifting sociopolitical realities.
Telling our stories through a range of mediums and in relation to different rhetorical situations can help my students to understand writing, multimodal composing, and storytelling as tools for enacting social and political change. In their personal, academic, and professional lives, students are expected to compose their stories within many different contexts using several different mediums. In my classroom, I scaffold activities and assignments to challenge students to compose in a variety of contemporary rhetorical settings, including audio and video texts, zines, and digital writing, in addition to traditional formal papers. By asking students to analyze rhetorical situations, make choices regarding medium, audience, purpose, and content, and to craft across multiple modes, I aim to help prepare them for the work that they will be doing both in and outside of their academic spaces.
As I believe that assessment must align with my critical pedagogy and praxis, conventional merit-based grading is replaced in my courses by “ungrading,” adapted from assessment models of Susan Blum, Asao Inuoe, and Jesse Stommel. Depending on the course, this typically involves labor-based contracts for seminar or lecture-designated courses but may look like portfolios for production courses. These “ungrading” summative assessments are supported by emphasis on formative assessments with consistent and guided peer feedback, instructor feedback, and process reflections. By decentering grades as the primary metric of success, students are more empowered to take risks and to engage with their work without the anxiety of points or percentages.
Centered on themes of story, land, embodiment, relations, and environment, my courses are guided by the cultural rhetorics praxis of rhetoric and composition scholars such as Malea Powell, Christina Cedillo, and Andrea Riley Mukavetz that affirms rhetoric as cultural and culture as rhetorical. One of the projects that I assign in my first-year writing courses, for example, asks students to examine their cultural connections to foods that are meaningful for them. By investigating the culture of their foodways, students engage in rhetorical analysis of the social, political, economic, and ecological issues of their cultural communities.
As an interdisciplinary scholar, I tend to teach courses in and across multiple disciplines, primarily in my home discipline of rhetoric and composition, but also in the areas of Indigenous studies, literary studies, and digital storytelling. At the intersection of these disciplines is story. My background teaches me that stories are who we are and how we know. I aim to teach students that sharing our stories empowers us as private and public rhetors, citizens, and humans. As an educator, I strive to cultivate an inclusive classroom community that welcomes all of our cultures, identities, and stories.
COURSES TAUGHT
University of Missouri-Columbia
ENGLSH 1000: Rhetoric and Writing
DST 2005/ENGLSH 2005: Digital Storytelling: Memoir
ENGLSH 2490/PEA_ST 2490 Introduction to Indigenous Literatures
DST_VS 2810/COMMUN 2810/ENG 2000 Story Development
DST_VS 3885/ENGLSH 3110/FILMS_VS 3560 Audio Storytelling/Audio Engineering for the Screen
ENGLSH 4040/7040 Studies in Writing: Food Writing
ENGLSH 4045/7045 Rhetorical Studies: Cultural Rhetorics
ENGLSH 4060/7060 Studies in Critical Theory: Decolonial Theory
ENGLSH 8060 Seminar in Criticism and Theory: Indigenous Research Methodologies
Northeastern State University
AIS 4223/AMST 5923: Community and Cultural Sustainability
AIS 4853: Sustainability in Tourism: An Indigenous Perspective
ENG 1113: Composition I
ENG 113: Composition II
Tulsa Community College
ENGL 1113: Composition I
ENGL 1213: Composition II
University of Missouri-Columbia
ENGLSH 1000: Rhetoric and Writing
DST 2005/ENGLSH 2005: Digital Storytelling: Memoir
ENGLSH 2490/PEA_ST 2490 Introduction to Indigenous Literatures
DST_VS 2810/COMMUN 2810/ENG 2000 Story Development
DST_VS 3885/ENGLSH 3110/FILMS_VS 3560 Audio Storytelling/Audio Engineering for the Screen
ENGLSH 4040/7040 Studies in Writing: Food Writing
ENGLSH 4045/7045 Rhetorical Studies: Cultural Rhetorics
ENGLSH 4060/7060 Studies in Critical Theory: Decolonial Theory
ENGLSH 8060 Seminar in Criticism and Theory: Indigenous Research Methodologies
Northeastern State University
AIS 4223/AMST 5923: Community and Cultural Sustainability
AIS 4853: Sustainability in Tourism: An Indigenous Perspective
ENG 1113: Composition I
ENG 113: Composition II
Tulsa Community College
ENGL 1113: Composition I
ENGL 1213: Composition II
