Teaching Philosophy
I hope to accomplish two goals in all of my classes. First, I encourage students to use the past to understand contemporary society, particularly when it comes to economic, racial, and gendered forms of oppression. Second, I believe in teaching useful skills that apply to an array of academic subjects. Consequently, my assignments focus on developing skills, including critical reading, analysis, writing, and speaking. These goals allow me to be passionate about the historical content, while also remembering the value of a well-rounded college education.
It is important to note, I am a white, middle-class, heterosexual, educated, able-bodied, neurotypical, cis woman. In all of my classes, I discuss the power that comes with my many privileged identities. Further, I assign materials that document and scrutinize the historical constructions of these categories and their impact on contemporary forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. By investigating the construction of these identities, students witness how they both change and remain constant over time. For instance, in my African American history course this Fall, I assigned chapters from Harriett A. Washington’s Medical Apartheid. Through these readings, students learned about the nineteenth-century doctor the medical industry once hailed as the father of gynecology, J. Marion Sims. Through Washington’s research, students learned that Sims performed experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women without anesthesia because he argued that African American women did not feel pain like their white counterparts. Through our discussion of modern forms of medical racism, like the high rates of mortality among Black mothers in childbirth, I urge students to consider how Sims’s nineteenth-century assertions about Black women’s bodies continue to impact the ways healthcare professionals view and treat African American women.
When constructing my courses, I focus on devising assignments that will develop multifaceted and vital skills, including critical reading, analytical thinking, precise writing, and efficient communication skills. To develop skills over a semester, I break up larger projects into smaller incremental assignments. This allows me time to utilize scaffolding and modeling techniques, while also providing students with copious feedback throughout the research, interpreting, and writing process. For example, when teaching the history of Eugenics to a group of freshman honors students, I assigned a small research project. Early in the semester, after students picked their topic, I introduced the class to academic databases, and together, we took a trip to the library. As the students constructed their thesis and initial drafts, I provided each with feedback that they were required to incorporate into their final papers. Six of the nineteen students in the class were selected to present their papers at UNCG's annual Honors Symposium.
In addition to teaching traditional skills, I have begun to consider the ways of exposing students to experiences and skills not typically addressed in college classrooms. While participating in a graduate student residency at the National Humanities Center, I learned about the “hidden curriculum”—skills college students are expected to know but are never explicitly taught. This experience prompted me to incorporate more assignments addressing often overlooked but essential skills, including writing professional emails and strategies for effective note-taking. Further, after discovering that many of my students had never visited a museum, I started to take my classes to local art museums (before the pandemic, of course). Such low stakes activities have provided students with confidence and fostered many meaningful discussions.
It is important to note, I am a white, middle-class, heterosexual, educated, able-bodied, neurotypical, cis woman. In all of my classes, I discuss the power that comes with my many privileged identities. Further, I assign materials that document and scrutinize the historical constructions of these categories and their impact on contemporary forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. By investigating the construction of these identities, students witness how they both change and remain constant over time. For instance, in my African American history course this Fall, I assigned chapters from Harriett A. Washington’s Medical Apartheid. Through these readings, students learned about the nineteenth-century doctor the medical industry once hailed as the father of gynecology, J. Marion Sims. Through Washington’s research, students learned that Sims performed experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women without anesthesia because he argued that African American women did not feel pain like their white counterparts. Through our discussion of modern forms of medical racism, like the high rates of mortality among Black mothers in childbirth, I urge students to consider how Sims’s nineteenth-century assertions about Black women’s bodies continue to impact the ways healthcare professionals view and treat African American women.
When constructing my courses, I focus on devising assignments that will develop multifaceted and vital skills, including critical reading, analytical thinking, precise writing, and efficient communication skills. To develop skills over a semester, I break up larger projects into smaller incremental assignments. This allows me time to utilize scaffolding and modeling techniques, while also providing students with copious feedback throughout the research, interpreting, and writing process. For example, when teaching the history of Eugenics to a group of freshman honors students, I assigned a small research project. Early in the semester, after students picked their topic, I introduced the class to academic databases, and together, we took a trip to the library. As the students constructed their thesis and initial drafts, I provided each with feedback that they were required to incorporate into their final papers. Six of the nineteen students in the class were selected to present their papers at UNCG's annual Honors Symposium.
In addition to teaching traditional skills, I have begun to consider the ways of exposing students to experiences and skills not typically addressed in college classrooms. While participating in a graduate student residency at the National Humanities Center, I learned about the “hidden curriculum”—skills college students are expected to know but are never explicitly taught. This experience prompted me to incorporate more assignments addressing often overlooked but essential skills, including writing professional emails and strategies for effective note-taking. Further, after discovering that many of my students had never visited a museum, I started to take my classes to local art museums (before the pandemic, of course). Such low stakes activities have provided students with confidence and fostered many meaningful discussions.
