teaching statement

drafted fall 2021

Teaching is liberation in action. To arrive at this bold philosophy, I connect the writings of two of the twentieth century’s most prolific radical educators: Paulo Freire and Toni Morrison. Freire writes that “education is freedom.” Morrison writes that “the function of freedom is to free someone else.” I track these declarations as pedagogical guideposts: critical learning begets freedom, and freedom must be shared. It is the task of an educator, then, to teach against oppressive structures and toward joy. It is also the educator’s task to prepare students how to teach others about the world we have inherited. Accordingly, teaching is equal parts content delivery and shepherding student output. In upholding Freire and Morrison’s thoughts on liberation, my pedagogy centers the what and also the how. For example, students must learn about Indigenous genocide and Indigenous resurgence but they must also learn how to communicate that knowledge outward in a thoughtful manner.

Education is a communal practice. To learn, we must trust our teachers. This goes both ways, as students embody knowledges that instructors do not or cannot know; teachers must trust students. Joining Freire and Morrison, bell hooks contributes her own theories of liberation: “Education teaches us how to create community.” The classroom is “a place of liberating mutuality where teacher and student together work in partnership.” My classroom, therefore, functions as a student-driven community space. What objectives do students have for the class? What readings or events would students like to cover? How can I make the classroom safe? To foster accountability, which, as hooks notes, is crucial when teaching about race-making, ethnicity, and Indigenous sovereignty, students’ intellectual and emotional needs must be taken seriously. Furthermore, hooks advocates, and I employ, the practice of generous learning with ourselves and each other. This means we read critically and respect scholarly contributions, however minor they may seem. It also means that students are unafraid to ask questions, but if their questions have consequences, they are accountable to the collective.

I actualize my teaching philosophy through two key practices: disability-focused course design and trauma-informed course content. Neurodivergent and chronically-ill people should not feel uncomfortable in learning environments. At UNC, I design each syllabus to meet the learning disability accommodation criteria. My classes, for instance, do not include timed tests or timed writing assignments. Instead, I introduce individual and long-term group projects with check-in dates as well as small assignments whereby students select submission deadlines from a list of options. By sharing decision-making power with students, I communicate my trust in their abilities. So far, I have measured this approach’s success by the quality of student work and class grade average. Depending on the course, I may steward the original research process, step-by-step, to help students understand the discourses of academia, and the politics of education, while making no assumptions about their previous training; we create a common research method together. This is most evident in the research workshops that I lead: I break down each element of historical research, from primary source identification and interpretation to annotation and analysis, and ask students to share-out their findings as well as comment on each other’s work. When appropriate, I might invite students to participate in aspects of course design too. For example, I might crowd-source ideas for final assignments or teaching units. This is not to eschew my responsibilities as the instructor, but rather to engender what hooks describes as “teaching community.” Student input functions to demonstrate how curriculum design is always subjective as well as reciprocate power and yet again recognize students as capable decision-makers.

As an interdisciplinary educator trained in American studies, I believe my task is to provide students with content that challenges cultural hegemony and trains critical reasoning through effective written and oral communication. However, my classroom is not for the benefit of White ignorance or able-bodied and straight privilege; I do not aim to shock students with histories of colonial terror. Instead, I teach about world-making that complicates Enlightenment thought and Western hierarchies of knowledge-production. I elevate historically de-valued epistemologies—such as traditional Indigenous dance, Black orality, and subculture print media—as rigorous and worthy of our attention. I believe students are equipped thinkers, prepared to examine the complex socio-political ecologies of our world, like the United States’ relation to White supremacy and racial capitalism. Therefore, I assign materials with the explicit goal of cultivating critical engagement and encouraging ongoing assessments of all naturalized hierarchical systems, including education itself. Through this pedagogical practice, I find myself assigning materials that are underutilized in secondary and undergraduate-level education, such as the writings of creator Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, the work of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and the films of Cheryl Dunye. Above all, my pedagogy aims to nurture a safe classroom environment that prioritizes student inquiry and provides tools that students may use to translate inquiry into research, then translate research into material outcomes for their edification as well as the edification of their various social, professional, and kin networks.