Teaching Statement

In the first lines of my dissertation’s acknowledgements, I thanked my 10th grade English teacher. I thanked him for seeing me read Anna Karenina under my desk during lecture; for not penalizing me or taking away my book; for understanding that my homework did not suffer for my hidden reading; and, most of all, for asking if I had already read the assigned reading, and then handing me a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four to keep me occupied during class reading time. His compassionate and flexible approach to my individualized needs is reflected in the first chapter of my manuscript—all about Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I have many anecdotes about teachers or advisors that have made an impact on me, but this one stands out. When it came time for me to reach out to a college student struggling to stay engaged in my class, my instinct was to hand him a copy of Doctor Zhivago and invite him to my office hours for independent discussion. I learned from our private discussions that the pandemic had forced him to move back into an unsafe home environment, and reading was his primary coping mechanism. Our discussions over Doctor Zhivago built trust between us to the extent that I eventually felt comfortable connecting him to virtual campus mental health resources. He stopped speaking to me, and I feared I had broken our trust. He emailed me many months later to let me know that he had eventually sought help from campus resources, and even included a photograph of him holding Doctor Zhivago in his new apartment.

I have taken what I learned from my 10th grade teacher, as well as numerous other inspiring teachers throughout my long academic journey, and cultivated a personal teaching philosophy that exemplifies the most significant impacts that my teachers have had on me. Although my primary career has been as a researcher and writer, I have always thrived in the classroom—especially with younger student populations where attention spans are shorter, theoretical language is often extraneous, and I get to participate in students’ first experiences with intellectual challenge.

Collaborative

My approach is, above all else, student-centered. It is important to me that students, especially young students like my first grade Hebrew school students or K-12 music camp students, are included in the implementation of their own education. I greatly value their feedback in my course development. I include midterm and end-of-semester reviews in each class I teach, soliciting evaluations on course materials and my instruction techniques. I find that openly collaborating with students to meet their needs makes students of all ages feel more responsible for their writing and learning processes. 

Holistic

I enter any lesson with the understanding that my students have rich lives outside of the classroom that inevitably inform the way they learn. My pedagogical approach is to meet students where they are, show compassion for their personal circumstances, and continually update my approach to meet accessibility needs. My intention is to every day assess student strengths and abilities, recognize and learn about diverse learners, focus on problem-solving and group work as critical methodologies for student development, and offer varied and motivating assignments with student input.

Multi-modal

I have spent as much time teaching K-12 students as I have university students, and I continue to learn exciting ways to teach from both groups. Teaching first grade religious school gave me a deep appreciation for very short attention spans and the kind of work it takes to maintain student focus. Multi-modal teaching is the best way I have found to keep students of varying ages engaged in learning. This means that I regularly vary the medium and mode of learning in my classroom. It can be a small change—having students stand up and sit down to break up the tedium of listening—or a big change—shifting from a lecture to student peer-review workshop. Multi-modal teaching also involves changing the technology of learning—creating a cognitive map on a whiteboard, reading out from a textbook, or having students take personal time to write. These types of variances keep students interested in the course topic, and provide numerous opportunities for differential participation in classroom activities.