Teaching Philosophy

In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire says, “Education as the practice of freedom...denies that [people] are abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people.” These lines adorn the top of my syllabi and form the basis of my teaching practice. For me, the work of the educator is to connect students to the world around them. Though I am nominally an English instructor who teaches classes in literature, creative writing, media studies, and philosophy, I consider myself truly a professor of the humanities, of those artifacts, texts, and objet d'artes that offer expressions of and portals into the vastness of the human experience. I strive to find the juiciest texts that tell the most interesting stories, facilitate student understanding of and joy in their consumption, and foster written, verbal, and other creative expression of their ideas and reflections. In short, my work is to help students learn more about the complex, chaotic, difficult, and gorgeous world in which we live. 

I harbor a deep and unshakeable belief in the value of my field. As an undergraduate, I had the privilege of attending a seminar held by renowned historical scholar Hayden White, during which he talked extensively about how the humanities—what he called the human sciences—deserved equal celebration and attention as the hard or social sciences. His passionate words stayed with me, and whenever the worth of my work is questioned, as daily it seems to be, I remain resolute knowing that this work matters. We citizens of planet Earth always return to the humanities to answer questions that have dogged us for millennia. I craft units to reflect both timeless and contemporary human dilemmas. A unit on cyborgs centers our relationship to tech and the digital space; in a unit on Absurdism, we learn one philosophy's way to live in a chaotic, meaningless world. I consider how to engage all kinds of learners in the process of "writing," which is really the process of thinking critically about the world; thus, in addition to our critical weekly writings, I keep as many of our final projects as I'm allowed creative in nature: students write their own Socratic dialogues, Afrofuturism-inspired scifi stories, alternate history short films, spoken words projects embodying the characters of Hamlet, and more. If I believe that these human sciences hold the key to building empathy and understanding, then it is my job to show students the magic this field holds. 

I am committed to bringing students into the scholarly community. I seek to model for students what a widely-interested, compassionate, and nuanced scholar looks like. Students can take interest in a wide range of authors and texts and genres if facilitated with care, intention, and enthusiasm, which starts with my own excitement and engagement for the material. I love teaching what I do because of the endless perspectives and texts to explore within a supportive and collegial community. My reading lists are wide and include philosophers, writers, artists, and thinkers from all over the artistic and critical map. Albert Camus and Jean Baudrillard rub shoulders with Hannah Nikole Jones and Janelle Monae. Why wait for brilliant contemporary writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer or Natalie Diaz to be justified into the canon? Offering students their first foray into timeless conversations means treating them like peers and taking their ideas seriously. I want my students to become the kind of people who avidly consume all kinds of art and media, and do so for both the sheer pleasure of it as well as to satiate their hungry minds. For example, in my advanced class, we actually read Pedagogy of the Oppressed; I let students in on my process so they can see the philosophies that inform their experience with me. They produce bold works, such as a rewrite of Shel Silverstein's classic The Giving Tree informed by Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass or a short film about the recent COVID-19 pandemic utilizing the tools of literary Absurdism. They see that being an intellectual, informed member of their community starts with them pursuing their own interests and following their own lines of inquiry.

At the end of the day, everything I do serves student joy. Pleasure is an important and necessary part of the learning process, and I believe that joyful energy is what gives students the grit and drive to read difficult texts, revise their work to high standards, and come to class fully prepared. I want students to be excited to come to class, to chatter away, and, as is often reported to me during conferences, to breathlessly fill in their parents and families on the drive home or over dinner about what we talked about that day. I give them time to share and talk, and allow my own personality—kind, quick, witty, and absurd—to shine through. We begin every class with a check-in question, something short ("what color describes your mood today?") and sometimes relevant ("like the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest, what would your alter ego be?"). My students love to make fun of me (gently!) when I say for the millionth time, "This is one of my favorite stories/poems/novels." They ask me, how can they all be my favorite? I try to show them. During discussion, I name student contributions and explain their value: "I love that idea, Alex, because…" or "That is a really smart observation, Rishabh, do the rest of y'all see that?" I write their ideas on the board, draw arrows, make connections right in front of them so they can see how their observations become thesis statements, essay responses, or just sheer interesting, connected reflections upon the text that are intrinsically valuable.  

I am lucky to see many concrete ways that my beliefs in my work and teaching are effective. I see it when students bounce into class, waving and yelling hello to me, and then immediately tell me three weird, funny, personal stories. I see it when I am asked to write a dozen recommendation letters every fall for students applying to colleges across the country, and when those same high school seniors invite me to their scholarship dinners as an honored mentor and we spend the entire night cackling with laughter and sharing about our hopes an dreams for the future. I feel it most in those personal moments when a student shares with me that I made her feel for the first time like her voice mattered, or when another told me that I reinforced in him an "unknown courage" that he didn't know he had. I want to work with students because they are beautiful brains, and wildly vibrating hearts, with big feels and a lot of worries about the world. It is life-giving work that I take incredibly seriously, because it is ultimately the work of being human.