Types of Courses Taught: I have taught W131-Standard, W131-Basic, and W231: Professional Writing, as well as a first-year composition course at a Texas state university and a variety of high school courses in composition, literature, and English as a Foreign Language. Having mainly taught courses that follow a standardized design, my approach is simply to bring a spirit of enthusiasm and curiosity to the classroom, regardless of how I feel about what I’m teaching.

Creative Assignments: This isn’t a class activity exactly, but a pre-class thing I began doing in a desperate attempt to cut through the suffocating silence that precedes each class. It’s hard to build up energy for class from a dead stop, and, more than that, I want my students to feel like they are part of a community. I began making a point of looking for things in the news or on social media that were at least semi-relevant to our course, and now the first thing I do when I walk in the room is put whatever I’ve found up on the projector and begin chatting about it while I get ready for the lesson. After the initial awkwardness, students come to expect it, and the conversation helps energize the class and move us more seamlessly into the lesson. The National Park Service Twitter account is essentially my co-teacher by this point.

Relationship between your own creative work and your teaching: This is such a great question, and I don’t think my answer is unique: a good scholar is a good teacher is a good scholar—our creative work should shape our teaching, and our teaching should inform our work. Both are sources of joy and inspiration for me, so I try to find an ebb and flow between the two that allows me to draw energy from one when the other is wearing me down.

Main takeaways: One of the key outcomes of any class I teach is a self-awareness of who we are as learners—how we think, what gets us excited about learning, what strategies and approaches work best for us, etc. (in a word, metacognition!). Realistically, what students learn in my class may not stick with them beyond finals week, so I focus on fostering practices of self-reflection on how they learn. The hope is that, once grades are no longer a distraction, students will find a way toward a genuine love of learning and growth.

Teaching Philosophy: This may sound simplistic, but I try to always assume the best of my students. I’m unimpressed with the “suspicious” approach that pervades so many high school and college classrooms—overloading students with busy work and arbitrary rules because we think it’s the only way we can force them to learn. I believe most students want to get something out of a class, or at least most don’t want to feel as though they’re wasting time and tuition money on a class. I’ve found that when my teaching is grounded in the assumption that we are all invested in making the course a meaningful experience, students rise to the challenge.