Statement of Teaching Philosophy
“—The teacher, then, is not an end-point of development for students to reach.
The students are not a flotilla of boats trying to reach the teacher
who is finished and waiting on the shore. The teacher is also one of the boats.
—Yes, but of course with great responsibilities for the teacher in these boats!
Not as the owner of the boats. You see?
Strongly present in the boats, leading the transformation.”
―Ira Shore & Paulo Freire, Dialogues on Transforming Education [1987].
The students are not a flotilla of boats trying to reach the teacher
who is finished and waiting on the shore. The teacher is also one of the boats.
—Yes, but of course with great responsibilities for the teacher in these boats!
Not as the owner of the boats. You see?
Strongly present in the boats, leading the transformation.”
―Ira Shore & Paulo Freire, Dialogues on Transforming Education [1987].
In all my classes, I collect mid-quarter evaluations that help me adapt my teaching style to the individual needs of any particular group of learners. In my course evaluations, students state that my enthusiasm and my “out of the box approach” is very effective and stimulating.
My use of a variety of media helps students to familiarize and relate to new concepts with ease and guides them towards a comprehensive understanding of the given subject. In my upper-division course Principles of Hispanic Literature and Criticism, we discussed Esteban Echeverría’s hybrid text—half chronicle, half short story—“El matadero,” widely considered the first short story published in Spanish America (1871). We analyzed the caricature version of this text adapted by Enrique Breccia to better understand the complex relationship between barbarism and civilization in pre and post-colonial Latin American societies. This is inherently a difficult discourse to penetrate and the visual adaptation of the piece—along with its aesthetic language—facilitates its discussion; the various pen strokes and dark-light interplay help contrast the tension within the text. Based on student evaluations and my pedagogic gestalt, I have continued to supplement original texts with their visual adaptations because I have witnessed how this method positively impacts student learning.
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