Teaching and Pedagogy

Teaching Philosophy

My responsibility as a TA or lecturer is to equip students with tools to think critically about the world around them and their place in it. I help students understand that politics is part of everyday life; that action or inaction in is political. More importantly, I instil a critical eye for action and inaction, and encourage students to reflect and ask questions.

Aside from my subject matter expertise, the three most common pieces of feedback I receive are my ability to make topics relatable, maintain an engaging classroom atmosphere, and make strong connections with students.

I make topics relatable by presenting the material in a meaningful way, attempting to speak to students’ personal experiences. From the exciting topics to the dry, unraveling the pieces of Political Science that students face in their lives is the key to not only sparking discussion, but having the learning objectives for those topics stick in students’ memories.

When I teach, I always start with a question: “what’s going on in the world today?” Even if only one or two students raise their hand, it opens the floor for the rest of the class. This conveys that ours is their space for learning and collaborating and that I would like participation – that the class isn’t just a time for me to wax political. In larger, lecture-based settings I often ask guiding questions throughout, allowing students to reflect on current events, or their own situations and how it relates to the topic of the day. In smaller group settings I use these same guiding questions with the hope that they take up the onus of discussion-making, but have found more student participation during exercises like debate or mock parliament. These exercises in role playing produce insightful comments that tend to weave course material with current events more so than discussing a set of pre-determined questions.

My approach to building meaningful connections comes from my upbringing. My education has always been in a close-knit setting. I was raised in a rural area and went to a small high school, and completed my undergraduate degree at a liberal arts university with small class sizes. The accessibility and openness of these experiences have instilled upon me the importance of creating a welcoming and respectful atmosphere inside and outside the classroom. I make it a point to try learning everyone’s name, I ensure that I am available to students outside of class, and I give meaningful feedback on assignments.