“I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.”
- George Bernard Shaw
I Teach People
I believe in recognizing and supporting my students as people first. Everyone brings unique emotional, social, and academic skills and challenges into the classroom, and helping each other grow requires mutual respect and empathy. This means teaching life skills, time management, stress management - anything my students actively identify needing to learn. I am committed to supporting my students not just for a year, but to and through college and into their adult lives, as they grow as individuals.
IT'S THEIR ROOM
A classroom should belong to students. Real learning occurs when students own what happens in the room, and feel the pride that comes with committing to building a community. My role is to be a guide, mentor, and coach, but never a “boss.” Students work as white-collar experts: given projects, a timeline, and expectations, supported in choosing their own methods and finding their own resources to achieve them.
I Don't KNOW the future...
... But I can prepare students for it. Research suggests that in the next 20 years, 50% of job growth will be in careers that don't yet exist. The key to being ready for those jobs is a broad skill set: the ability to dissect a problem, develop a research strategy, locate evidence, analyze it to form nuanced solutions, and present those findings as persuasively as possible. It also means learning empathy and communication skills - things that can't be done by machines.
literacy is cultural
Content must be relevant to students and, to the extent possible, push them to develop not only academically, but as citizens in a diverse society that is rife with critical issues that demand an engaged and thoughtful populace. I believe in the crucial importance of debating difficult issues - race, poverty, biology, ethics - as a way of respecting students as capable, developing thinkers: the people who will wrestle with the problems we cannot reconcile in the present and those on the horizon.
FACTS MATTER...
Understanding non-fiction - how to research any topic, find trustworthy sources, analyze opposing views and develop a nuanced, evidence-based opinion - is foundational to every career and a cornerstone of personal and societal safety in the digital age. I teach my students how to look for facts and why they matter - both in developing their own point of view and understanding others'.
...AND SO DO STORIES
And as any skilled presenter will tell you, they often matter more than facts in connecting with and convincing an audience. Stories are the basis of human knowledge and culture, and I give students the tools to analyze and understand how stories are used - and abused - in rhetoric, both so they can protect their own stories and tell them with greater effect.
No black boxes
The best way to build academic pride and success is through measurable, achievable, concrete goals that make progress transparent and accessible to students. Grades should never be a judgement, but rather specific, actionable feedback on how to build skills. To that end, my grades are mastery-based, focusing on growth in a specific skill rather than overall “achievement”; all feedback is clear, individual, ongoing, and grounded in explicitly taught guidelines.