Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy animates from my disciplinary training as a humanities scholar (namely, rhetorical studies, cultural studies, and writing studies) and my experiences as a non-traditional student. I am primarily an educator who teaches from critical pedagogy approaches rooted in relational goodwill coupled with intellectual rigor. But before I became an educator, I was a queer, Mexican American, foster care alumnus who grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in South Texas and who dropped out of community college to be a florist and went back to school after watching The Devil Wears Prada. These experiences spark into the pedagogical kinesis of the following values, each integral to my teaching:

• • I believe that culture is rhetorical and vice versa, and I tailor my curriculum so that students can hone their cultural, communicative, and rhetorical savvy set to the pace of their backgrounds and commitments to their homes, their communities, and the world;

  • I believe that education happens best in community and that projects are most exciting when community facing, and as such my classes include opportunities for community-building (e.g., group work and instructor-student meetings), and many projects are configured to circulate beyond the classroom via public-oriented strategies; and 

  • I believe assignments and activities should be attuned to students’ professional and personal interests, literacies, and goals, which should be accounted for in fun, practical projects and activities for students to draw upon and hone their knowledge while professionalizing in ways that make sense for them and our institutional contexts.

These values shimmer in the daily moments of my course, and I mobilize them to craft an adaptive pedagogy grounded in social justice while attendant to my administrative realities and student learning outcomes. I take an outside-in approach to my courses, foregrounding perspectives from Black, Indigenous, and other scholars of color so that students with such identities can see themselves affirmed as serious scholars and thinkers. As a former non-traditional student, I know how such moves can be vital to the success of marginalized students, and I also attend to student success along my own experiences in higher education, drawing from my positionalities to meet students where they are in their lives. I work with students to help them outline what academic practices work best for them, which often takes the form of: 1) a labor-based grading contract informed by anti-racist pedagogy, which emphasizes development, process, and not grades; 2) class-created assessment rubrics so students get the developmental assistance they specifically request with my guidance as the expert in the class; and 3) ongoing reflection through writing and group discussions so that students further develop their own learning according to my course goals while bolstering each other through the class. My nearly ten years of writing center consultancy work with primarily Mexican American, ESL, and international undergraduate and graduate students and faculty from across the country also inform the developmental feedback I give to students on their projects, activities, and other writings. With these pedagogical moves, I work to model for students the equitable workplaces and settings that we all might create together; they are the next generation, after all, and too often, the system works against the marginalized.

More practically, depending on the topic of my courses, I typically categorize them as Thinking or Making classes (with overlap between the two), wherein the former covers critical and rhetorical theory and focus, as well as theories of communication, to develop students into humanistic and ethical thinkers and scholars and responsible citizens in an environment that increasingly asks us to be good and kind to one another. The latter courses work to put theory into practice, focusing on teaching students rhetorical and digital methodologies for working with, in, and for communities, as well as user experience methods for revising and testing materials for their discrete audiences. My courses often have students going outside of the classroom to interview other students, test their materials, and get perspectives that will help shape their projects rather than sitting and listening to lectures, which have their place in my courses to be sure. My courses also integrate the applied theory model that drives my scholarship, and I incorporate rhetorically informed user-centered design approaches to implement a multi-stage project approach with a focus on process so students can likewise hone their compositional acumen. At the practical level, my pedagogy follows a scaffolded model of interrelated activities and smaller assignments that allows students to practice composing their larger projects for various rhetorical situations and audiences. These activities are often done in groups to foster collaboration so that students can work through concepts of audience, genre, and design in fun yet applicable ways—all with an eye on the public. 

In my class focused on archiving the city of Charlotte, for example, my students created storymaps using geographic information system software that recounted often under-told or hidden stories of neighborhoods around the city through a collaboration with multiple citizens across the city and our community-engaged archivist; students focused on the intense gentrification racking the city, which likewise erases Charlotte’s vibrant Black history, as well as the effect of development on local fauna and flora. Students also conducted oral history interviews with everyday residents for the library’s archives, as well as short-form documentaries covering historical and cultural events across the city. Students presented their findings in an exhibit-style presentation at the semester’s end, inviting friends, family, and members of the public to engage with their stories of the city, which helped train them as public-facing composers while allowing them to understand the significance of presenting someone else’s story while rendering complex histories of development and displacement.

Finally, I spend ample time revealing to students the hidden curriculum of higher education and the job market so they understand how to speak about their experiences working in groups, testing materials with public audiences, and ensuring accessibility. To be frank, I attend to this hidden curriculum because of my background growing up in foster care and as a community college dropout. I am in my position today thanks to numerous mentors and leaders who paved a path for me to become a leader in my classes and in my field. As such, I have mentored multiple queer and/or students of color in applying to graduate, law, and medical school, writing letters of recommendation and helping them plan careers. I know I am on the right path as an educator when many of my students with nontraditional backgrounds maintain regular communication with me for support, and I plan to continue this work throughout my career in higher education.