Teaching Philosophy

I strongly believe that anyone can be an artist if they have something to say and are given the tools to say it. I arm my students with the skills that they need to be able to express themselves in the way that they want. My students not only receive technical training, but also critical training that will allow them to create more meaningful work, as well as be more conscious consumers of art and media. I want them to be able to recognize and find stories of diversity; stories that represent them and their experiences, as well as stories that illuminate the experiences of people different from them. I teach them to understand what leads to generalized or single sided stories and representation and how to avoid that in their own work. They need to learn that vulnerability incubates creativity and charity generates deeper and wider connections. By teaching my students these concepts, they can more critically engage with the media and art that they interact with daily and become forces for positive change themselves. If I can instill these values in my students, I can count myself as a successful teacher.

Create a space where ALL students feel valued and safe

Adolescence is a time of immense development of one's identity, particularly physically, socially, cognitively, and morally. While much of this takes place in the home, the classroom can also provide a space for a great deal of this development. It is especially important that all of my students feel like they have a place in my classroom to feel safe and accepted. Understandably, each student comes from a distinct background with individual experiences that inform their thinking and values. My classroom is a place where students can navigate these differences, foster empathy for one another, and feel comfortable speaking up for themselves.

Creating a safe space for all my students is first achieved by modeling this behavior myself. I want my students to understand that I am a person with individual experiences as well, but that even though those experiences differ from others, I can still seek to understand and love. Additionally, providing students with a diverse range of experts to learn from helps in solidifying this sense of diverse acceptance. I provide my students opportunities to learn from artists and media makers that are people of color, women, part of the LGBTQ community, differing levels of physical and mental ability, differing levels of economic status, and from diverse international cultures and traditions. I want each of my students to be able to identify with at least some, if not many, of the examples we see in class.

Furthermore, I want my students to have opportunities to share their own work and learn from one another. One’s peers, especially at the time of adolescence, are extremely influential, so it is important that they can see each other’s creative works, as well as develop skills of communication, presentation, and empathy. I intend my classes to become a support system where students feel buoyed up and inspired by one another. This can be achieved by sharing work frequently, in all of its developmental and finished stages, learning how to give and apply constructive criticism, and making space for every student to communicate what really matters to them.

Provide opportunities for self-driven inquiry and failure

In the works of Paulo Freire, he discusses the long-standing tradition of what he terms as the ‘banking model’ of education. This model of education posits that students are empty vessels, and the teacher is the master of information who inseminates this knowledge. This model in turn effectively enforces and perpetuates oppressive ideologies and discourse. The solution, then, is to shift to a student-driven education system termed by Freire as ‘problem-posing education.’ This model of education seeks to help students become critically aware of the knowledge they are receiving, not just finding inherent problems in it, but also approaching these problems with the collective creativity of students and teachers. Education then becomes a co-learning experience where democratic ideals are preserved.

In their work, Popular Culture, Schooling and Everyday Life, Giroux and Simon also discuss the need for more student involvement in the pedagogical decisions of the classroom. They suggest that students should be involved in deciding the curriculum for their class or that the curriculum should be modeled around the students’ experiences. I strongly agree with this idea and believe students learn best when they are personally invested in the material we learn. My students frequently have opportunities for self-driven inquiry and personally engaging creation. I first provide a framework of techniques and skills, then allow them to explore their own interests and passions through that framework.

Additionally, I help my students understand that failure in these pursuits is not only common but expected. Without failure, success is not possible. If Steven Spielberg had given up after being rejected twice from UCLA, we never would have had his amazing films. If JK Rowling had quit writing when she was broke, depressed, and recently divorced, Harry Potter never would have existed. In high school, Michael Jordan was cut from his school’s basketball team. He never would have become one of the world’s greatest basketball players if he had given up there. Failure is not the end but rather a springboard for growth. In my classroom, I try to make it clear that failure is expected—giving up is not.

Capacitate students to critically engage with media and art

Media and art is all around us all the time. We are constantly being exposed to the ideologies they express. Media and Art shape many of our perceptions and beliefs often without us even being aware.I believe that it is vitally important to learn to critically engage with our contemporary mediated world, it is key to become literate in media. Media scholars, Kellner and Share state, “Media literacy helps people to discriminate and evaluate media content, to critically dissect media forms, to investigate media effects and uses, to use media intelligently, and to construct alternative media” (p4). If we want to have control over what kind of messages become part of our life understanding and perspective, we need to be more judicious in what kind of messages we are letting in. Or ideally, analyzing and understanding these mediated messages in the same way that we do a book or a poem. Instead of being complacent consumers, we can be proactive partakers. Instead of being psychologically determined by media and art we interact with, we can be cognitively conscious, setting our own standards and definitions of contemporary life. This is a primary focus of my classrooms, to help my students gain critical autonomy in their media and art consumption.