If my approach to teaching and learning could be summed up simply, I suppose I’d say it’s a combination of “loving justice” (Kai Cheng Thom, 2021) and a deep commitment to always centering students as collaborators, accomplices, and leaders in their own learning. This necessitates that I engage in perpetual pedagogical self-development; or, put another way, that I commit myself to being a lifelong learner.

 
 

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

 

The liberatory praxis of my pedagogy involves (as informed by Laenui, 2000): 

  1. facilitating students’ rediscovery of themselves, 

  2. mourning what was taken from them/recovering what they can from the grips of oppression, 

  3. dreaming about radical and visionary futures, 

  4. feeling desire to commit to the iterative process of discovery/mourning/dreaming/action, 

  5. and caring for themselves and each other as/when the world as we know it ends. 

It’s equal parts Parable of the Sower, An Archive of Feelings, and The Queer Art of Failure, with attention to how assignments ask them to explore their own journey within the cycle of socialization, in addition to centering practices that cultivate hope. It involves early conversations about accountability, disposability, abolition, and transformative justice, no matter the specific topic areas. We, hopefully, give ourselves and others generous grace as we navigate these new terrains, together. In essence, my approach to teaching involves curiosity and compassion, for self, for others, and for learning.

This self-directed, problem-based, and often experiential approach is expansive and generative for students. When we ask “what are you interested in?” and “what do you want to learn more about?”, we can provide access to materials that students actually want to read and connect them to people and communities that act as archives, repositories, and resources of knowledge and history. This approach to learning fosters empowerment and validation.Students hopefully don’t ever feel as though they aren’t “smart enough” to do the work, or that they have to leave parts of themselves and their identities behind in order to survive the class. In this way, I’m nurturing the development of a whole human, not just an intellect; and at the end of our time together, these humans are able to elucidate complicated concepts about human behavior and our social world to folks both within and outside of the academy. But, more than that, so many of them leave with a renewed sense of desire to change their worlds.

 
 

PEDAGOGICAL EXAMPLES

 

I've tried out numerous formative and summative assessment techniques, and in longer courses I’ve engaged in specs grading, contract grading, and pass/fail points-based policies. I use multimodal technology and like to keep up with the platforms that are not only the easiest to use and most appealing to students, but also the most universally accessible. Every time I teach, I learn something new about myself, the college student population, and the class topical area. As brief examples of how this process tangibly plays out, you can find course material linked below:

 
 

ADDITIONAL TEACHING EXPERIENCE AND TEACHING-RELATED SERVICE

In addition to formal courses, I’ve advised three undergraduate and three graduate-level independent studies, served on eight dissertation and two Master’s thesis committees, and mentored students in various research programs outside the classroom; including through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) summer research fellowship, the Guided Research Experience and Training (GREAT) Program, the Institute for Women’s Health Research Ready fellowship, the Federal Work Study Research Assistantship Program, and the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development Scholars Program (IMSD).

I also worked with a small group of people in the GSWS department to write an “Affordable Course Content” award, given by the VCU Libraries, the Office of the Provost, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and the ALT Lab ($7,000), to create what would become this open access introductory text for our 201 students, with web-based learning materials (I also solely developed and wrote the learning objectives for each section of the text). For this work, I was awarded the Faculty Excellence in Access, Course Content, and Inclusion Champion of Accessibility Award by VCU’s Student Accessibility and Educational Opportunity Office in 2019. 

I am one of three research team leads on VCU’s School of Medicine LGBTQIA+ Curricular Transformation Task Force, in which I am heading up the Language, Demographics, and Comparative Human Development team. Upon completion of this project, the School of Medicine will undergo an extensive curricular overhaul in an effort to integrate a minimum of 50 hours of LGBTQIA+ specific training, instruction, and practice. This work is occurring in tandem with my role as the Faculty Liaison for GSWS’s curricular track in Health, Society and Social Justice, in which we are currently proposing to VCU’s School of Public Health (launching next year) to offer as a 4+1 major and MPH. 

Beyond the classroom, I also engage in a number of specialized teaching endeavors at and outside of VCU, including developing courses through The Division for Inclusive Excellence’s Diversity and Inclusion Course and Program Compendium: two 90 minute workshops for faculty/staff (“Gender: Beyond the Binary,” “Disability & Neurodiversity 101,”), and a 4-week professional development course for faculty/staff (“Diversity and Inclusion in Healthcare”); serving on the Steering Committee for the college’s Safe Zone program, designing a new curriculum specific to the medical campus; serving on Queer Research and Advocacy (Q) Collective’s Board, where I developed the curriculum for and lead a 6-week undergraduate summer intensive in Queer Studies; being a core member of the Disability Studies Certificate Program Steering Committee; and, at the university-level, being invited to join the Presidential Curriculum Transformation Task Force on Pedagogical Innovations. Finally, with/in community, I have offered workshops and trainings for the Richmond Area Sexuality Network, the Virginia Department of Health, the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood, Equality Virginia, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work, and the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).