Teaching Philosophy
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
– Frank Lloyd Wright
As a scientist and an environmental advocate, my personal and educational ambitions lie in connecting students and members of the public with the natural world. I embody the creativity and vulnerability required to effectively communicate complex concepts. As an educator, I connect with my audience using a comfortable, discursive, and adaptive teaching style. The foundational concepts of my teaching philosophy include exhibiting passion, mentoring individual students, embracing technology, and leading by example.
Teaching with passion
Enthusiasm effectively engages students in the classroom and audience members during public talks. I convey my passion in the classroom and in field-based instruction by having a strong foundation in the subject, a personal commitment to environmental education, and an investment in the individual learner. After several semesters as a teaching assistant at UW-Madison for an introductory Botany course, I was thrilled to learn from departmental faculty that my enthusiasm led to the most new recruits of undergraduate students to the Botany major.
Individual mentorship
I mentored several undergraduates for directed studies at UW-Madison and SJSU. Each individual contributed new and unique data to the broader context of my graduate work. As the mentees created new data and were meaningfully involved in the scientific enterprise, they garnered a sense of accomplishment. Active mentorship allows students to feel confident in applying the scientific method, develop a trusted relationship with educators, take ownership of data, and experience learning outside of the classroom. I earned a Graduate Student Peer Mentor Award for my mentorship work.
Embracing technology
I welcome the technical skills of students and seek innovative methods to engage them in difficult subjects. In directed studies, I implemented a digital imager that allowed for live, simultaneous, teacher-student viewing of a microscope field-of-view and created educational videos using this platform (https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperKdog2000/). At UW-Madison, I also implemented innovative extra credit assignments to share on YouTube. These included using spoken word to rap about peer-reviewed articles or making a multi-media presentation of semester-long project work. Using active-learning technology allows students to actively engage with educators, experience new ways to learn content, and extend learning to popular media sites.
Teaching by example
Though I am the leader in the classroom, I also learn every time I teach. If I am not sure of an answer, I am honest with my students and we discuss the path to discovering the answer together. I embrace the mistakes I make. I also explore uninhibited, relaxed situations to achieve learning objectives. I set an example of transparency and affirmative risk-taking while still exhibiting confidence, and the students follow suit. Classes benefit from teachers that lead by example since students connect with the teacher-as-learner, engage in mutual discovery, establish an honest trust in the instructor, and reciprocate open precedents.
