teaching mentors

the professor i learned most from about effective undergraduate teaching was my doctoral supervisor, Pat Koch. she was famous for teaching the undergrad sexuality classes. and now i know that she was modeling literally all of the pedagogies in practice that i value and care so much about today. things she employed include:

• co-created community guidelines
• promoting students' use of their own terminology 
• providing small group sessions for peer-to-peer interactions 
• allowing time and space for reflection and personal experiences 
• having a way to submit anonymous questions at the end of every class
• incorporating value clarifications exercises 
• bringing in new points of view and creating safe ways to discuss them
• using humor in the classroom to disrupt anxiety 
• offering extra credit options that allowed for more personal development  

in learning to teach the undergraduate sexuality classes from her, i learned about classrooms as communities, about valuing lived experiences, about antiracist and trauma-informed practices, all without realizing it. as i have continued through my teaching career, it is all of these skills learned from assisting and then teaching the undergraduate sexuality classes that have provided the basis of a strong teaching philosophy.  

these skills are all transferable to a graduate classroom, but the additional skills i needed for the graduate classroom, mainly leading deep interrogative discussions, were harder to come by. many of my doctoral classes were seminars that were not-so-skillfully led. they could be interesting, and i learned many things, but the people leading these were star researchers, not star teachers. 

the first time i led a doctoral seminar, i realized how hard it was to lead skillfully. there's an urge to let that one person who raises their hand first just have the mic and the floor continuously as relief that "hey, at least someone is answering my question!. there's the difficulty of questioning statements made in front of the class without embarrassing students, or reframing and redirecting answers that are not quite in line with the question or topic. 

i don't think that i ever really got to be in a class that did this beautifully as a student. but i learned these skills through practice, and through co-teaching with colleagues. i've definitely learned a lot from Emma Tsui as we co-create our lessons, discussions, and philosophies we want to incorporate into the classes we have taught together. she is a master at supporting students in a kind and caring way--identifying their needs, strengths, and creating plans forward for her students. 

what i now carry into my teaching is a set of practices rooted in care and community. classrooms can be brave spaces that support the whole: co-created, reflective, grounded in lied experience, and alive with humor. from trial, error, and collaboration, i learned that rigorous graduate classes require a special kind of presence, balancing accountability with purposeful curiosity. and i think that the absences i experienced in my own graduate training pushed me to be more intentional about the choices i made in my own graduate teaching. and co-teaching has sharpened those skills and commitments. co-teaching reminds me of the deeper relational experience of teaching,

my teaching is a practice that i have inherited, adapted, and refined through community.

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