Teaching ethos

I believe that effective classrooms are built on a pedagogy of meaningful mentorship and inclusive pathways for engagement. The world changes for the better when people are empowered to empower others.

Developing students’ critical thinking and communication skills are among my top goals as a teacher. Because I see the classroom as a co-created space between teacher and students, I emphasize community, transparency, accountability, and applied knowledge. This approach includes creating a vibrant and respectful community where students feel safe sharing or potentially conflicting while practicing charity in their interpretations of one another’s input. I also create transparency through scaffolding for course expectations and clear learning goals, including a classroom rule that it is okay to say, “I don’t know” and ask for help. I model this when students ask questions and I respond, “I don’t know but we can learn together” and then demonstrate how to find resources to answer their questions. This is especially important for students from both elite and marginalized backgrounds where hierarchical expectations of authority and, in many cases, constrained resources limit student-teacher engagement. I foster accountability through open communication, and especially emphasize developing writing skills through regular in-depth feedback and assignments that build on one another so they can track their own improvement.

At Yale, I have worked as a teaching assistant in courses for sociology students, from small (10-student) seminars to large (95-student) substantive lecture courses, including in person and online formats. I have taught Introduction to Sociology, Cultural Sociology, Foundations of Modern Social Theory, Contemporary Theory, Material Culture, Health and Illness in Social Context, and Senior Essay. As a teaching assistant, my duties included facilitating discussion sections, completing all grading, advising students during office hours, and preparing course materials like study guides and in-class activities. I also gave lectures in Cultural Sociology and Health and Illness; for instance, in the latter course, I prepared an hour-long lecture on the culture of biomedicalization in CrossFit. I have also lectured in undergraduate courses at CU Boulder, Kenyon College, and SOAS (UK). In the spring of 2021, I was nominated for the Yale Prize Teaching Fellowship. I’ve continued to develop my teaching skills through the Yale Certificate of College Teaching Program, which requires four classroom observations, participation in two learning communities, a compiled teaching portfolio with sample course materials and newly developed syllabi, and over 30 hours of workshop attendance on topics like universal and inclusive design, assessing participation equitably, and teaching first-generation and non-traditional students.

Fall 2019 - introduction to sociology

with Professor Philip Smith. Yale University.