Teaching

 Teaching Philosophy

The core of my teaching philosophy is structured around the belief that all students innately have the ability to learn and make meaningful contributions. My task as an educator is to facilitate this ability and provide students with opportunities to investigate, collaborate, and grow.

As a course instructor I center experiential learning - allowing students to learn about science by actively participating in science. Classroom education and traditional lectures are important for science education, but can easily become abstracted or disinteresting without real-world interactive experiences. In my courses this means I emphasize field excursions, working with class-generated data, and interactive laboratory experiments. In one course, for example, this takes the form of the students learning the basics of ecosystem monitoring during a lecture, but reinforcing the concepts by designing monitoring methods and heading to a local estuary to try them out on the rocky reef environment. Students then take the data they’ve collected, run statistical analyses, and write a short report on the results. By asking their own questions, designing their own methods, and analyzing their own data students are given agency over their education and feel empowered to view themselves not just as students, but as scientists.

Mentorship as a concurrent learning experience is also critical to my teaching method. Students are a part of a course, but they are also individuals with their own personal and professional interests and goals. Providing one-on-one mentorship allows me to better share resources and advise related to these individualized needs and bridge the gap between student and instructor. This mentorship may conclude when the course ends, but often extends as they work towards a dissertation, pursue a career in science, or simply navigate the world as a young adult.