My personal teaching philosophy is rooted in an education of identity, inquiry, and experience. To honour students’ identities is to recognize that learners (including teachers) bring varied ways of knowing to the classroom. I acknowledge that students already understand much about their lives and the world, and that real learning happens when people are given the opportunity to create and participate in spaces where, by formulating and posing critical questions that foster continued inquiry, they can move beyond what they already know. I view inquiry as inherently experiential, and so I invite students to share their experiences and participate in activities that have them think more deeply and intentionally about their own individual and collective identities, everyday lives, and related societal power structures. My overall purpose is to facilitate students becoming more active participants in the roles and spheres they inhabit. As a teacher, I seek to simultaneously encourage and challenge.

I work as an intentional program and course designer to fashion engaging spaces for the expression of students’ authentic identities and critical thought. My first goal when designing a course is to craft clear learning objectives that relate not just to the acquisition of knowledge, but also to the application of theory; the ultimate objective is to have students analyze and act on objects for study and propose their own solutions to problems. In a relational way, I hope to cultivate a classroom dynamic that is less concerned with the transference of knowledge and more concerned with students bringing to the fore and learning to articulate and consider more critically their own bodies of experiences, thoughts, and skills. As an instructor, learning strategist, and educational developer, I have aspired to engage learners by asking for and fashioning examples that relate to their lives and interests; the aim is student-centered pedagogy through the invitation of partnership.

Given that I posit my work as a partnership with students, my student-centered approaches include problem-based and experiential learning activities, as well as the creation of personal learning plans. Problem-based learning is driven by collaboration and problem-solving. For example, I have students collaborate, in groups, on solutions related to problems involving the transition to university, group dynamics, and varied issues in social life. To be sure, I formulate problems in collaboration with students so as to create more authentic cases, and I facilitate discussion of complex social and institutional interactions by asking classes to think about what they know as fact in a given problem, what they might assume, why they make the assumptions they make, how they might investigate problems in greater depth and complicate their solutions, and how their own identities and experiences shape their reading of – and might lead them to act on – a given scenario.

Experiential approaches include the creation of alternative and diverse learning communities where all participants are able to learn from one another. I have first-year students in learning teams apply social scientific concepts and research methods to investigate their classroom experiences by conducting primary research driven by shared inquiry. These first-year groups are led by senior-level students who function as peer mentors; mentors participate in seminar discussions to process the learning they are witnessing in the first-year classroom and undergoing in their own roles as leaders. The creation of mentorship roles is important to the formation of a community that serves to have students think more deeply about their learning experiences, critically analyze the function of power in formal education, and empower voices that are often silenced by traditional classroom structures.

I consider my teaching practice to be inclusivity in action. In my role as a learning strategist, I facilitate the development of students’ academic skills through the implementation of individual learning plans that account for students’ unique circumstances and ways of knowing. These plans are created in collaboration with students, including those with diagnosed learning exceptionalities and mental health challenges. This work has made me more attuned to the varied needs of learners and the importance of universal design in the classroom. It was as a child case-worker that I first understood that students can often teach me as much as (or more than) I can teach them. Thus, I seek to continually evolve as an educator and learn from my colleagues, community, and students.