At the core of my pedagogical philosophy is the principle that students are knowledge holders and creators capable of transforming our world. As an instructor, I facilitate their development and expand their knowledges through two guiding principles: self-reflection and collaboration. Because I have experience teaching in multiple roles, including in the classroom, in writing centers, and as an administrator working with undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty, I understand how power structures can either enrich or interfere with learning. I teach writing as a transformative process and as a mechanism for creating social and racial justice through the transformation of personal lives, educational institutions, and social worlds.
My research on Latina student’s educational experiences has given me insight into the harm that teachers of writing can cause when they fail to move beyond historically established standards and to see students as knowledge holders and creators. In part to counteract these practices, I developed a language diversity guideline that invites students to write using their entire linguistic repertories. After receiving an explicit invitation to compose with their whole linguistic selves, students have displayed their knowledges by writing in multiple languages and translating multiple languages. This guideline has led to discussions of what counts as academic writing, who gets to be a writer, and how monolingual audiences engage multilingual texts.
Whether I’m teaching first year writing, graduate courses, or providing professional development to writing center consultants or classroom teachers, my goal is to demonstrate that all students possess knowledges grounded in their lived experiences and to provide space for self-analysis and transformation. Students, in particular, can continue to develop beyond my courses as engaged human beings who understand that writing is a collaborative, transformative practice and who take seriously their own and others’ ways of knowing and being.
For more information on my teaching, visit my Community Guidelines page.
Recent Courses Taught:
- English 102 – Composition II
- English 309 – Multimodal Authoring
- English 448 – Perspectives on Literacy
- English 459/667 – Writing Center Pedagogy, Theory, and Research
- English 670 – Writing the Archive