Teaching Praxis
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” –Marianne Williamson
I am acutely aware of the importance of instilling in learners a strong conviction that they are powerful, brilliant, and competent beings with luminous futures. I am fully convinced that humble beginnings can give way to heroic endings.
I became attuned to the possibilities for my own life through the spoken and written word, namely stories. As a child, I was intrigued with real and fictionalized accounts of people of color who overcame obstacles such as poverty and illiteracy to achieve lifelong dreams. My encounter with these stories fueled my passion to pursue scholarship in storytelling, children’s and young adult literature, and literacy. As such, my intense passion in the aforementioned subjects has prepared me to teach courses in each of these areas.
I have been blessed to have a plethora of faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds mentor me throughout my collegiate career at South Carolina, Harvard, and now the University of Illinois. Faculty and staff at each institution have proven themselves to be genuinely concerned about my well-being and a number have become deeply invested in my current as well as future success. For this, I am truly grateful.
Since I was already the recipient of beneficial teaching and mentoring, I warmly welcomed the first opportunity to teach and mentor myself. So I traveled to Surabaya, Indonesia, to serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA). I became intimately aware of teaching challenges involved in my first encounter with a non-English-speaking culture. Yet I also found the task to be intriguing as well as immensely rewarding. For example, while serving as an ETA, my primary responsibility was to help 200 plus tenth and eleventh grade students improve their conversational English speaking skills. If my students had limited knowledge of English, I had even more limited knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia, which is the national language of Indonesia. However, as time progressed, I came to understand and look upon what I had initially perceived to be a “challenge” as an opportunity—an opportunity to help my students grow while doing so myself.
Instead of taking an English-immersion approach, I took an integrated one. I asked my students to teach me Bahasa Indonesia while they fine-tuned their English speaking skills. In addition to providing students with agency, this enabled me to learn more about colloquial phrases that were popular amongst students. Increasing my knowledge of the national language further helped me as I sought to build relationships with students, parents, school officials, and community members.
I learned from my experience as an ETA to set aside time to self-reflect and critique my approach to classroom instruction; this lesson served me well when I later became a teaching assistant in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois. For example, during my Introduction to Asian American Studies discussion sections, I encouraged students to tap into their creative genius by constructing drawings, engaging in role-play, and participating in online interactive games. Moreover, I enthusiastically employed the primary instructor’s in-classroom technique of having students lead discussions. This proved to be fruitful because students shared their own ideas and worldview, which helped to further enrich the classroom environment.
To gauge how (and if) my students were receptive to my lessons, I utilized early informal feedback questionnaires and asked trusted colleagues to observe my teaching and make note of areas where I could improve. I also participated in a number of seminars offered through the Center for Teaching Excellence to enhance my effectiveness within the classroom and to stay abreast of new techniques that are being employed to reach learners from various walks of life.
Teaching is highly gratifying and allows me to engage in unadulterated intellectual exchange and communicate directly with learners. It also enables me to receive knowledge and insight from my students. It is my utmost goal to instill in students a lifelong love for learning, a curiosity to apply knowledge as well as skills obtained within the classroom to their everyday lives, and a willingness to critique and challenge preconceived notions. Teaching of this kind is not just a job but a vocation. In essence, it is an entire way of life.
I became attuned to the possibilities for my own life through the spoken and written word, namely stories. As a child, I was intrigued with real and fictionalized accounts of people of color who overcame obstacles such as poverty and illiteracy to achieve lifelong dreams. My encounter with these stories fueled my passion to pursue scholarship in storytelling, children’s and young adult literature, and literacy. As such, my intense passion in the aforementioned subjects has prepared me to teach courses in each of these areas.
I have been blessed to have a plethora of faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds mentor me throughout my collegiate career at South Carolina, Harvard, and now the University of Illinois. Faculty and staff at each institution have proven themselves to be genuinely concerned about my well-being and a number have become deeply invested in my current as well as future success. For this, I am truly grateful.
Since I was already the recipient of beneficial teaching and mentoring, I warmly welcomed the first opportunity to teach and mentor myself. So I traveled to Surabaya, Indonesia, to serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA). I became intimately aware of teaching challenges involved in my first encounter with a non-English-speaking culture. Yet I also found the task to be intriguing as well as immensely rewarding. For example, while serving as an ETA, my primary responsibility was to help 200 plus tenth and eleventh grade students improve their conversational English speaking skills. If my students had limited knowledge of English, I had even more limited knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia, which is the national language of Indonesia. However, as time progressed, I came to understand and look upon what I had initially perceived to be a “challenge” as an opportunity—an opportunity to help my students grow while doing so myself.
Instead of taking an English-immersion approach, I took an integrated one. I asked my students to teach me Bahasa Indonesia while they fine-tuned their English speaking skills. In addition to providing students with agency, this enabled me to learn more about colloquial phrases that were popular amongst students. Increasing my knowledge of the national language further helped me as I sought to build relationships with students, parents, school officials, and community members.
I learned from my experience as an ETA to set aside time to self-reflect and critique my approach to classroom instruction; this lesson served me well when I later became a teaching assistant in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois. For example, during my Introduction to Asian American Studies discussion sections, I encouraged students to tap into their creative genius by constructing drawings, engaging in role-play, and participating in online interactive games. Moreover, I enthusiastically employed the primary instructor’s in-classroom technique of having students lead discussions. This proved to be fruitful because students shared their own ideas and worldview, which helped to further enrich the classroom environment.
To gauge how (and if) my students were receptive to my lessons, I utilized early informal feedback questionnaires and asked trusted colleagues to observe my teaching and make note of areas where I could improve. I also participated in a number of seminars offered through the Center for Teaching Excellence to enhance my effectiveness within the classroom and to stay abreast of new techniques that are being employed to reach learners from various walks of life.
Teaching is highly gratifying and allows me to engage in unadulterated intellectual exchange and communicate directly with learners. It also enables me to receive knowledge and insight from my students. It is my utmost goal to instill in students a lifelong love for learning, a curiosity to apply knowledge as well as skills obtained within the classroom to their everyday lives, and a willingness to critique and challenge preconceived notions. Teaching of this kind is not just a job but a vocation. In essence, it is an entire way of life.