Teaching Philosophy

How do you cultivate joy, interest, self-direction, and hands-on learning in a humanities classroom? One of the most impactful experiences I had as a student was looking at microfiche exploring newspapers from decades past for a history project in high school. As an instructor in film and media studies, I want to generate opportunities for students to have their own moments of discovery and delight in the archive, whether that’s the local library branch, special collections at the university, or digital repositories of online archives. In support of this teaching goal, I’ve structured my classes around archive-based research projects. These projects, which students design based on their individual interests, are developed incrementally throughout the course with a variety of scaffolding activities and small assignments. I have found that student curiosity and investment are fostered most by sending them into the library stacks and presenting them with tangible objects or documents as illustrations of class concepts. (Simply talking about the concept of spirit communication and bringing in a 1972 Ouija boardgame to class engender two very different learning experiences, after all.)

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Filtering course material through what some scholars have called “object studies,” or what might more colloquially be understood as “things you can touch,” brings accessibility into the classroom in perhaps a different way than we often think about accessibility as teachers. We ultimately are curators of syllabi and student experiences, but to invite students to tinker, to interact in a tactile way, and to handle dusty, mostly undisturbed materials means we are curators of cabinets of curiosities also. Any class I teach empowers students to contribute their own oddities to this cabinet and indulge their own curiosities about the objects brought to their doorstep or those they go looking for on their own. The excitement students feel in discovering objects and ideas that are not necessarily readily available on the internet or digital archives has a profound effect on their understanding of curation—that is, the curation of histories: what is left out of the historical record, and what is important about the very material, physical existence of plural histories?

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I want students to walk away from the classroom with embodied research skills that can extend to other areas of their lives; these skills can translate to critical thinking and a student’s sense of self-efficacy and self-advocacy. Not only do I cultivate these skills through hands-on archival exposure, but also by creating a safe and encouraging learning environment for students before class sessions even begin. Individual student needs are wide-ranging and divergent. This prompted me to develop a pre-class survey with a set of questions pertaining to student learning styles, logistical impediments to learning or attendance, intellectual and/or emotional investments in the class, and personal goals for the term. Students have responded very positively to these surveys, noting in comments that they may have trouble keeping up in class due to English being a second language, or that they are more comfortable participating in small group discussions. Opening this line of communication sets the tone of my receptiveness as a teacher, allows me to adapt the course responsively, and translates to a smoother flow of communication throughout the course.

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Finding ways for students to be invested in the class material, cultivating a safe and responsive learning environment for them, and fostering agency in the learning process are three imperatives for the critical skills students will employ beyond the classroom. In my teaching practice, I’ve found that object-oriented analysis, guided archival research, and teaching with responsiveness and sensitivity creates fertile ground for students to develop holistically. My approaches of using underutilized archives and weird objects to foster self-directed research along with emphasizing feedback to create an inclusive and responsive atmosphere share the goal of emboldening students to enrich their intellectual pursuits and engage their self-reflective capacities.