Education
Teaching Philosophy
I believe that being a good writer is one of the most important skills you can learn during your educational career. No matter what profession you enter, much of your work will center on writing and communicating effectively. This reality is also true for the various courses you will take during your academic pursuits. To be a good writer is a source of power that can help you achieve your goals and succeed in your endeavors. The term “good writer” is often misunderstood. One may define it as someone who writes a clear sentence or has flawless grammar. These elements are essential and are part of the definition, yet they do not create a complete picture of what it means to be a good writer. In my classroom, I strive to help students fully understand what tools they need to be a good writer and the importance of mastery of the skill.
As an educator, I strive to create a classroom environment that allows my students to explore the world and look at situations in new ways. My classroom structure is classically “flipped” to allow the maximum face-to-face time for discussing concepts and ideas. This active classroom encourages my students to write, think, and argue ideas. I expect them to wallow in the complexity of all subjects and situations. This approach helps cement the idea that good writing has much to do with good thinking. Critical thinking is at the forefront of my learning objectives when I plan a lesson. My classroom encourages a workshop environment where students spend most of their time writing and sharing their work. Sharing their work and ideas fosters the critical thinking spirit amongst them.
To help students understand the multifaceted nature of good writing, I strive to connect their learning to their lives by creating lessons based on real-life situations. I also tailor class plans to encourage students to connect their projects to their prospective careers. For example, my health sciences students are assigned to research the community’s health services for problems that require solving. Then, working in teams, they research and weigh the various solutions to a specific problem, choosing the best remedy and presenting it to the counties’ public services department.
Technology is also essential in my classroom, as it is a crucial communication element in our world. Guiding my students in using technology, such as social media and digital databases, is vital in preparing them to be good communicators in the digital era. For example, I embed several multi-media presentations into my course, where students learn to use different types of technology and data visualizations to communicate their communication goals to their intended audience. The students get to see how each type of technical tool affects explicitly their audience.
Another attribute of being a good writer is global citizenship. My mission is to help my students understand the value of learning about how other cultures communicate. Global awareness adds much to our definition of what good writing is for, and it varies from country to country. A good writer understands the differences in how other people communicate so that they may communicate more effectively with others. As our world shrinks and we more commonly face working with other countries, this facet of good writing is crucial. An example of how I incorporate global awareness into the classroom is when my students analyze different texts from the same genre but written in different countries so we may start to understand how cultures use varied approaches to communicating.
In conclusion, the core philosophy of my writing classroom is to foster empathy, an awareness of those they aim to communicate with, and the various ideas and perspectives others hold. By creating an active classroom where my students are constantly challenged to understand the people and world around them to write more effectively to reach them, my students leave my class prepared to reach their goals in a global world.
Classes Taught
Creative Writing
CRW 2001: Introduction to Creative Writing
CRW3311: Narrative Techniques
Professional & Technical Writing
ENC2210: Professional Writing for Business Majors
ENC3250: Technical Writing for Health Science Majors
ENC3250: Technical Writing for STEM Sciences
Composition
ENC1101: College Composition I
ENC1102: College Composition II
ENC1101: College Composition I for STEM Sciences
WRA 101: Writing & Inquiry
Program Development
Junior Creative Writing General Arts
In the summer of 2016, I re-imagined the junior creative writing elective which was only an afterthought at the time. Due to my newly developed program and dynamic instruction, the classes saw a 54% increase in enrollment by 2019.
Junior Creative Writing Major
Due to the success and popularity of my junior creative writing elective program, I was asked to develop a program that would have creative writing as the central focus for the junior division. The program will launch in the summer of 2021.
Interlochen Online Junior Gen Arts, Creative Writing
To adapt the summer 2020 camp season - due to the Covid-19 virus - Interlochen took classes online. I was asked to develop a three-week program for the juniors in creative writing, fully online.
Worldbuilding for Video Game Developers
I built this course for computer science majors who plan to go into video game development for Florida Polytechnic University. The course focuses on developing compelling storylines for video games.
Interdisciplinary Creative Writing
This creative writing course I built focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to storytelling, incorporating visual art, nature, music, drama, and movement.
College Composition for STEM Writers
I developed a first-year writing course that focuses on the types of writing found in the STEMs, such as Lab Reports, Popular Science Articles, and a variety of Reports with attention paid to their rhetorical demands.