Growing up, school always came easy to me but when starting my undergraduate education as a first-generation college student, I was thrown into a completely new education environment. Rather than expecting me to memorize and regurgitate, my professors and mentors expected me to think critically and question everything. This is something I was never taught how to do. My entire education had failed to prepare me for some of the simplest tasks in life, thinking for myself. In college, I had to teach myself how to think and relearn how to learn. This struggle has made me extremely sensitive to the weaknesses of a traditional "lecture and test" education and has motivated me to help students gain the most out of their college experience and ensure that students left my classroom with the skills to think critically and succeed outside of a scantron. This is especially important in Nevada, which houses a diverse education, ethnic, and socio-economic society that is not given equal opportunities to education.

 

As a university and community college instructor, I use a framework for teaching that focuses on the individual learner by creating flexible learning environments. I create a classroom environment where students become their own education advocates. By incorporating frequent assessments and student reflections, providing assignments for multiple learning strategies, and designing assignments based in community service and equity work,  I strive to provide students with opportunities to learn about themselves so they can better conquer course material, give back to their community, and gain skills that will carry them far after their higher education program. 

 

Assessment & Reflection

Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Biology  is an introductory biology lab that undergraduates take their first year as biology majors. The course entails a four-hour in-person lab, made up of about 20-30 students. The hands-on lab component is paired with an online lecture, creating a hybrid environment for students to navigate. The biggest challenges of this course are ensuring that no student falls behind the fast-paced curriculum. It is easy for students to take a passive role and hide behind the work of their lab mates and it is my responsibility to hold each student accountable for their own learning and participation. I do this with frequent “reflection exercises.”  I find reflective learning a great strategy to encourage and deepen student learning by allowing them to evaluate their learning and performance in the classroom. This starts at the beginning of the semester where students take a survey and are asked questions to get them thinking about their own effort and participation: “What will your effort look like in this class?”, “What habits led to your success in previous classes?”, “How much time are you willing to dedicate to this class considering all other responsibilities?” At two more points throughout the semester, students review their previous survey answers and reflect on how they are holding themselves accountable to those standards with additional questions: “What is challenging you this semester?”, “What are you doing well this semester?”, “Do you need to reestablish expectations for your effort in this class?”, “What would help you succeed in this class?”

In addition to these reflections, we complete more specific assessments before and after projects and exams. Before each group project and exam, I review the resources available to study with my classes and ask students to develop a study plan and a goal for the preceding assignment. After each project or exam, the students complete a questionnaire that encourages them reflect on their exam preparation and allow for adjustments for future work. This exercise also provides me an opportunity to see utilized student resources, and then modify the course and resources as necessary. These reflections and assessments are an incredible way for me to gauge the needs and stressors of my students and encourage students to take a more active role in their own education both inside and outside the classroom. 

 

Various Learning Strategies

One of my biggest goals as an educator is to help students learn how they learn. Students are unique, neurodiverse individuals and many students don’t know which learning strategies work best for them. To address this, I introduce students into a variety of learning strategies in our weekly “Pre Lecture Assignments”. In my Principles of Biology course, taught primarily to first year students in the biology major, my students complete a weekly, online assignment to synthesize and summarize the material learned in lectures. Each question in the assignment incorporates a different learning strategy- visual, verbal, and writing. Within one assignment, students will draw out an answer to a question, record themselves speaking an answer to a question, and write out an answer to a question. We practice these same strategies weekly to give students a large sample size of data so they can confidently make decisions about which strategies work best for them and carry that with them in the future.

 

Service & Equity Assignments

I see a STEM classroom as the perfect opportunity to promote DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice) and service work. As a specific strategy, I have crafted activities and assignments that I conduct with my students throughout the course of the semester designed to investigate and expose historically-rooted but persistent biases in scientific fields. In my Advanced Human Physiology course, we complete a semester long project that results in student podcasts discussing a bias that exists in healthcare. We dive into sensitive and important topics that range from gender bias in treating female abdominal pain to questioning why infant mortality rates are higher in infants of color. These assignments give students an opportunity to develop their creative skills in tandem with their scientific research skills and the final products are powerful pieces of work. To learn more about my dedication to service baed, equitable learning, please read about my experience leading a service based project for 120 freshman at UNR.

 

One of the unifying themes among all the pedagogy strategies I have integrated is explaining the “why” with effective learning objectives. In my classrooms, this fosters better relationships between student and instructor, it shows students that great thought and effort has gone into constructing a learning environment that will benefit them in many areas of their lives. I use learning objectives throughout the entire semester to assess student learning and reflect on the effectiveness of assignments and activities. Being able to explain why certain assignments are given also allows instructors to reflect on their own performance and leads to developing stronger courses. I believe that students should be part of creating learning objectives and in my courses, time is taken at the beginning of each course to assess students’ needs and desires. One of the biggest skillsets I have developed teaching in both Nevada and California, is teaching to an incredibly diverse group of students. Within one, 24-person class I taught both a high school student and a forty-year-old mother of three. Most of my students worked part- or full-time jobs and struggled to manage their time and prioritize their education. It was a challenge to hold students to a high standard while also accommodating their diverse needs and schedules throughout the semester. My teaching philosophy revolves around incredible patience and empathy, and I am a better educator for holding these values highly.

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To view an example lecture that puts my teaching philosophy into practice, please visit this link.