PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING STATEMENT

Although the bulk of my teaching in recent years has been at the post-secondary level, I still describe myself, when asked, as an Early Childhood Educator rather than as a Professor or Instructor; not because Early Learning and Child Care are necessarily my best or favourite topics of instruction (even though they are), but rather because my pedagogy informs my andragogy in such profound ways. Many people still believe that children are ‘just little adults’, homunculi. This is not true. But it is true that adults are just big children. My learning environments, whether they are for our youngest, our keenest, our weariest, or our reinvigorated learners, are places of laughter, music, movement, play, inquiry, and collaboration. Neuroscience into the developing brain tells us that warm, responsive interactions ignite and drive synaptogenesis, that action and repetition myelinate, and that music and play are mnemonic, but also necessary, catalysts for learning. This is true of young brains. It is true of all brains. My students and colleagues can expect me to co-create a classroom where learners’ abilities and possibilities are met with flexibility; where knowledge sharing and evaluation are open, de-barriered, and multi-modal, and where a passion for both learning and teaching is contagious. My own drive for learning and teaching has been caught from and incubated by the passion of other educators, and I strive to do the same for any learner who joins me in my classroom.

A typical day in any of my learning spaces starts with warmth of reception and connection to care; building relationships with students as a model for how we expect them to connect with their own students in turn. I work continually to decolonize my practice, and to unlearn harmful ideas that have been reiterated in academia for too long. My practice is rooted in collaboration and co-learning, in ideas of uncovering and discovering rather than ‘covering’ course material. I use storytelling, the arts, and adaptive and digital technologies to help ideas come to life. I encourage conversations and correlations. I aim to embody ideas of scaffolding and proximal development in each of my interactions with students so that all of us can internalize the feeling of teaching and learning moments. In my assessments and evaluations too, I aim to honour the many different ways pre- and in-service teachers (and all learners) know and show, providing options for multimodal submissions, and evaluation methods that mirror real-world challenges rather than synthetic standardized environments. I challenge myself to be an exceptional educator, knowing the difference it makes to learn from passionate pedagogues… not only in learning but also as inspiration for future practice. My students too, will be one of their students’ ‘exceptional educators’.

I have a real love of language and a tendency towards flowery vernacular, so concepts that are plain to my mind often call for complexity in writing. Had I just one word to sum up my philosophy of teaching, it might be ‘praxis’ – the embodiment of ideas and theory, the living of lessons, the internalization and application of knowing and doing... Of course that can all be broken down even further, and so emerge ideas around ‘embodiment’ and the ways that active, participatory, practical learnings are central to my classrooms; or ‘living’ and the ways that dynamism, student-centered approaches, and experience-honouring are; or ‘theory’ and the ways that context, research, and evidence-basis ground my teaching but do not tyrannize it. Perhaps the best, albeit rather trite, idea to isolate is that of “knowing better and doing better”. I consider myself profoundly lucky to be teaching in a time of rapid and extensive research in both pedagogy and andragogy. I thrive on being able to weave in and pivot on new information in my learning environments, and on incorporating both academic expertise and the lived experiences of my students into our learning. This ‘knowing better’ is often informed by thinkers who remain fundamental to my understanding of teaching as a vocation; Hannah Arendt, Gert Biesta, Lisa Disch, Kimberlé Crenshaw, as well as the incredible educators who introduced me to these thinkers. These ideas have turned my practice into one of rational compassion, of democracy and collective construction, of plurality, equity, and holism, and of consent and consensus. In turn, my practice compels me towards robust participation in research, publication, and training, both within my academic community and outside the walls of their institutions. Accessibility, while admittedly sometimes missing from my scholastic writing, is a mark I strive not to miss in-person, and admit just as readily that I still sometimes do. I relish the opportunity to know better and do better in partnership with any organization and learning team that strives to do the same.