TEACHING APPROACH
My pedagogy
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
I focus on using non-traditional teaching strategies to provide experiential, concept-based learning experiences for my students. Many of my learning activities engage students in meaningful real world problems that require team-work and ‘out of the box’ thinking. I am trained to facilitate experiential activities and I bring these skills into my classroom to authentically connect my students with their learning.
DIFFERENTIATION
I’ve had the opportunity to work with many diverse groups of students, including ELL students, students with Autism, Down-Syndrome, Learning Disabilities, and severe medical conditions. Whatever the needs of my students may be, I differentiate my instruction and assessment, and constantly reflect on the effectiveness of my scaffolding. The process of creating a safe environment and caring community with my students is one of my favourite parts of teaching. It lays the groundwork for learning because a student will only take risks when they feel safe, valued, and cared for. And learning, is all about taking risks.
INCLUSION
As a teacher, I promote pluralism by celebrating and honouring everyone's lived experience and identity in the relationships I build with my students, and with the content I provide.
ARTS BASED
"Imagination is the ability to reach beyond what is to what might be or should be, to open the way to the possible." - Maxine Greene. I am a strong believer in the transformative power of the arts within education. I myself attended St. John Fine Arts school as a student and experienced first hand the difference an arts based education makes.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
As an educator, I want to help my students feel hopeful about the world they live in. I want them to feel confident in their ability to make a difference. To meet this goal, I design projects that challenge students to creatively and actively confront issues affecting their community.
“Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance, and one of teaching's great rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get back on the dance floor. It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.”
Parker J. Palmer
