Teaching is learning.

Teaching Philosophy.

Since my earliest years as a graduate instructor, I have sought to act as an instructional guide by providing students with a structure for learning while demonstrating to students how to learn. In a media-inundated environment within which students must maneuver their own academic careers, what students learn from my courses helps them to think critically about the messages they are exposed to while learning to effectively shape their ideas and arguments.

Like the Nile's northward flow, my English, world literature, and foreign language lessons are organized from a “roots-up” perspective, allowing students to build a foundation for their own critical analysis. This manner of teaching contributes to students' overall learning and encourages them to understand the history and culture that is taking place all around them of which they are a formative part. Students discuss lessons and readings in class, and from our discussions, students learn to take a stance on issues and logically argue for them in writing. In forming responses to readings and prompts, I encourage my students to distance themselves from a “like/don't like” attitude toward texts and critically confront issues in order to take themselves out of the role of mere observers, and place themselves as contributors to academic discourse.