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Educational Philosophy
Why I Teach
After working in the fields of social services with homeless people and then
working as a professional activist with Greenpeace, I came to teaching in my thirties
because I was interested in replicating the experiences that I had in school that
inspired me to be an activist for social and environmental justice. I found my path as a
teacher through modeling Dewey’s belief in pragmatism, implementing experiential
learning with real world feed back in the first “Tide Turners” course I developed. This
course, a community service humanities elective, asked students to pick a problem
that they cared about, research the nonprofit, government and private sector responses
to the issue, then implement their own project-based solution. Serving as a “guide on
the side” I observed students participating in transformational experiences. For
example, a student from Sudan, wanting to take action on the humanitarian crisis in
her home country, organized a three-day student-teach in keynoted by Congressman
Jim Moran, featuring issue experts from nonprofits such as Amnesty International and
culminating with a lobbying day for Darfur refugees on Capitol Hill. This experience
truly helped shape my future teaching and instilled in me a commitment to create a
democratic classroom where the teacher and student learn together with authentic
assessment from real-world feedback in all curricula.
What I Teach
How I Teach