Teacher
My family is a family of educators, tracing our legacy across states, continents, and generations in a single embracing of our inheritance to see to the success and flourishing of young people around the globe. And so, my teaching identity is core to my professional identity. I forged it in teaching from the elementary level through the post-graduate level. I honed it from the urban contexts of my service with AmeriCorps in downtown Dallas, to the cosmopolitan contexts of my time at Dalat International School in Penang, Malaysia, and the cultures, lands, and communities I served in between.
I take a two-pronged approach to meeting students in the learning experience. I try to see them as both individual learners and as actors in a social learning environment. In such I regard students individually as fundamentally:
active and purposeful
rational
creative
moral
free and responsible
And I regard students in relationship with others as fundamentally:
social
loving
merciful
interdependent
As a teacher I see my primary responsibility as unlocking students’ potentials for human flourishing. To do this I need to set students up for success, meet students’ diverse needs as diverse learners, and appeal to and arouse students’ curiosities to learn not only new things, but also known things more deeply. When my students have access to realize their potential not in just a content area, but also in their greater capacity as human beings, they realize how valuable they are to humanity as contributing thinkers and actors. They understand their actions have consequences in the lives of others, and then they will flourish.
I believe the deepest seat of learning is the heart. Truly learning something begets change, so it involves transformation at the most fundamental level of our human experience under a synthesis of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. In a short statement, it is difficult to discuss the learning process deeply. But to be brief, learners (teachers and students) are active and responsible in this process, which occurs through perception, conceptualization, and application. The synthesis of multiple learning domains means that true learning is felt in deep, myriad ways—transformative experiences are key to transformative learning. As a teacher I facilitate this process through:
enabling social connection in the learning community
finding bridges of application from theory to practice
careful design of learning objectives and activities I communicate transparently
frequent formative assessment with precise feedback
encouraging classroom and performing cultures that foster risk-taking, vulnerability, and trust
I have found the large performing ensemble (wind ensemble, orchestra, athletic bands, and the like) to be an incredible laboratory to practice this process, which is why I put my professional focus here.
