Teaching Philosophy

I believe that education should be student-centered, accessible, and collaborative. All of my work in classrooms is framed around an effort to promote and support students. I began as a preceptor in 2015 where I helped students through their group work via probing and guiding questions, scaffolding, and encouraging discussion. With other preceptors, I took the initiative to facilitate review sessions in order to prepare students for their exams. We covered concepts, study methods, and general test taking strategies.

After a year in this role, I transitioned into a role called Instructional Manager, where my responsibilities shifted to managing preceptors, coordinating grading and creating rubrics to be used in the process, and ensuring that class time went by as smoothly as possible. This position was less about interacting with students on a day-to-day basis and focused on removing tedious, repetitive class needs from the instructor’s daily requirements so that the instructor could focus on student learning via instructional task and formative assessment.

Student-centered

Recognize students' input in their learning and apply changes to better their experiences

Accessible

Provide resources that enable students to be engaged in their studies such as: review sessions, office hours, and student habit help

Collaborative

Promote teamwork in class through instructional tasks, out of class through group assignments, and by example through an instructional team

Reflective

Assess practices (teaching, team, grading), determine how to improve outcomes, and implement changes

However, outside of class, I found myself often mentoring students in ways that benefited their self-efficacy. The two and a half years I spent working with students and an instructional team solidified my teaching philosophy. For everyone who wants to be an Engineer, as a professor of mine once said, “Engineering is not a spectator sport.” However, continuing the sports analogy, every team, every player has coaches. Every student has the right to succeed, teaching is just one of the ways I can help that happen.

Being a woman, Latinx, and queer, on top of not feeling comfortable in my identity until after my time in undergrad, I’d like to foster other members of marginalized groups’ desire to remain and succeed in Engineering. Being present and active in a classroom setting means helping them understand that their identify as future Engineers is an important part of their identity but not the only identity they have.