Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy

My pedagogical philosophy is informed by my 12-year tenure working with young people in New York City, including the young women and gender-expansive youth empowerment and political education program, the Sadie Nash Leadership Project. Their curricula are informed by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogies of the Oppressed, Ella Baker’s approach to building collaboratively with young people, and countless women, like me, who have contributed lesson plans to the project. My philosophy is also informed by my experience teaching film production at SUNY, Empire (where project-based activities were crucial to learning), my participation in New York University’s performance and politics fellowship, EmergeNYC, and my teaching experience in religion and African American studies courses at Agnes Scott College and Emory University.

Based on these experiences, five core pedagogical components shape my teaching approach. 1) Compassion and holistic engagement with students, 2) participation such as movement-based activities, discussion, and games that bring both joy and learning, 3) prioritization of underrepresented leaders, 4) student feedback, and 5) the valuing of knowledge in all forms—artistic, embodied, experiential, emotional, spiritual, and textual. These five components, coupled with lectures, epitomize my teaching philosophy. I structure my classes using 30% activity, 40% discussion, and 30% lecture, and I also include media in my lessons, employing video clips, PowerPoint presentations, interactive group surveys, podcasts, and music excerpts.

As literature scholar Yvette DeChavez, advises, I aim to decolonize my syllabi by prioritizing marginalized voices within the academy. Students learn from Black and Brown scholars like Gayraud Wilmore, Yvonne Chireau, Christina Sharpe, Kevin Quashie, and Audre Lorde. Particular attention is given to resistance narratives such as conjure and its use in slave revolts to encourage students’ engagement with social justice. I also assign readings on Black religion and gender and sexuality—such as Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions—to ensure my queer, and trans students not only see themselves in the authors’ subjectivities but the religions as well.

I have found that decolonizing syllabi also means challenging what knowledge is and who possesses it. Students are exposed to books written by religious practitioners like Lilith Dorsey and Luisah Teish, political thinkers like Adrienne Maree Brown, guest lectures from spiritual leaders and grassroots organizers, and field trips to local temples. In religion courses, my goal is to give students a broader comprehension of the religion’s lived practices and orally communicated beliefs, as Africana religions (including most forms of African American Christianity) are informed more by repetitive stories and quotidian practices than text-based doctrine. My approach to African American studies shares a similar goal of connecting students with sites of activism and spaces for personal and collective healing. Moreover, my classes seek to validate alternative forms of knowledge production like dreaming, meditative epiphanies, or rituals. For example, in my Religions of Africa and the Diaspora course at Agnes Scott College, I facilitated a Hoodoo-inspired ritual called a petition, where students wrote down desired results like good grades, money, or new friends.

Artmaking is also a tool and framework I employ in the classroom. In this same class at Agnes Scott College, the final project allowed students to create an art project of their choosing. I encouraged artmaking because I wanted students to connect to the material in a similarly embodied epistemology of religious practitioners. This embodied practice looks like a spiritual, meditative experience that often occurs when making art and also emerges through a connection to materiality (herbs, paint, color, or even film). I evaluated rigor not based on artistic expertise but on demonstrated research in their area of inquiry. Their projects were phenomenal and are available to see at: https://tinyurl.com/ReligionsofAfrica 

I have also implemented holistic care within the classroom by remaining flexible in the course structure. For example, while serving as a teaching associate for a course on Black Love, I had a student who, based on observations from our discussion sessions, was thoroughly engaging in the assigned readings intellectually and emotionally, but his writing skills needed improvement. Taking structural educational racism into account, I advised that if he regularly attended the school writing center, I would adjust his grade to reflect his peers with greater educational access. I also regularly meet with students to provide mentorship, particularly for those who feel comfortable with me due to shared identities, many of whom I am still in contact with today. Ultimately, I believe in a radical pedagogy that is political in its commitment to a liberatory freedom celebrating all forms of knowledge production and showing a deep love for students.