Everyone deserves to find joy in learning and to be respected as whole, complex people.
My teaching philosophy is strongly influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and by the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm — so you can tell that I’ve been working at a Jesuit school! But in fact, the IPP is essentially what is taught in secular ed schools. Xavier University summarizes the principles of the IPP this way:
The five educational principles:
- Context - understanding student life and culture
- Experience - providing intellectual and affective learning opportunities
- Reflection - of meaning for self and others
- Action - the external expression of learned content
- Evaluation - of student growth
The eagle-eyed among you will notice that this is surprisingly similar to the 5E lesson planning framework commonly used in science education. For me, however, couching my approach to teaching in a Jesuit context particularly resonates because Jesuit education emphasizes that our students are whole people who bring valuable experience to the table. It centers our students’ humanity — warts and all — and that’s something that, honestly, I think is easy to forget about when you are, say, grading tests or enforcing your class’s phone use policy.
At its best, learning is joyful, empowering, and liberating. This learning is characterized by depth of thought, healthy skepticism, and robust dialog. It’s collaborative, iterative, and dynamic. Only through good learning can people become empowered to take care of themselves and each other.
Given that understanding of learning, my teaching practice encourages careful argument construction, metacognitive and reflective practices, the building of a classroom community, and strong emotional engagement. I want for my students to not just learn the content, but to learn how to detect bullshit, how to support each other, how to navigate difficulty — in short, how to be fully human.
I focus on building relationships with my students and providing them opportunities to build relationships with others through frequent group work. I ask my students explain their thoughts to me and to each other with the evidence they gather through experimentation, valuing the principle of eloquentia perfecta, or “perfect speech.” And I consistently provide students opportunities to reflect on their learning, both how much they learned and how they felt while learning it. Recognizing the feelings associated with learning — the frustration, the anxiety, the happiness, the triumph — gives students the tools to know what good learning feels like, and to advocate for themselves when good learning isn’t happening.
I know that not all of my students are going to go on to become scientists. But they are going to be citizens of Earth, and a strong science education can help prepare them to be advocates for themselves and their communities.