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• 1 2013-04-29T20:07:57-07:00 Teaching Portfolio 8 plain 2013-04-29T20:19:40-07:00

  My work seeks to render historical questions, perspectives, and stories socially meaningful for present populations. The opportunity to engage students in this process is an integral part of my work. Towards this end, my primary objective as a teacher is to provide students with a critical lens towards American studies so that they may better locate themselves as agents of social change. The toolkit I use to do so emphasizes experiential learning, diversity, and community partnerships.

  Experiential learning offers a powerful tool for engaging students with the practice of comparative ethnic studies. Because of my own professionalization within archival and preservation based organizations, these activities have centered on providing students with opportunities for primary historical analysis, including:

  • Conducting on-site architectural analysis of “the Mexican Village” in Los Angeles
  • Discussing historical methods with archivists at the Seaver Center for Western History
  • Analyzing the content of exhibits at the Natural History Museum

  Rather than finding a “correct” answer, I ask students to consider the various ways groups have worked to create historical narratives that shape the ways we understand racial difference. Recognizing the production of history as a process with material consequences challenges passive-learning approaches to education and can spark debate regarding the stakes involved when making sense of the past.

  I find that opportunities to move the classroom beyond campus resonate particularly strongly with underrepresented students, for whom the communities surrounding urban universities more closely represents their own ethnic or class identifications. For instance, in my coordination of the Building People’s History project, a semester long community partnership intended to draw public attention to a politically-active archive in south Los Angeles, students from diverse backgrounds became active participants in discussion, stayed after class, and expressed interest in becoming majors. The visible presence of leaders sharing a similar background helped them connect with class materials, take an active role in the discussion, and envision a place for themselves in the production of history.  

  Experiential learning and community partnerships contribute to an active-learning environment within the classroom. They provide opportunities for student reflection within writing assignments, common experiences to draw upon during small-group work, and material references for lectures. Based on iterations in my discussion section at USC, I plan for student-led discussion to be a signature part of each class. While lecture and assignments also hold a central role in my classroom, I believe that fostering students’ responsibility for themselves and their classmates helps them hone a sense of self-awareness and accountability as social agents whose ideas and actions affect others. I am also interested in integrating digital media to the classroom in sustainable ways, evident by my current training through the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at USC.
  In closing, as a scholar with a commitment to the public humanities, I seek to make ethnic studies meaningful to students by applying its lessons to the analysis of contemporary landscapes. It is my goal to realize visions of liberatory praxis in the local times and places of people’s lives, both within and beyond the classroom.