“Who wants to get better today?” It’s the question I ask to start each of my acting classes, but it also captures the approach to all my teaching. To me, getting “better” isn’t checking boxes, meeting other’s expectations, or dismissing what we’ve already accomplished. It’s about making discoveries, overcoming challenges, and taking another step forward in being the kind of thinkers, creators, and contributors to our communities that we aspire to be. What excites me most about the classroom are the opportunities to improve and to grow in these ways, both for my students and for me. Each of us enters the classroom with a desire to understand ourselves, the world around us, and who we want to be in it.
Teaching is service. Guiding and supporting others through this journey is a tremendous responsibility, but my passion for it comes from the self-reflective, creative, and intellectual discoveries I witness throughout each semester. I believe these moments are best facilitated with teaching that centers and values students as individuals, each bringing unique backgrounds, perspectives, and curiosities into the classroom. Different students learn through a variety of different ways, and I love opportunities to communicate and connect through various points of interest. I also personalize my feedback based on each student’s own goals and needs. In my writing-intensive courses, students are given autonomy and flexibility in choosing essay topics that best align with their passions. I meet with them individually to identify their goals, interests, and questions before relating them to our course theme and creating a customized plan for their writing process. Likewise, my practice-based courses include constructive, personalized feedback framed as exciting opportunities for improvement. Moreover, I encourage them to take ownership of their creative processes and adapt techniques to best suit their own bodies, voices, and artistic identities.
Teaching is unifying. While tending to the individual, I also strive to connect my students by fostering a supportive, accepting, and respectful learning community. In theatre pedagogy especially, this requires an acute awareness of the cultural codes, social behaviors, and inscriptions of power I ask my students to embody in the classroom and onstage. Additionally, being cognizant of the impacts commercialized standards of physical appearance can have on students’ perception of self and identity is crucial. Therefore, I believe I am ethically bound to help students cultivate the critical and intellectual skills needed to understand how they represent, appropriate, or resist these inscriptions placed upon them and their fellow artists. My teaching philosophy is thus inherently intertwined with my commitment to advocate for diversity in the academy, the theatre, and the communities they reflect. As an educator, I promote and demonstrate a critical eye for how gender, class, race, and other characteristics of identity are expressed in studios, classrooms, and performance spaces.
Teaching is empowerment. Confidence in our identities, values, and self-expression requires a comprehensive understanding of our social, cultural, moral, and spiritual worldviews. I find my students learn the most about themselves by learning about other people, cultures, and perspectives. My teaching achieves this broadening of appreciations and curiosities through an embracing of interdisciplinarity.
As a scholar/artist, I believe an appreciation for all branches of knowledge broadens the limits of conventional understanding within our fields of study. To produce new knowledge and ask new questions, I guide my students in reaching out to other disciplines to borrow methodologies and perspectives. I firmly believe this appreciation for cross-disciplinary work not only gives students the foundations they need to thrive in their field’s current state but also serve as leaders and innovators well-equipped to shape its future. To that end, my classes aim to inspire students to become well-rounded, self-reliant creators and thinkers who have the expertise to propel successful careers and pursue fulfilling lives on their own terms. I believe theatre is a liberal (i.e., liberating) art that allows us to engage and empathize with the innumerable ways the human experience is understood and expressed. However, I also believe theatre is best learned by making it. All my classes connect back to practice and my work as a professional actor, designer, and technician allows me to present theatre from a holistic perspective.
Through teaching, I hope to serve, unify, empower, and inspire the appreciation and pursuit of artistic expression. I hope to help us all get a little better each day.