Teaching Philosophy
I am a first-generation college student, and my journey has primarily been inspired by self-explorations and travels. Growing up with little resources and in-between wars in West Africa, I am self-taught in many aspects of my life and in some of the interests I am pursuing today as an adult, including arts, language, and philosophy. Growing up, I have always found comfort in humanitarian causes and philosophy. Finding a mentor who believed in me and represented those ideals was crucial in not only my personal life, but also in my professional endeavors. It is that same sense of unconditional support and philosophical ideals that drive my educational pursuit.
As I continue to nurture my sense of self through self-reverence, vulnerability, and humanism, my pedagogical approaches steadily find lives of their own. But more than anything I see myself as an Agent of Change promoting a philosophy of pedagogical inclusivity and diversity within a multi-dynamic and multidimensional ecological system. For me, this means that I am intentional about learning from the systems that are already in place, while being flexible with changing dynamics. These dynamics can be viewed as non-marginalizing systems of coherent anticipatory and proactive provisions used to cultivate means for enacting equated opportunities and policies. Because attending to individual differences can prove challenging, I believe that my role as an educator is not only to facilitate systemic growth through individual and collective safety, but also to encourage self-development and self-agency in inclusive and validating ways.
In line with my philosophical stance, my role as an agent of change dictates that I approach my instructional role as a co-creator of knowledge. As such, my students are also viewed as agents of change to whom I extend the opportunity to co-create alongside the learning process. My intention in doing so is to incentivize them to be active learners and not passively digest the contents that are being passed on to them. As co-creators, in my classrooms, I invite the curiosity of my learners and students from a backward design pedagogical methodology. My vision and goals are therefore to adapt to each learning environment and to the students within it according to the unique dynamics being developed. I anticipate that taking this approach can empower learners and help enrich all levels of the ecological system, including me as an educator and lifelong learner.