Experimentation and Collaboration
I teach about 50 information literacy (IL) sessions for English Composition courses each year but no class is exactly the same. The benefit of this “one-shot” instruction model is that I can continually refine my approach, iterate, and experiment. Since the core content of the IL sessions remains constant, I focus on responding to classroom dynamics, developing new strategies to engage students, and continually refine activities to yield important critical insights about research materials and tools. As an active member of the City Tech Library Instruction Team and Curriculum Committee, I have helped lead assessment activities to identify gaps in student learning and gain feedback from subject faculty that inform new approaches to IL instruction.
Collaboration plays a huge role in my teaching practice and is perhaps the defining characteristic of my pedagogy. I rely on my extensive experience as an “outsider” in other classrooms when developing the Learning Places curriculum in terms of timing, assignment design, the integration of research, and collaboration with guest lecturers and co-instructors. After more than 12 years of experience in classrooms, co-teaching this course has resulted in the most profound transformation of my pedagogy. I have learned (and continue to learn) so much from collaborative curricular design and by observing how faculty in other disciplines approach instruction and engage with students. I believe that true interdisciplinary, co-teaching involves more than bringing different perspectives and teaching styles into the classroom; the most successful co-teaching experiences are generative and dynamic. Through the rhetorical interplay of two people with different pedagogical approaches and disciplinary backgrounds working together, alongside a group of students, new possibilities for understanding what a place means, what our relationship to place is, and how our actions in places have the capacity to create change become possible.
Professional Development Activities and Scholarship
As a member of formal and informal professional communities, my pedagogy is influenced by academic library peers and faculty within CUNY and beyond. Much of my scholarship is directly related to pedagogy; writing and research is one of the primary ways that I think through my role as an educator and meaningfully connect my classroom experience to critical pedagogical theory.
I engage in local professional development activities and have taken on leadership roles in organizations including: the Library Association of CUNY, the CUNY Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee, and the Metropolitan Library Association. Professional development opportunities at City Tech including the Bridging the Gap seminar series, participation in Open Lab and Living Lab pedagogy seminars, contributions to the Online Learning Advisory Committee (OLAC) and the Library’s Open Educational Resources initiative, as well as my involvement in college wide curricular assessment and course coordination activities have all offered meaningful opportunities for dialogue, reflection, and refinement of my pedagogical practices.
I’ve learned a lot from collaborating with teachers across New York City as part of my work on the education working group at Interference Archive and reflected on my teaching practice in recent presentations with City Tech faculty and with librarians at other institutions. Each year I attend at least one local and one national conference to connect with other library practitioners and learn new pedagogical strategies that I can use and adapt.
*Selected scholarship and professional development activities
