TEACHING AND PEDAGOGY
A Problem-Posing Education
I believe that the most powerful forms of learning come from grounded and everyday critiques of the world. My principal goal as an educator is to develop a critical perspective that allows students to identify social problems in their communities, to explore those problems by introducing easily understood methodologies, and to encourage discussions that lead to informed solutions. Most importantly, I continuously discuss my own pedagogical goals with students so they can understand how and why they are learning.
WATCH A LECTURE!
2020 Vision: Ethnography of a Most Disruptive Year
Watch a video that was created for my final lecture of 2020. During a year that included a pandemic, a polemic election, and social unrest, anthropologists had a lot to talk about. I discuss how I used anthropological theory to understand disruptions in my own world and how students may apply this sense of disruption to their lives.
INSPIRED BY PAULO FREIRE
A pedagogy of the oppressed
Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire’s discussion of a critical pedagogy has guided me through much of my growth as an educator. Freire’s problem-posing method asks students to name a social problem, to reflect upon the problem by using newly acquired literacies or technical skills, and to act in an informed way that leads to the resolution of a problem. I find this model (to name, to reflect, to act) is useful in a social science classroom where technical vocabularies are applied to contemporary cultural and political debates that are readily observable in the everyday lives of students.
A CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN THE FAVELAS
Violence before Rio's Olympics
I came to appreciate the real-world ramifications of Freire’s critical pedagogy during my doctoral research when I spent four years collaborating with grassroots activists in Brazilian favelas (shantytowns). Freire-inspired government programs trained favela activists to use smart phones, social media, and digital cameras to record the struggles of everyday life on Rio’s urban margins. A group of these students then used social media to organize mass street protests against police violence and to share their human rights vernacular with activists across the globe.
EVERYDAY ETHNOGRAPHIES
Social Media Analysis, Self-Reflection, and Experimentation
Inspired by my experience witnessing a critical pedagogy in Brazilian favelas, I develop introductory courses around problem-posing and semester-long ethnographic projects. I center my courses around contemporary social issues and assign homework that asks students to actively brainstorm similar issues in their communities. Students then video record a conversation with a community member affected by this issue. Some students have spent a day in the life of social workers, local politicians, environmental activists, and imams. Many of my students are already employed as clinical assistants or police officers and use their ethnographic projects to better understand their careers and develop a sense of empathy.
AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF INCARCERATED CLASSROOMS
Working with students to create knowledge about a global pandemic
In 2018, I designed an online “Introduction to Anthropology” course for incarcerated students housed at eight Wisconsin prisons. Students were both victims and perpetrators of violence and many hoped to turn their education into a career helping people like themselves. Online communication between students was barred by law, students were prohibited from conducting online research, and I could only communicate through written evaluations. I assigned essays that asked students to apply course themes to incarcerated life. With institutional approval and interlocutor consent, I have published articles that quote student writing and provide a model for the humanistic teaching of incarcerated people in the digital age.
INVITING EXPERTS INTO THE CLASSROOM
Teaching interview skills
I encourage students to “ground” theory in an everyday reality by discussing local community problems, de-centering my voice, and inviting experts to speak in the classroom. For an “Introduction to American Politics” course at Carroll University, I asked students to imagine a campaign to rename a nearby park from “Jackson Park” to “Liberace Park”. Whereas the park’s namesake Andrew Jackson was a US president who promoted slavery and indigenous genocide, Liberace grew up near the park and became a famed 1950s piano man known for introducing LGBTQ+ voices to the television sets of middle America. The class had weekly workshops to develop the campaign and local politicians visited the class to discuss the practical legislative dynamics of a name change. I designed a similar problem-posing course titled “Anthropology of Activism” for Beloit College where students interviewed eight human rights activists from Wisconsin. Most students were aspiring activists and inquired about the toolkit of professional community advocates. By bringing outside and diverse voices into the classroom, I hope to give students access to local networks and practices that they can use long after a course is finished.
CLASSROOM ETHNOGRAPHIES OF CURRENT EVENTS
Learning through media analysis
For more all online or "asynchronous" courses, I coach students through project-based collaborations, ethnographic coding, and data-base management. These projects have taken many forms depending on the course and students. For example, in an online class titled “Police and Democratic States” at the University of Colorado, I asked 60 undergraduate students to annotate online articles concerning the COVID-19 pandemic in prisons. We created a shared database and used anthropological theory to code 400 articles. Students analyzed the database, created visualizations of common patterns, and wrote essays about how their knowledge was distinct from a dominant narrative about COVID in prisons. Even with pandemic restrictions, this semester-long project created a collaborative environment where students could ethnographically engage problems.
MENTORING STEM GRADUATE STUDENTS
Teaching-as-research Projects
I have also taught peers outside of the social sciences to use a problem-posing pedagogy. As a program assistant for the University of Colorado’s Graduate Teacher Program (GTP), I worked with a group of graduate students from every STEM discipline on Colorado’s campus and facilitated nine semesters of faculty workshops related to classroom teaching. These workshops helped to develop Teaching-as-Research (TAR) projects that asked STEM graduate students to apply social science methods to investigate the effectiveness of their laboratory classrooms. Almost all of the forty plus TAR projects that I helped supervise resulted in academic publications, conference presentations, and further “applied” projects.
MUSEUM CURATION IN THE CLASSROOM
An Exhibit on Pandemic Masks
In the Fall of 2021, I designed an introduction to anthropology course with the Logan Museum at Beloit College. We compared several masks found amongst the hundreds of thousands of artifacts within the college's archives. Students compared these masks to the variety of the masks they used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these masks included objects and concepts that are not typically associated with pandemic masks including feminizing hormone therapy, alcohol, and football helmets. At the end of the course, students were asked to imagine what the mask of 2121 would look like. The semester-long project encouraged students to consider a four field anthropological approach that included archeology, cultural anthropology, and physical anthropology. By defining non-traditional items as "masks", students also explored the socio-linguistic nature of everyday life.
EXPERIMENTING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
High School Year books, Memes, and Non-fungible Tokens
I envision my classrooms as ethnographic laboratories where students test innovative methods that use technology. In one course titled “Social Media Analysis” taught at Beloit College, I guided students through a series of smaller projects that explored theoretical and practical aspects of the digital age. One two-week project looked at social media as a historical archive. We searched an online database of high school yearbooks for photos containing “blackface” and other examples of cultural appropriation. After compiling a database, we discussed how social media algorithms—much like yearbook editors— are ill-equipped to identify culturally insensitive information. Other projects for the course included documenting the linguistic qualities of TikTok videos and creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to discuss the political economy of the blockchain. Throughout these activities, students wrote about their experiences and described how these practices could influence the future of ethnography.