Teaching StatementThe foreign language classroom is a space where students and teachers critically and analytically engage with the most pressing issues of our time. I strive to provide students with such a space, wherein they acquire and apply the necessary tools to grapple with complex concepts, and where they are encouraged to challenge their own assumptions and beliefs. The ultimate goal of my teaching is to empower students to reflect critically on their own environment and the world around them through German language and culture, so that they become interculturally competent citizens in our globalizing world. At the same time, I stress the practical utility of studying German, in that it equips students with a higher mobility in an evermore global employment market.
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Refining My Craft as a Teacher
In order to refine my craft as a teacher, I co-founded an interdepartmental “scholarship of teaching and learning” (SOTL) reading group to provide a space for language instructors to reflect on their teaching practices in dialogue with current pedagogical and second-language-acquisition scholarship. I also have an ongoing digital pedagogy research agenda to further my understanding of designing blended learning curricula that combine online elements with face-to-face instruction. I believe that an implementation of online teaching tools presents language teachers with the tremendous possibility of significantly expanding the quality time students engage with each other in the target language.
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To me, teaching is about being a mentor, and providing students with the resources that they need to follow their own intellectual curiosities. I create an active, democratic learning environment where the study of the language engages students with interdisciplinary source materials, and ultimately enables students to connect to the German language and culture. With the help of different digital communication platforms, students have meaningful, real-world conversations, which shows them the importance of gaining a nuanced understanding of lexico-grammatical structures, and the ability to communicate in different contexts. By reaching linguistic fluency, students become proficient in intercultural exchanges, thereby allowing them to be responsible global citizens.
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