Teaching

I have been teaching since 2005, so I have only included highlights on this page. For a detailed list of my activities, please see my CV.

Graduate teaching

I teach Individual Differences and Accessibility in Language Teaching for the MA in Foreign Language Teaching at Michigan State University. I designed and developed the course in 2023. In this course, I implement another iteration of my favorite assignment: critical reflections in the form of open-format assignments. I’ve presented and written about my use of this open-format assignment before (e.g, this FLTmag article). I also institute myriad inclusive practices in the course to serve as (a) a pedagogical benefit to the students in my course for their own access needs and comfort and (b) a model for what these inservice and future language teachers could do for their own students in the classes they teach. For example, I institute a late work policy that serves both me and the students well. Students always get one opportunity to revise every assignment and the revision should be done within a week of receiving the original feedback in order for the course to progress smoothly. It’s my favorite class to teach!

Undergraduate teaching

The spring of 2020 brought an unexpected revolution to higher education. Thankfully, my previous experience teaching online informed the decisions I made with regards to the appropriate pedagogical approaches for remote delivery of each of my previously face-to-face courses. In the case of my LLT 307: Methods of Language Teaching course, we had already achieved the bulk of our learning objectives prior to Michigan’s stay-at-home order, and so it was a relatively easy decision to reduce the course load and create asynchronous opportunities for interaction. While each course has different delivery needs with respect to its learning outcomes, my students and I found this approach to be a realistic and inclusive solution for our learning in an overwhelming and unprecedented time.

In the spring of 2020, I taught an original mini-course–as part of a teaching and learning project–on race, language, and disability. In this mini-course, students reflected critically through lenses of (a) intersectionality and (b) DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Theory) and others about the language that American academia, society, and media use to shape current discourse about both disability and race. As part of this course, I explored students’ attitudes about the usefulness and efficacy of alternative or open choice assessment. In line with one of the tenets of Universal Design for Learning (i.e., the “how” of learning which emphasizes providing students multiple avenues to showcase their learning), students’ critical reflection assignments were expected to address assessment criteria as delineated on a rubric, but students were able to choose the vehicle or manifestation of their work (e.g., essay, video, artwork, presentation, etc.)

In the fall of 2018, I taught LLT 307: Methods of Language Teaching (in-person) to an eager undergraduate group of future Michigan K-12 teachers at Michigan State University. In this course, we explored how principles and theories of SLA interact with the unique contextual realities of English language learners in Michigan. I spearheaded an accessibility-focused interest group through which my former students and I can continue our dialogues about the importance of considering accessibility for learners with disabilities in our language classrooms.

Teaching English Language Learners in the U.S. and abroad

I split my time between teaching advanced intensive listening & speaking and developing a very young curriculum in the Laureate English Program at culinary institute Kendall College in Chicago from 2016 to 2017. I really enjoy the flex of pure creativity in early curriculum building.

I devised a flipped learning scenario for my listening and speaking course at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago from 2013 to 2017. It worked so well for my students that I may never go back to primary use of other formats!

The U.S. State Department’s English Language Fellow posted me at Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon from 2010 to 2012. My favorite course to teach there was public speaking because of the incredible opportunities I found to infuse my lessons with authentic materials. I also taught business English as well as English 101, 201 and 202. I coordinated 15 sections of intensive English for rural students who were recipients of a U.S. grant, and was also tasked with offering cultural workshops and tutoring for these unique students.