Teaching
Teaching Philosophy
Importance of hand-on & specimen based learning
My teaching experiences have taught me that knowledge creation fundamentally occurs within the mind of each student and must be, therefore, internally motivated. Hands-on labs where students directly explore fossils, learn to identify key anatomical features, and how to teach themselves and their peer is a critical technique for this process.
Importance of multiple methods for demonstrating knowledge acquisition & understanding
Students come into the classroom with a diverse set of previous experiences, learning modes, and goals. Therefore, in my classroom I present students with a variety of ways to engage with the material, from traditional lectures to active learning modules on core concepts to self-directed interaction with museum specimens in lab. Critically, I am focused on students understanding how to approach a problem scientifically and assessing why something is true.
Importance of building connections to other fields & the lives of students
While learning and understanding key facts are major goals of my teaching, it is more important that students understand why this is relevant to their own lives and how these skills are useful in broader society, especially for those students who will go into other fields.
Teaching Experience
Vertebrate Evolution
As a teaching fellow, I co-created a new version of this advanced undergraduate course with the vertebrate paleontology curator, Dr. Stephanie Pierce. I designed exciting new specimen based lab sections in which students could directly interact with fossils and specimens from the teaching collections at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. I created new handouts which guided students through the major evolutionary trends and prompted their learning through questions about specific objects on display. This approach allowed students to explore either individually or in small groups and learn the key anatomical features and core evolutionary concepts though self directed learning. I also organized a field trip so that students could discover for themselves how to apply their knowledge like a real paleontologist.
The Fishy Aspects of the Human Body
I believe that understanding the origins of our own bodies is something that should not be kept secret for only advanced, specialist students, so I was very excited to co-develop this general education course. Based around readings from “Your Inner Fish” by Neil Shubin, students explored the fossil record and developmental genetics to understand the origins of human anatomy. I designed hands-on activities to build on in-class discussions of chapters covering everything from the
Working backwards from the course objectives, I worked with museum staff to select specimens from across vertebrate paleontology, invertebrate zoology, herpetology, ornithology, and mammalogy collections to highlight the parallel trends explored during weekly readings. For example, juxtaposing stations on the evolution of mammalian hearing with the development of the middle ear allowed students to discover key parallels and discuss underlying processes.