At the beginning of each Principles of Biology I (BIOL 1107) course, I use a survey to welcome all 380+ students. Through the survey, I express that I care to know about them individually and convey that I value their previous experiences. Students use this assignment to teach me how to pronounce their names and to share their pronouns, goals for after graduation, and major concerns about the course. I also ask students to write about something that helped them be successful in challenging coursework in the past, reminding them of their own resilience and resourcefulness. I respond to their concerns collectively during class. Prior to meeting with students one-on-one, I reference the survey and often bring up their own wisdom. I contact students who fail the first exam and use their stated goals to motivate them to meet with me and revise their study practices. Because the course is so large (380+), this survey is a way for me to efficiently learn a little bit about my students and convey to them that their identities matter to me. An effective instructor must believe in the potential of all students and value the existing knowledge scaffold each student brings into their class. Being anti-weed-out is a foundation of my teaching. In how I speak in class, write class announcements, and give feedback, I try to convey my confidence in my students. I prioritize support over punishment and flexibility over conformity in my class policies. Accommodation (of disability, of traumatic life experiences, of the upheaval of young adulthood) and compassion are foundational to my pedagogy. At all times in my interactions with students, I am working to share power, not wield it.   

BIOL 1107 is a privilege to teach because it is the welcome mat of our discipline. At this introductory level, one of my goals is to convince my students that science concepts and methods are relevant to their own lives and will enrich their reality, regardless of the careers they pursue. In in-class assignments, I ask students to express their personal curiosity about the topics we discuss and to adopt the mindset of someone using biology knowledge in their career (as a researcher or healthcare provider, for example). It is also my pleasure to work with upper-level students. Because they are more experienced, my primary goals for them have to do with fluency in the discipline. I want them to be able to contribute to and work with scholarship in our field. I seek to decrease intimidation and increase their sense of agency. In these smaller, writing-intensive environments, students choose what they research, lead class meetings, and exchange peer feedback on presentations and writing.   

Inclusion and student engagement are my core teaching values. Accessibility is part of inclusive teaching: I caption my pre-class videos and class recordings, work with American Sign Language interpreters, select class materials that are compatible with screen readers, and offer extensions and extended time accommodations without requiring medical documentation. I explicitly tell students that I am here to guide and support them, and then back that up by making myself available: in addition to office hours, I conduct an average of 170 one-on-one meetings with students per semester. Accessible materials and a sense of belonging in the classroom are prerequisites for learning, but engagement must follow. 

To promote student engagement, I work to set a dynamic classroom tone, manifesting as ample, moderated discussion and collaboratively achieving learning objectives. Student evaluations, feedback from co-teachers, and observations from fellow faculty have made clear that I excel at establishing rapport with my students. Because my personality puts students at ease, discussions run smoothly in my classroom and tend to involve a breadth of participants rather than a few willing speakers. This is true even in my large introductory course. I have semi-flipped my BIOL 1107 classroom. I provide pre-class, short lecture videos and readings and use in-class time to review, poll students, and facilitate group work. Group work in-class assignments involve short answer questions, drawing models of cellular and physiological processes, and designing experiments. While I am not currently able to provide BIOL 1107 students with detailed, personalized feedback on their progress, thorugh these in-class assignments, I have increased the feedback they receive, going beyond basic, multiple-choice exams. Students have more opportunities to show what they know and self-assess. My curriculum adaptations promote learning as a social experience and challenge students to visualize systems in a way that enables them to answer complex questions.  

When my students look back on their time with me, I want them to think of our classes as part of how they developed critical thinking, patience for confusing topics, a sense of pride in their intellectual capacity, and for them to remember me as someone who treated them with kindness and respect.