TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
Introduction
My teaching helps students grow intellectually and holistically into self-aware and responsible human beings. I deploy pedagogy in calibrated ways that combine the study of history with the acquisition of skills. Learning takes place in the classroom where I directly engage with students. Intellectual communities that emerge among students also transform learning into a sociable endeavor. In these settings, students practice formulating and articulating arguments, grounding them in credible evidence, persuading others of their perspective, and engaging with the points of view of others. Participation encourages students to be aware of the roles they play in other communities on- and off-campus. The study of history teaches that people in the past lived very differently from how we live today. The development of this historical perspective enables students to think critically, innovatively, and expansively about the range of choices they have in their lives, choices that ultimately affect the lives of others around them. As professors, we play a pivotal role in shaping students’ so that they can make the best decisions for all of us in the future.
Pedagogy
My undergraduate courses include Introduction to Islamic Civilization, Modern Middle East, Western Civilization, Renaissance and Reformation, and Early Modern France. Lectures and primary sources, articles, monographs, and textbook readings impart foundational knowledge. The courses also introduce students to analysis, interpretation, and synthesis. I do so by advancing historical arguments in lectures; by assigning “critique essay” exercises that require students to absorb, digest, analyze, and interpret texts independently before I address them in class; and by fielding discussions that explore topics in greater depth. Advanced courses include Spanish Empire, War and Peace in the Mediterranean World, Social Movements in Modern Islam, and History, the Public, and the Market. Student-driven discussions; intensive analyses of the construction of historical knowledge and narrative; reading of fascinating primary sources; independent research projects; and the practice of written and oral presentations train students at a higher level of ability.
The rigorous programs we teach often engage students with uneven abilities and needs. I always enter the classroom with the conviction that all students have the potential to develop. It is my job to enable their work, though I also expect them to strive to achieve. With experience I have come to realize that the majority of students fall in the middle and that my role is to help these students carefully assess how to reach the next level. For advanced students, I offer compelling conceptual and theoretical ideas and candid critique to further stimulate them. With weaker students, I devote extra time outside of class to explain and model how to closely read and analyze texts and how to write about them in clear, coherent, and informative ways.
The rigorous programs we teach often engage students with uneven abilities and needs. I always enter the classroom with the conviction that all students have the potential to develop. It is my job to enable their work, though I also expect them to strive to achieve. With experience I have come to realize that the majority of students fall in the middle and that my role is to help these students carefully assess how to reach the next level. For advanced students, I offer compelling conceptual and theoretical ideas and candid critique to further stimulate them. With weaker students, I devote extra time outside of class to explain and model how to closely read and analyze texts and how to write about them in clear, coherent, and informative ways.
Intellectual community
To engage students, I construct one-on-one relationships with each of them. I also foster an environment where they share and exchange ideas with each other. In the discussions I proctor, students present their own ideas and learn how to understand the diverse points of view of their peers through active listening, digesting, and assessing. This process encourages them to become more invested in their own learning as well as that of their classmates. The classroom becomes a vibrant intellectual community where students discover new ways to relate to each other. I also build ties between students and individuals and communities off-campus. “History, the Public, and the Market,” a course that challenges students to think of ways to practice history for a larger public and in a marketplace of ideas, introduces students to professionals in sectors such as museums, non-profits, and even video game production. These connections provide students opportunities to network and apply their skills in vocational environments.
Historians have long considered human experience as the accumulated efforts of great individuals over time. Yet nearly all individuals functioned within communities – families, villages and towns, corporate groups, the state, and communities of the mind, art, and spirit. Studying individuals in the context of communities is critical, and this approach can be transposed into a useful awareness of circumstances in the present. In my teaching, I encourage students to examine their actions in relation to the communities around them and to also think about how other people make impacts on them. Awareness of the importance of their roles in communities furthers growth as students come to realize that college is a constructed community, and as such, they must play a role to shape it according to their interests, well-being, and ethical principles.
The study of history is an ideal way to raise individual and community awareness. Students and the general public enjoy history for a variety of reasons. In the form of stories, history captures their attention and imagination. In the popular mind, history also serves a crucial purpose: lessons of the past help us avoid repeating mistakes in the present or future. Though each person must realize his or her own reason, I argue for a different purpose for studying history. Teaching about early Islamic civilization, I emphasize the distance between our present world and the past, and that we have to recognize that human beings frequently thought and did things very differently from how we live. This teaching cultivates a historical perspective in students that then builds awareness that the world has not always been the way it is today. Understanding that human beings lived very differently helps students realize that they too have a range of options for making choices in their lives. Moreover, the skills and tools with which we equip them will help them assess and realize the best decisions for themselves and for others with whom they form communities. This is the liberation that the liberal arts offer and the responsible citizenship that our education fosters.
Historians have long considered human experience as the accumulated efforts of great individuals over time. Yet nearly all individuals functioned within communities – families, villages and towns, corporate groups, the state, and communities of the mind, art, and spirit. Studying individuals in the context of communities is critical, and this approach can be transposed into a useful awareness of circumstances in the present. In my teaching, I encourage students to examine their actions in relation to the communities around them and to also think about how other people make impacts on them. Awareness of the importance of their roles in communities furthers growth as students come to realize that college is a constructed community, and as such, they must play a role to shape it according to their interests, well-being, and ethical principles.
The study of history is an ideal way to raise individual and community awareness. Students and the general public enjoy history for a variety of reasons. In the form of stories, history captures their attention and imagination. In the popular mind, history also serves a crucial purpose: lessons of the past help us avoid repeating mistakes in the present or future. Though each person must realize his or her own reason, I argue for a different purpose for studying history. Teaching about early Islamic civilization, I emphasize the distance between our present world and the past, and that we have to recognize that human beings frequently thought and did things very differently from how we live. This teaching cultivates a historical perspective in students that then builds awareness that the world has not always been the way it is today. Understanding that human beings lived very differently helps students realize that they too have a range of options for making choices in their lives. Moreover, the skills and tools with which we equip them will help them assess and realize the best decisions for themselves and for others with whom they form communities. This is the liberation that the liberal arts offer and the responsible citizenship that our education fosters.
Our roles
Professors play a unique role in this learning process. We are oftentimes the first adults to hold students accountable after they leave their parents’ homes. What we hold them to is not so much rules of cohabitation in a parental home; and though we require them to meet deadlines, accountability also goes beyond turning in work on time. Students come to college with the understanding that they are here to learn, grow, develop, and achieve. We are ultimately holding them to these goals. As professors, we are transitional adult-authority figures between their childhood homes and the career-workplace. We help them transition to a time and place of mature adulthood where they have to independently identify their own goals and then seek to fulfill them. What is hard about these goals is that they are often abstract and perhaps not immediately apparent to students at this point in their lives.
The disciplinary content and skills that we teach are in essence an abstract hierarchy of values. In the humanities, what we teach is not usually tangible or material. Other areas of knowledge may be more vital for basic survival. Still, by erecting a hierarchy of value, we create a system of meaning for students, one that makes distinctions between right and wrong, success and failure. This system also includes gradations that students scale as they acquire knowledge and achieve skill. The fact that they have to ascend these steps is a social construct. However, by doing so, they learn to envision a purpose and seek to achieve it (and learn from their mistakes). Students are then able to apply this process – identifying a goal and passing through stages to reach it – to other areas of life. The fact that the process is abstract is critical in helping them develop the mental acuity to envision elements of life as important abstract goals for which to strive. These goals may be success and approval, but certainly fairness and happiness as well. These contrast to rather corporeal, physical, and graspable ends that may constitute immediate, tangible gratification. The abstract goals that we condition students to reach often take more discipline, planning, and patience.
Professors have more experience mediating with society and can offer students a degree of security when they face real-world situations that are unfamiliar. Yet the security we offer is not entirely like the one that parents provide. More detached than parents, we evaluate students based on their achievements. The faith and belief we express in them are also less emotionally compromised than that which parents show to their children. The constructive evaluation (both praise and critique) that is our duty to give them, therefore, is in some ways more elemental than what parents offer. Students recognize that our feedback is more objective, and therefore more honest. Thus, we can help students face the results of their work in constructive ways.
The disciplinary content and skills that we teach are in essence an abstract hierarchy of values. In the humanities, what we teach is not usually tangible or material. Other areas of knowledge may be more vital for basic survival. Still, by erecting a hierarchy of value, we create a system of meaning for students, one that makes distinctions between right and wrong, success and failure. This system also includes gradations that students scale as they acquire knowledge and achieve skill. The fact that they have to ascend these steps is a social construct. However, by doing so, they learn to envision a purpose and seek to achieve it (and learn from their mistakes). Students are then able to apply this process – identifying a goal and passing through stages to reach it – to other areas of life. The fact that the process is abstract is critical in helping them develop the mental acuity to envision elements of life as important abstract goals for which to strive. These goals may be success and approval, but certainly fairness and happiness as well. These contrast to rather corporeal, physical, and graspable ends that may constitute immediate, tangible gratification. The abstract goals that we condition students to reach often take more discipline, planning, and patience.
Professors have more experience mediating with society and can offer students a degree of security when they face real-world situations that are unfamiliar. Yet the security we offer is not entirely like the one that parents provide. More detached than parents, we evaluate students based on their achievements. The faith and belief we express in them are also less emotionally compromised than that which parents show to their children. The constructive evaluation (both praise and critique) that is our duty to give them, therefore, is in some ways more elemental than what parents offer. Students recognize that our feedback is more objective, and therefore more honest. Thus, we can help students face the results of their work in constructive ways.