Statement of Teaching Philosophy
My approach to teaching has been strongly influenced by my multidisciplinary graduate education and over 30 years of professional experience in the human services field. I have an MA in Counselling Psychology and an EdD in Educational Leadership. I believe that many of my strengths as a teacher can be traced back to my professional preparation through these two graduate programs, combined with my diverse practice experience with a range of different client and learner groups. Specifically, my own professional development and extensive experience as a counselor have enabled me to bring a strong set of communication and leadership skills to my role as a teacher. I place a high value on maximizing student participation, experiential learning and I am intentional in my efforts to model values and practices of inclusion, respect, humility, collaboration and social justice. I am able to draw on my skills as a group facilitator to create a safe, yet challenging learning environment, which in my opinion provides the optimal context for learning. My doctoral degree in Education challenged me to think about my practice as an educational leader/teacher in a much more rigorous way and exposed me to a diverse range of intellectual resources and educational theorists. In fact it was the EdD program that really helped me to appreciate the thoroughly ethical nature of teaching. It was through this program that I became re-introduced to the concept of praxis – which offered me a useful resource for thinking about and developing my own expertise as a teacher/practitioner. Finally, I am very dedicated to critically reflecting on my practice as a teacher as a particular form of accountability. For me this means that I must make an ongoing commitment to critically examining my own assumptions, biases, and privilege(s) as a way to take responsibility for dealing with those taken-for-granted ideas and dominant cultural constructions that may inadvertently replicate unequal relations of power, both in the classroom and beyond.
Course Development
I have developed the following courses:
CYC 240- Ethics in Child and Youth CareCYC 240 syllabus_FINAL_2015
CYC 552- Ethical Decision-Making in CYCCYC 552_course syllabus_2016_FINAL
CYC 558- Applied Research Seminar CYC558_Syllabus_201805_Final-1
