A good educator should encourage learning in the classroom; a great educator should inspire learning beyond it.  I aim to be the latter and everything I do in teaching, from the content to the organization, from the in-class activities to the out-of-class assignments, is embedded in the belief that student learning extends beyond the hours our course meets.  My goal for my students is that they find their own passion in what they learn and it is my responsibility to help them do that.  To get students engaged in their own learning process, I focus on making the material exciting, challenging, and relevant as a way to communicate core concepts and drive student interest.

 

When I first meet with students and distribute the syllabus, I tell them that my two objectives are for them to learn and to have fun.  Most students nervously giggle before I explain that I think enjoying learning is important and because I believe everyone learns differently (borrowing from Gardner’s multiple intelligences), I utilize many approaches in teaching the material.  Any given class will include small-group and large-group discussion, diagrams on the board, activities involving wordle, post-it-notes stuck on the walls, passages from the constitution, folded paper-planes (demonstrating group think), full-sized pictures of Congressional representatives, marbled cake, or clips from Parks and Rec or House of Cards.  Using a variety of activities encourages student interaction and stimulates student engagement. I am not afraid to fail and though I have experienced my occasional “flop,” the methods (primarily project-based and constructivist learning) I incorporate in my teaching help students understand the material in an enjoyable way.

 

Most students enroll in one of my classes with a precursory understanding of government and politics; the subject, after all, is taught beginning in elementary and in various manifestations through high school.  Yet while making the material challenging is relatively easy despite many students’ assumptions at the beginning of the course, more importantly it is imperative in understanding all the complexities that make it such a fascinating field to begin with.  Understanding how a bill becomes a law is nice, but the simplified process that students are forced to memorize lack the exciting drama and complicated nuances that mirror reality.  To merge academic theory with real world applicability, I invite legislators, lobbyists, and political analysts to my classes to share their experiences with students.  I assign articles from The Washington Post and The Indianapolis Star that connect abstract terms to current political issues, such as their perspectives on voter disenfranchisement through voter ID laws and legislative gridlock from political polarization.  At the beginning of each weekly topic, I pose a large question to the class (such as: “Is our country becoming more polarized and what does this mean for the health of our democracy?”) and then each subsequent reading and class discussion grapples with this concept.  Relying on textbook definitions and step-by-step processes does not reflect the complicated and exciting world of politics and I want students to acknowledge and understand these complexities as they learn about political science. 

 

Making the curriculum relevant is twofold: I want students to be able to apply our major concepts to their other classes as well as to current events occurring in politics.  Political science is an inherently interdisciplinary field that draws upon history, economics, sociology, and communication among other fields; when students can make the connections between their political science class and their other courses, their understanding of each field and the relationships between them is enriched. I often pull in research from outside of the discipline to show students a different framework for analysis of the same issue (i.e. Downs in rational choice theory applied to voting, Carlin and Winfrey in addressing sexism in politics, etc.).  I also strive to demonstrate the real-world applicability of the topics we address in class. I dedicate discussion time to current events related to the theme each class and also assign papers in which students select a political event that interests them and then critically analyze it through the key course concepts.  My objective is that students can discuss a current political issue long after the course has ended and speak about it in an academically-informed and intellectual manner.

 

By making the material exciting, challenging, and relevant, I aim to cultivate a classroom dynamic where students are pushed to challenge their preconceptions and can apply the main concepts to their own interactions with politics.  I want to help students find their own passion in politics, from whatever angle or issue that may be, and to develop their own informed approach to making their difference in the community.  While my pedagogical practices are constantly improving with each class and new group of students, my goal to develop critically engaged students who not only think about change in the classroom but are inspired to create it outside remains my own professional motivation.