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20-minute video teaching sample from Lesson 1:MoneyTalks
My teaching philosphy
As a counseling educator, I strive to create a learning environment that invites students into a process of growth and change. I challenge students to experience my courses in ways that go beyond exposure to content and curriculum, ways that lead out and strengthen the scholar inside each of them. Through a strong commitment to and respect for diversity, my goal is to inspire students towards building knowledge and skill as advocates for clients and social change. Client advocacy and social change are promoted through research that seeks avenues for the counseling profession to serve our pluralistic society, which may require a paradigm shift for our profession.
The current paradigm for delivering counseling services suggests that the counselor creates an accepting environment and a warm, empathetic, therapeutic relationship for clients. Once this has been accomplished, clients then feel comfortable entering the counselor’s world, ready to reveal their wounds for healing. As a researcher, I am interested in discovering methods for offering counseling services to marginalized populations such as the poor and inner-city homeless. The problem with this paradigm for marginalized populations is that it creates an alternative reality that is quite unlike their world. I am interested in research into the effectiveness of bringing counseling services to the marginalized client’s world. This research demands an immersion of the researchers in the world of these clients. Carrying out this type of research invites students to wrestle intrapersonally and interpersonally with discussions concerning the direction of the counseling profession. Students must come face-to-face with their personal beliefs and misconceptions about marginalized people, and with societal prejudices towards the poor. One creative way to invite students to the discussion is through the use of the cyber-classroom, which can bring new creative ideas on how to make counseling more available to the poor.
I am also interested in research that contributes to making counseling education and training available to a diverse population of students through online delivery. For example, I am interested in research into adult learning and motivation in the cyber-classroom. Online delivery of education is a relatively new field that reframes the ways students learn. Students are more likely to succeed if they feel accepted in a classroom, and for online students, this task becomes a challenge due to the impersonal nature of the technology that creates their online classroom. I am interested in how culture affects the cyber-classroom and the training of counselors.
As the borders of the classroom extend across states, countries, and continents, the interaction of diverse culture brings a plethora of new knowledge and experience to play in the education process. I am interested in research that contributes towards maximizing the strengths of the cyber-classroom across cultures, and I am willing to adapt my teaching philosophy accordingly. Rather than viewing myself as one who draws from the well of experience and knowledge for students to drink, I view myself as a chef, who after organizing ingredients, recipes, utensils, and equipment in the “kitchen”, leads students as they sample ingredients, creating new combinations and recipes for all to taste. In this way, I teach and learn. I often say that teaching is “learning out loud.”
Course Syllabi available by academic year/semester:
In the classroom, I use a blend of teaching styles in all my courses in order to appeal to students’ varied styles of learning, My instructional methods include lectures, class discussion of readings, library research, group projects, audio and video presentations, guest lecturers, individual and group projects, and experiential learning. I strive in all courses to encourage students to improve their scholarly writing skill. Students frequently make appointments to discuss their progress, and I mentor them as they grow into the counseling profession.