Teaching Philosophy

(produced for Communication Training COM 5206 Spring 22)

We are all lifelong students.

From the moment of our birth, there exists in everyone, an insatiable desire to constantly improve on our understanding of the world around us.  Personally, I assume this knowledge aquisition journey is the defining aspect of my existence.  Conventional viewpoints assign titles of expertise to those who have completed a formally established curriculum, thereby producing a society of highly specialized individuals.  This socially constructed paradigm dissuades those who are not cognizant of our species genetically engrained longing for learning from seeking out knowledge, thereby largely negating the practice of building expertise across multiple domains.  I believe that each one of us has the ability to learn and achieve a mastery level of knowledge on any subject, and… if given the proper learning environment and instruction, that ability is easily fostered and flourishes within any individual.

It is important to me that those who seek out knowledge be afforded every opportunity for personal growth, without regard to any of the social constructs that have been placed upon our  species.  If one seeks out truth and understanding, I feel it is our job as educators to enable the individual to the best of our abilities.  If, for whatever reason, we encounter an area where our expertise is lacking, then we should welcome the opportunity for personal growth and knowledge expansion.

It is truly my hope to achieve an ever-growing level of competency in all of my knowledge acquisition based endeavors, as opposed to exuding confidence.  Confidence is an attribute that suggests a mastery of any given subject, and personally… I feel that the acknowledgment of personal mastery (whether achieved or not) dampens our inner longing for personal growth.  As such, the quest for competency is, in my mind, an honorable goal worthy of pursuit.  If I can help anyone on their personal quest for competency in any given subject, then one cannot hope to achieve a more honorable goal.

From participating in week long science outreach initiatives aimed at enriching the lives of elementary aged school children, to educating experts across multiple technological domains in under three minutes, I have had to develop an understanding of how humans process information and incorporate a methodology in the presentation of conceptually relevant data.  For the past two decades I have served various roles at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), focusing primarily on communicating information to various target audiences. From domain experts across multiple academic fields, scientific and technical journalists, global media outlets, federal and international funding agencies, to elementary school children on a school field trip… I’ve been lucky enough to face the challenge of communicating IHMC’s research across the board.

As an educator, I aim to continually learn about the topics at hand and have personal expectations to always increase the student’s level of understanding on any given topic as the primary goal. 

In regards to my students, I expect that they will arrive in my classroom unaware that, in all of them, exists the genetically engrained longing for conceptual learning.  My success as an instructor is directly correlated to the level of conceptual understanding of the given topics at hand that they walk away with, regardless of the time allotted for instruction.  As such, the techniques I employ to build their conceptual foundation will depend entirely on the subject matter at hand.  From conceptual knowledge modeling, to hands on activities the students will be immersed in a positively constructed learning environment.

The things that I must never accept from myself nor my student body are the willingness to give up on a certain topic due to it’s perceived difficulty.  Difficulty arises from the lack of conceptual understanding of any given topic, and it may be necessary to take an educational detour to fill in the knowledge gap required for conceptual understanding.  I, as the instructor, and my students must never be averse to taking such a detour.

As an educator, I will continually seek out new topics and experiences across multiple domains in the hopes that the knowledge gained across these various pursuits will lead to educational enlightenment across any/all educational topics.

As stated before… We are all lifelong students.  As we age, one begins to realize the more we teach others, the more we learn about ourselves…. The question then becomes “what do we learn next?”.