Effective teaching nurtures students’ capacity for critical engagement in a diverse society and inspires them to work towards collective liberation and communal care. My career, includes over a decade of secondary teaching at the Toronto District School Board and undergraduate teaching at the University of Toronto and York University.
Through the application of course content and cultural knowledge from lived realities to a shared social world, students are encouraged to meaningfully reflect on and hold space for the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the work of living together. I focus on teaching concepts to support students’ understanding of power as productive of truth and knowledge, privilege and authority. Pedagogically, I achieve this through anti-oppressive practice and universal design, the core value for which is accessible education, particularly in online learning environments that can both pose and alleviate barriers to access.
My research and teaching are interconnected. My work as a secondary teacher in the Toronto District School Board directly informed my dissertation research, the questions for which emerged from my teaching. Titled The Sky’s the Limit: On the Impossible Promise of E-Learning in the Toronto District School Board, my research examined how online learning – or e-learning – is spatially reorganizing and marketizing public education in secondary schools in Toronto, Ontario. The impact of my work on public policy compels me to pursue a research agenda that will sustain this trajectory.