I was a teacher of children with special needs long before I became the mother of such a child; all of my secondary teaching experience was structured according to the class-within-a class model. This model posits that students with special needs often learn most effectively alongside their regular-education peers. Teaching students with such diverse levels of skill inspired in me the idea that every student belongs to every teacher; to clarify, I firmly believe that my job is not just to instruct the interested student, the motivated student, the prepared student, but rather to teach to the utmost of my ability the disenfranchised student, the reluctant student, and the challenged student.

I held to this belief when I made the transition to teaching at the post-secondary level, and I remain conscious of it as I design learning experiences for my students. Students learn via experiences, and as a teacher, my calling is to craft experiences via which students gain significant, transferable knowledge. Each reading, writing, and speaking experience I design for students is meant to be valuable not only in and of itself, but also valuable when my students encounter subsequent language experiences. My pedagogical methods are thus highly interactive; I design each class period such that students are actively engaged with language for the majority of the time. My lessons do not spring from the question, “What will I say?” but rather from the student-centered query, “What will they do?” Whether my students are writing based on a model and then sharing their work or discussing the connections between culture and literature via guided practice, they are interacting with language.

I teach with such an emphasis on student action because I strive for my students to be consistent engagers of language as opposed to merely users and recipients. Writing and speaking have power. Stories have power. My goal for my students is to realize and use this word power in its many forms. Years of teaching have repeatedly presented me with the truth that those who have more power with words have more power in life. This truth can be harsh, for as often as I see a student with significant word power access incredible opportunities, I see a student with little word power denied access to a job or even further schooling. Driven by the desire to equip my students with as much word power and thus life power as I can, I continuously research and redesign my pedagogies and curricula, individualizing and diversifying as much as possible such that every student can learn.

When crafting assessment, both formative and summative, I consciously choose both the form and content that will lead students to demonstrate the skills I intended for them to gain from the learning experiences of a particular lesson, unit, or course. The degree to which students can demonstrate the assessed skills provides a significant indication of whether or not I have designed learning experiences effectively.

The bedrock to my beliefs about pedagogies and curricula is my belief about students. I believe every student, from every background, with every skill level, deserves access to an equitable education, access to high quality, significant, transferable learning experiences. My drive to design such experiences is fueled by my goal that every student leave my classroom firmly grasping more word power than he or she had upon entering.