Teaching

My approach to pedagogy is grounded in my own experience as a community educator and organizer, and highly influenced by theories of popular education as articulated and enacted by scholar-activists such as Paulo Freire, Myles Horton, and Ella Baker. From the work of these thinkers (and many more), I begin with the belief that we are all equally teachers and learners. This led me to a praxis of education, research and action that I honed through many years of popular education work, and bring with me into the classroom.

I teach classes that ask students to begin from their own lived experience, and to draw repeatedly on that knowledge as they encounter texts and ideas through class readings, conversations, and activities. I use experiential project-based learning in order to bring the classroom to life, and bring life to the classroom. At Queens College, I teach a range of classes including Community-Based Research, Urban Research Methods (graduate and undergraduate), Introduction to Urban Politics, and our department’s Service-Learning Seminar, in which students work with nonprofits and governmental agencies while putting urban theory into practice in a supportive environment.