Teaching

I envision teaching as an act of nepantlerismo–a Nahuatl term used by Gloria Anzaldúa to describe someone who straddles two worlds and builds bridges between them. Her works, the works of various feminist theorists of color, and my own academic mentors have shaped my teaching practice. As an educator I want to encourage students to serve as puentes (bridges) using social theory to create a more just world.

The classroom is not only a place for students to examine their daily lives but a stage to foster and nurture a healthy critique of academic disciplines and practices. In this place, and on this stage, I guide students to:

1. Apply theories and methods to assess, challenge, and transform the logic and practices of knowledge production inside and outside of the academy. Social theory has provided many with the framework to decipher and act in times of profound uncertainty. I have designed my curriculum to equip students to use sets of knowledge to transform our current social moment. 
2. Center the contributions made by individuals and communities who are not usually recognized or considered valid by those in the mainstream. I achieve this by exposing students to theoretical and methodological gaps in academic texts and guiding them to fill those exclusions with Global South scholarship and subaltern communities’ sabidurias (wisdom), conocimientos (knowledge), and expertise.
3. Value their own and others’ experiential knowledge and its role in creating social theory. I empower students to reflect on how personal experiences have the same epistemological power as any other set of existing discourses. I ask studets to remain “critically vigilant” (hooks 2003) regarding the ways that social positionality influences knowledge creation and dissemination. 
4. Restructure the concepts and practices of social justice and collective responsibility towards the creation of a “mundo … donde quepan muchos mundos (a world where many other worlds may fit in)” (EZLN 1994). I encourage students to connect with different groups, assess existing paradigms and practices, honor new ideas, and empower others to engage in transforming society at large.

hooks, b. 2003. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. NY: Routledge

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN.) 1994. Segunda Declaración de la Selva Lacandona. Chapas, Mexico.Web

In addition to being an assistant professor at the Center of Learning Innovation, I am University of Minnesota Rochester’s (UMR) Civic Engagement Scholar. In this dual role, I tap into my academic training and expertise in community-based participatory and action research to assist UMR students, faculty, staff, and senior leadership to foster sustainable, mutually beneficial partnerships and initiatives.  

CLI 2522 — Community Collaborative

Since UMR is “committ[ed] to empower students to be engaged citizens and collaborate with the local community to solve healthcare challenges” (UMR’s Public Engagement Action Plan, 2015), my role as an educator is to coordinate and teach CLI 2522–Community Collaborative (CoLab).  CoLab is an upper-level Community Engaged Learning (CEL) course at UMR that connects students, faculty, and community partners to develop projects that improve health outcomes (individual, social, community) in the Rochester community. Learn more about CLI 2522 from former UMR students.

CoLab invites students to cross borders and engage on an educational journey shaped by critical community engagement. As an ethos and practice, critical community engagement is not just the logic and practice of working towards an ideal of community change. Instead, to engage critically means to work alongside individuals and groups to understand, map out, and target unjust conditions that have disallowed communities from sustaining healthy and just futures.

CoLab introduces students to sets of knowledge, vocabularies, and methods and connects them to community-led opportunities that will help them develop practices as health science professionals that are consciously connected to the lifeworlds of the communities they serve. A pedagogical goal in CoLab, conscious connection helps students gain an awareness of how social issues manifest as health problems and introduces them to ways they can be accountable and intentional in their ongoing commitment to challenge structural, disciplinary, symbolic, and affective forms of oppression and dispossession.