My teaching philosophy in its present state is built upon the experiences I have gained over my career.  Not drawing strictly from my teaching experience but also incorporating knowledge from prior professional passions and occupations, in order to round out my insight into what I provide learners.  To achieve this I focus on three areas of my instructional approach: encouraging positive learning, engaging the learner, and building the foundation for lifelong learning ability. 

To meet these three key concepts of my philosophy I employ an assortment of instructional strategies based constructivist learning ideals, cognitive ability, multicultural content, and instructional implementation.   

Constructivist leaning ideals: As an educator and facilitator I have always been committed in allowing the learners to use active learning modalities (hands-on practice, real-world applications, experiments, etc…) that are authentic and engaging to them.  I always strive to build on their understanding of concepts and build on them.  As their knowledge expands, I encourage and support the leaners in assessing their progress through comprehensive inquiry (discussion, collaboration, brainstorming, reflective journaling, etc…).  My goal is to always make learners experts in the skill, technology, or concept I’m teaching. 

Cognitive ability:  As a teacher, I always take into consideration the ability and possibilities of learners.  This is an essential component in instructing students and in order to achieve this, I use strategies that balance the variances in learning abilities.  As such, I routinely create lessons with activities that speak to various abilities and whose product is not always finite.  The activities may include opportunities to provide a written summary, create something creatively, and work independently or collaboratively.  Regardless, the activities and objects embedded within the content are not made to have a homogenous look but to provide students various opportunities to showcase their abilities. 

Multicultural content: I find it essential to know the diversity of learners as this allows me to incorporate global perspectives into the instructional content.  Additionally, the multicultural make up of classes provides me an opportunity to view and hear differences among peers that are seldom lost in traditional teaching approaches.

Instructional implementation: The key to teaching any leaner is to clearly identify the objective, create meaningful lessons, elicit active engagement, assess vigorously and deliver comprehensive feedback.  Any learning and teaching model will work as long as the latter five points are met in the instructional approach.  The content and activities will vary from course to course but the underlying foundation always remains the same.