School name: Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)
Type of school: Private not-for-profit
School locale: I teach on their campus which is in Manchester, NH, USA
Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person
How many years have you taught psychology? 10 years at SNHU; 5 years during Graduate School at Baruch College, City University of New York
Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Specialization: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
What size classes do you teach? 30 students per class
What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? See the students as an individual. They are a whole person, with varying responsibilities, concerns, motivations, and passions.
What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I’m all about free open-source materials lately, so I’m going to unabashedly say new teachers should check out the totally free e-book I published through OER Commons called Photography’s Power and Potential for Teaching Psychology. So many students learn well from storytelling and visuals, so I created this book to help all students and educators alike.
What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? Focus on skills-building and engaging activities. These will matter most for retention of information and motivation.
Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.
I love to use the arts within my psychology courses. We use poetry, music, and photography quite a bit. In Social Psychology, I have students take their own photos of topics we cover in class (e.g., discrimination, altruism, conformity), and we do a gallery viewing class day of their work. Students get to guess what topic each photo is about, and we have fun discussing the choices the photographer/student made to get their theme across to others (lighting choices, angles, contrasts, color choices, etc.).
What are three words that best describe your teaching style?
Creativity, active learning, civic engagement
Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. On my 1st day of class as a teaching assistant for Research Methods back in graduate school, when I sat in my chair after introducing myself, the chair broke, and I crashed to the floor! I stood up and said, ‘well now you know a little more about me…I’m clumsy, and I can laugh at myself!’ We all had a good laugh and moved on. I like to think I single-handedly broke the ice for the whole class that day J.
Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened. A huge teaching win for me is when I organized a student exhibit in a gallery space to showcase my students’ original photography and poetry as it relates to Social Psychology last fall semester. Seeing people engage with those creative students and their work during the opening event at the gallery made me so proud of them and of what can be accomplished when we encourage creativity as connected to psychology!
What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I speak 3 languages and have traveled to about 40 other countries (often with only a backpack)!
What are you currently reading for pleasure? Joy Harjo’s memoir titled ‘Poet Warrior’. She is a powerful poet of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was a Poet Laureate of the U.S.
