Teaching

My teaching focuses on active learning, community engaged scholarship, bilingual/translingual pedagogy, and partnership pedagogy with experiential learning as a integral part of each class. I create a supportive plurlingual learning community which inspires curiosity and encourages students to explore and think critically about language and linguistics.

Active Learning

My teaching centers around the concept of active learning, where students are the active creators of knowledge, and teachers are the facilitators. Active learning has been demonstrated as much more effective than traditional models of lecture-style teaching (Freeman et al., 2014; Jankowski, 2017; Prince, 2004). Furthermore, active learning promotes the development of life-long learners.

Community-Engaged Scholarship

A key component of the active learning and student-centered learning in in my courses is based on community-engaged scholarship. Community-engaged scholarship connects what is being taught in the classroom to to the surrounding community, cultural heritage, and local environment. Community-engaged scholarship is motivated by the belief that all communities have valuable intrinsic knowledge, assets, and resources. By partnering with the community, both the community and the student gain important insight. Additionally, engagement with the community promotes civic responsibility and leadership.

Bilingual/ Translanguaging Pedagogy

Where would a linguistics course be without a variety of language practices? In my courses,we will embrace all language varieties as having inherent value. Instead of a deficit perspective, we recognize multiple and diverse language practices as enriching our classroom environment, our learning, and ourselves. At any time, my students are encouraged to use Spanish, English or other languages or combinations of languages as a resource.

Partnership Pedagogy

Partnership pedagogy is a collaborative teaching approach where students actively contribute to shaping the learning experience. Partnership pedagogy emphasizes shared responsibility, mutual respect, and co-creation between instructors and students to foster deeper engagement and more meaningful learning. In my classes, students provide input on course contents, assignments, activities and overall class design to create a vibrant and engaging community of learners and develop lifelong learners.

Teaching Experience

Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Undergraduate Coures:
ENGL 3370: Language and Culture
ENGL 4370: Introduction to Border Languages (SPAN 4317, MASC 4370)
ENGL 4395: Community Language Project
ENGL 4375: Language Acquisition
ENGL 3375: Intro to ESL

Graduate Courses:
ENGL 6361: Discourse Analysis
ENGL 6375: Language & Culture
ENGL 6366: Community Language Project
ENGL 6370: Second Language Teaching
ENGL 6374: Second Language Acquisition Theory