What are the upcoming classes you’ll be teaching?

This year I will be mostly teaching courses related to language teaching that count towards the undergraduate Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) certificate as well as the MA degree in Language Teaching Studies. These are LT 436/536 Design for Language Learning Systems and LT 448/548 Curriculum and Materials Design. This Fall I will also be teaching a FIG (Freshman Interest Group) class that is linked to LING 144 How to Learn Languages - a class I highly recommend! In Spring I'll be teaching LING 491/591 Sociolinguistics, which explores the connections between social and linguistic behaviors.

Every time I think of the fact that I received this award it makes me smile. It gives me joy and energy to know that I have touched others enough to result in a nomination. 

Along with my other colleagues in the Department of Linguistics, I help students uncover the importance of language in our lives, and the power it has to communicate not only what we are thinking but who we are as social beings, across all the diversity of human cultures. Like the proverbial fish in water, we use language constantly to live our lives but often do not notice its patterned complexities. In classes like Sociolinguistics we look at how these patterns correlate with social groups as well as, for example, how they reveal the ways we negotiate power or communicate our intentions in subtle ways that only in-group individuals might notice. 

In the 400/500 level language education classes I teach, my students are becoming teachers themselves. They are usually individuals who love learning and using more than just one language, and I have the great pleasure of sharing with them ways to guide their own students to appreciate and learn languages in active, culturally rich ways. Language is such an amazing cultural and human resource, and when I teach future teachers, I feel like I am investing in maintaining the diversity of this resource. I suspect that one reason I was nominated is that my students have learned to appreciate the challenge of good teaching.

I experience inspiring moments all the time in teaching, so it's hard to choose just one! Students are very active in my classes, so my inspiration often comes from what they do with the class material on a daily basis, and it is often surprising and delightful. In LING 144 How to Learn Languages last Spring for example, 70+ students were milling around in a game asking questions in any languages other than English (including using gestures of course!) and I was able to witness how their anxiety about communicating multilingually melted away as students laughed and came up with creative ways to accomplish their goals. When I asked for volunteers to model this activity in front of the class at different language levels, I had immediate takers. This showed me that my own goal of making multilingual discourse positive and motivating was succeeding, and that these students would be a little more likely to take their language learning beyond the classroom without hesitation or embarrassment. And of course, when I see the many upcoming teachers I mentor achieving these goals themselves with their own students, I am doubly inspired.

Of course, it is very satisfying to be acknowledged and celebrated for your hard work. Winning this award also helped me to reflect on the Mathematics Department's role in my work, how fortunate and grateful I am that they have offered me so many opportunities to practice new course design in a wide variety of contexts. I want to extend my deep thanks to everyone who has helped me become the educator I am today. They have earned a part of this award, too.

I teach a wide range of undergraduate mathematics classes. For the last ten years, I have been practicing a teaching model that emphasizes group work and independent student learning, and optimizes class time for discussion about the material, rather than using class time to introduce material. I am also part of a small group of mathematics faculty members who run the Eugene Math Circle, a weekly program for grade school students who enjoy math, like solving challenging problems and want to learn exciting topics that are normally outside the school curriculum.

There is a moment that recurs in many classes, with many students. A very common situation: a student will be stumped on a problem and asks me about it. If I can reply with the right question, there's a moment where it looks like the student's eyes are no longer focused on what is in front of them, their focus goes inside themselves. They snap out of it, answer my question, and in doing so, can see an approach to solving the problem they asked about. This all happens in a flash. They return to their work with a passion so real and pure you can almost feel it. Those are the moments that inspire me to rewrite and fine-tune my materials, to give every student every possible opportunity for discovery.