This page contains links to various representative materials I use when teaching along with commentary that explicates these materials. It’s hard to capture the kinds of interactive learning class discussions and collaborative groupwork that many of these activities instigate, but the materials indicate some ways in which I structure these activities.

Arrangement of activities and a disclaimer on this arrangement:

Eventually, I plan to arrange my public portfolio based on the following goals I have in my classes. But for now I have just listed the goals and some emblematic write-ups of my portfolio materials.

1. we learn to learn and think for ourselves,
2. we forge new knowledge and skills, 
3. we build collaborative classroom community,
4. we engage the world around us,

Separating these sample activities into distinct groupings is somewhat misleading; many activities are designed to advance multiple goals, and some, in practice, serve totally different ends than I intended. For example, I find that administering a pre-class knowledge survey at the start of a course helps students recognize their hopes and concerns, and gently pushes students to set learning goals for the term. These are metacognitive tasks, and thus these fall into the “learning to learn” category pretty neatly. Having students discuss their responses, or showing anonymous responses to the questions to show the range of interests in a class, however, begins to build rapport between myself and the students, and the students with each other. Hence the pre-class survey is also a powerful tool to build an open, collaborative, and productive classroom community.

Found Poem Contemplative Activity: students work in groups to create a found poem on a “theme” of their primary course texts, and reflect on how genre and reading practice affects overall understanding of a text and concept. 

Experiencing Environmental Benefits and Burdens: students viscerally encounter a central quad on campus to experience and reflect on the political ecology of environmental goods and harms. 

ENVS_435_Pre-Class_Survey: This is a survey I administered via Qualtrics to students. It is annotated to explain some illustrative considerations I had developing the survey and interpreting the student results.  

Reinforcing Concepts: Telephone Pictionary: students combine the award-winning game of Pictionary and the timeless game of “telephone” (aka whisper-down-the-lane) to reinforce central course concepts. This game is a ton of fun and engages students’ analytic and creative faculties.