No bird soars too high if he soars on his own wings.  William Blake

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Antione de Saint-Exupery

My teaching philosophy embraces collaborative learning in which students challenge themselves and each other to critically examine themselves, the material at hand, and their place in the world.  In order to successfully expose students to critically think outside their comfort zones, I truly believe that collaboration is key in founding an environment based on care and respect.  As Blake so beautifully notes, a bird which flies alone has its  limits; this citation highlights the importance of exchange and cooperation in order to achieve success.  When one cooperates with another he is capable of unending possibility, some of which may be unattainable working on his own.  Collaboration however exists on numerous levels in order to achieve proper results.  Thus collaboration is the key which weaves the rest of my philosophy together.

On a very practical level, collaboration is the basis of the Communicate Approach which I mainly adopt in my foreign language courses.  In fact, students immediately begin speaking and interacting in the target language as soon as they enter my class because they begin reviewing on their own from the last lesson or we warm up with an Italian song or short film clip.  Students cooperate within each 50-minute lesson then continue to learn actively outside of the classroom through the diverse community projects assigned through service learning, internships, or other collaborative activities and programs within the course.  Even when I adopt task-based language learning activities, students understand the importance of collaboration not only in the classroom but also in the real world, which these activities and scenarios reflect.

When I approach a content course, usually literature or cinema, students consistently facilitate classroom work.  The lesson always begins and ends with the students’ interpretations.  Usually my students will   utilize a method called “Question, Hypothesis, Question” (QHQ) to begin the discussion.   A student poses a question he/she will attempt to answer through his hypothesis.  From pondering the answer, students are challenged to think deeper about the original thought or create comparisons, either way continuing their original dialogue.  One or two students post per class period (via Blackboard or a course blog), and every student must read the assigned reading along with the post and come prepared to dialogue in class.  Students truly become engaged in the course discussions using this method and look forward to the opportunity to be the discussion leader.  After students have exhausted the conversation, I highlight some of the most highly accepted readings and contextualize the literature from a historical and/or cultural context.  If the course is advanced, then I tend to introduce diverse critical articles and approaches, yet the focus remains on the students’ response to the criticism.  In order for this method to be successful however, students must be collaborative and respectful of each other, feeling comfortable enough to be open to diverse interpretations and agree to disagree.  Not matter the course, cooperative learning creates a sense of comfort and respect amongst the students and myself; they always enter and leave the class confident and ready to participate.

Collaboration does not end however with students.  Faculty members, departments and universities must also understand and create cooperative working relationships to better teaching and research.  It is critical for faculty to work together to create a unified vision and share curricula ideas, outcome goals, and even partake in action research projects together.  Lastly, it is necessary to create relationships with diverse departments, as I have accomplished with Rice University’s Film Studies, Gender Studies, and French Studies faculty, to offer students a multi-faceted liberal arts education.

As the world continues to globalize, so does the need for cultural competency.  Whether I am teaching a foreign language course or a content course in English or Italian, cultural competency and cultural awareness are always incorporated into my student learning outcomes.  Students must be exposed to diverse cultures, not only the one being taught but also those of students’ peers, in order to prepare our students to be leaders in a globalized world.   Curriculum should be integrated with culture, literature, and film, even on the elementary level.  Students must be exposed to diverse mediums and perspectives in order to create a true understanding of the foreign culture and at the same time better comprehend their native culture.  Moreover, each student should be encouraged to study abroad in another country to become exposed to a new and unique way of life, no matter what the student’s major.

Although cultural competency is crucial for the education of the overall person, technology is the means in which today’s students learn about the world in which they live.  For this reason, the use of technological tools in the classroom, from the simple: music, cinema, Internet news and soap operas; to the more complex:  blogging, micro-blogging, Digital Storytelling, E-portfolios, Google Maps, Google Earth, gaming, etc. not only aid in learning the second language and/or culture, but also are increasingly pleasing to the students who use these means of communication daily.  Educators need to take full advantage of the advanced technological tools available and educate students through all the senses and in all the ways in which the 21st century communicates. Technology aids in developing language proficiency while holding the students’ interest.  Additionally, technological aids can be easily adapted for content-based courses as well. For example, Google Earth can be beneficial in discussing the organization of European cities versus American cities for both cinema or literature courses.  No matter what the situation or the learning outcomes, even when utilizing technology my classroom always remains student-focused.  Students are open to learn from their peers and thus learning remains a social encounter of ideas, which in the end it truly is.

In closing, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery states, “teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” is my true goal for every student.  As a teacher, my role is as a guide, always in the background of the student-focused classroom ready to redirect the conversation, push my students further, and be a source of inspiration so that they can achieve not only their learning outcomes, but also their personal goals.  My students leave my courses knowing that the immensity of the sea is attainable and they are ready to conquer it.