Teaching Statement in Thirteen Images

As part of the final unit in the Praxis curriculum each fall our students extensively discuss teaching and learning in digital humanities. As a way of putting these conversations into practice, they develop two outcomes: a speculative, minimal DH workshop related to their research and a teaching philosophy statement related to their newfound interests in digital pedagogy. It’s been years since I’ve put together a formal teaching statement (unless you count the various student charters on the Scholars’ Lab website), so I had planned on joining the students in their writing process and producing a statement of my own to share with them. Things got away from me, though, as my wife and I just moved and are also preparing for our first baby. I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to devote to this task, but I thought I’d spin up something quickly in the same spirit.

I’m sharing this post as a creative spin on the genre: my teaching statement in thirteen images (thirteen because that’s the Praxis cohort we’re currently running). Consider it a visual collage of how I approach working with students in and out of the classroom. I used unsplash, a great source for open and free images, to search for keywords that were meaningful to my digital pedagogy. I won’t explain them beyond describing the pictures in alt-text. Instead, I think they’re useful to meditate on for yourself. When you teach, what do you see?