Course Syllabi:
My Teaching Philosophy:
Over the last seventeen years, my perspective on teaching has undergone several transitions. I have always considered myself a good teacher (and been considered such by my students and peers) in the sense that I am an expert in my field and form connections with students in the classroom that allow us to explore moving images and learn together. Teaching is a reciprocal relationship I enter into with students in which we examine "truth(s)." At its best, hours spent in the classroom help students make links between ideas and their personal experiences. In the process those hours help restore a sense of wonderment for some students that they had years before when they learned because they wanted to know rather than to score well on a particular text.
The nature of the courses I teach promotes personal relationships with students. Some of my classes are very small, which allows me to structure those courses to meet the needs of individual students while also covering appropriate material. I try to develop a personal relationship with each student while helping them uncover and expand skills they may only suspect they possess. I encourage students to arrange appropriate internships and work with them on individual study projects to build on their classroom experiences, take them on field trips, and bring in guest speakers from the film, broadcasting, and advertising industries. Whenever possible, I also try to use students on professional productions as talent or crew. These opportunities help students make informed choices about graduate school and career options. I cultivate an informal relationship with my students because I believe a less hierarchical relationship sets the stage for honest, relevant discourse in the classroom and makes students comfortable enough to take creative risks.
There are specific strategies I use to try to make students feel comfortable. Many of my students have undertaken independent production work or internships prior to taking a particular class. I try to call on these students for examples to legitimize that experience while presenting the others with options to consider for themselves. In class, depending on the particular course, students engage in exercises that replicate "real world" scenarios as closely as possible while reinforcing theories discussed during lecture sessions. These assignments, integrated with appropriate field trips, guest speakers, videotapes, and role-playing exercises, provide students with a comprehensive learning experience.
The two most important things I bring into the classroom are my "real world" experience and the fact that I genuinely care about each student I teach. I am not trying to diminish the contributions of my academic credentials and my own scholarly work; those form a foundation for my teaching, but my experience and concern for students are what truly define who I am as a teacher. For my discipline, my experience in the industries about which I teach is critical to my credibility as a teacher. There is no substitute for actually working in motion pictures, television, radio, and advertising to supplement a solid academic background. I know my students recognize the difference these experiences make in the classroom. When I think about the teachers who have been important to me, I remember that they were uniformly enthusiastic about the subjects they were teaching, and they reacted to me as an individual rather than as another name on the class roster. This is the model I follow; these are the reasons I teach.