Teaching
My teaching and research practice is rooted in a core element of maker pedagogy, which positions the teacher as a designer of learning experiences, facilitator, and coach that fosters a culture of collaboration and inquiry. Through my experiences teaching in diverse contexts, I have grounded my practices from the position as a guide and co-learner as students collectively engage in dialogue and pursue interest-driven projects. As a former secondary science student and Black woman, I was discouraged by classroom cultures steeped in competition, individualism, and whiteness. As we reimagine our futures together, I am dedicated to designing and teaching university level courses that positions education as a form of world-making, in which students and I create a learning community that honors students’ heterogeneous ways of knowing and doing as we co-construct knowledge about equitable, transformative education.
New York University
Spring 2024- Games and Play in Education
This course will prepare students to design learning experiences that include games or their main characteristics. For this, students will explore how theories of game and play intersect with learning theories, how to successfully use game-like activities to improve face-to-face and online learning, and what place new approaches, such as playful learning or gamification, have in modern curriculum design.
Fall 2023 - Foundations of the Learning Sciences
This course focuses on the social and cultural issues of learning as they relate to individual and group cognition in the context of media-rich technology learning environments. The course delves deeply into constructivism/constructionism, scaffolding, apprenticeship, distributed cognition, computer-supported collaborative learning, knowledge-building communities, the learning sciences, perspectivity and identity formation as they relate to the creation of successful and equitable learning environments for diverse populations of learners.
TeenSHARP
Summer 2020 - Fall 2020 - Making for Better Futures: Restorying through Video Game Design
Since we were capable of doing so, people have told stories as a way to pass down experiences, norms, and culture. However, some stories hold more power than others, not only shaping how we remember history but also impacting how we perceive our present reality and possible futures. Throughout the course, students will analyze and critique the dominant stories or “narratives” that have influenced how we understand the world, as well as reflect on their own personal experiences related to the dominant narrative. From there, students will use Scratch, a block-based programming language and online community, to design and create video games where they reimagine or “restory” those dominant narratives.
Fall 2019 - Spring 2020 - Exploring and Reimagining Science Through the Lens of Race
Science is the systematic way we come to understand our world, from building and organizing knowledge to the utilization of such knowledge for our own purposes. However, when issues of power are taken into account, we are forced to ask several questions: Who gets to consider what is deemed science? Who gets to participate in or “do” science? What are the consequences when science and scientific innovations are utilized to dehumanize and marginalize communities? This course will provide students the opportunity to explore the intersection of science and race by drawing on the perspectives of history, sociology, and design. In this semester of the course, students will learn the socio-historical context of race and science, including historical controversies and debates surrounding the gatekeepers of scientific fields and the (mis)use of communities of color for scientific advancement (e.g., The Tuskegee Syphilis Study).