CV
RESEARCH

 

Scholarship of Teaching

Scholarship of Prevention

For me teaching and research are one and the same channel to gain personal understanding, achieve empowerment and build community capacity.  With a mix of synchronicity and purposeful coincidence I returned to San Francisco State University, the very institution that granted me two bachelor degrees more than 20 years ago, one in La Raza Studies the other in Spanish.  My background in Primary Prevention, Global Health, Non-violence, Creative Expression and Youth Empowerment enabled me to co-develop a teaching praxis called Pedagogy of Collegiality. This teaching approach is rooted in critical education and contemporary feminist theory. I just completed co-editing the text Prevention is Primary: Strategies for Community Wellbeing. Currently I am working with Elizabeth Soep on the book Drop That Knowledge: Youth Radio, Learning and Media Culture.

San Francisco State University has been an oasis of creativity for me.  I understood this from the first day working for the Department of Health Education. As a seasoned teacher I could rely on careful course preparation and lecture notes; however, it was impossible to pretend to teach as intended given the multicultural character of the classroom.  Cultures as represented with diversity of age – some students still in their teens and others who are my elders’ elders.  Male and female students speaking more than one language with ancestors from all other the world; many first and second generation students and others used to being called Americans with and without race/ethnicity consciousness.  At SFSU there is diversity of income, from students who were homeless to others whose parents pay their tuition. We have sexual diversity and openness around sexual orientation, sexual preference and sexuality in general.  My teaching style connects with the multicultures in the classroom – students from all walks of life, many who may be experiencing the very health disparities described in the scientific health literature. My teaching philosophy stems from five basic principles: empowerment through community involvement, cultural humility, asset-based education, unlearning and health in motion.

Concept

 Definition

 Application

Empowerment through Community Involvement

The process of gaining power with oneself and one's community to produce change.  Developing understanding of root causes of problems.  Analyze and address underlying power imbalance.

Learning starts where the people are.  Problem-solving and critical thinking tools.  Offer opportunities that maximize participation in every aspect of the educational process to create a collective sense of learning.

 

Cultural Humility

A lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redress power imbalances, develop and maintain mutually respectful dynamic partnerships based on mutual trust.

Experiential classroom exercises to identify value systems.  Create consensus, develop original thought and develop personal voice. The ability to examine cultural pride humility as tools for health promotion and social justice.

 

Asset-based

Identify student’s strengths and develop lesson plans that build on them. Teach students that all groups have skills & knowledge of their members as assets.

Community mapping exercise teaches interviewing skills and participant observation.  Teamwork, dialogue, reflection & action.  Linking assignments to one another so that student keeps improving.

 

Unlearning

Questioning assumptions, stereotypes, and hegemony. Students become conscious of the tendency towards prejudice as a reflection of our social context & the time/place we live in and come from.

Writing as a teaching pedagogy removes barriers to communication such as the need to control and dominate conversations.  Through writing we can ask ourselves: 
What do I believe in, and Why?

Health in Motion

Movement is the language of the body. The body is ignored in even the most progressive classrooms.  Health inequities and social determinants literature compartmentalizes the mind/body/spirit nexus.

The holistic body is used to illuminate the cultural, collective, political body.  Weekly health promotion lectures are complimented with the practice of kinesthetic awareness through embodied learning, dance & yoga.