Teaching Narrative

When I first entered graduate school, I was eager to hone my craft as a teacher. I had always been fascinated by teaching and enjoyed the opportunities I had to lead a classroom during my undergraduate studies, as well as through volunteer work. Teaching has always been fulfilling for me—even when it’s challenging, and it often has been. Although it sometimes diverted time from my research and PhD completion, my teaching experience over the past five years has made me a more well-rounded academic and expanded my career prospects.

Through teaching, I’ve developed a strong sense of purpose, refined my personal teaching style, and clarified my goals as an educator. Every time I step into the classroom, I strive to create a space where students can engage deeply with the material while leaving room for spontaneity and responsiveness. My enthusiasm for teaching remains unwavering, and as I near the completion of my PhD, I often reflect on the kinds of positions I want to pursue. Without exception, all of them involve teaching or working closely with students in some capacity.

Each new year and teaching experience has deepened my insights and renewed my commitment to the craft. Every challenge has been a valuable lesson, offering fresh perspectives on how to better serve my students. These experiences have also taught me the importance of flexibility—the beauty of adapting and refining my teaching methods to meet the diverse needs of different learners.

One of the most formative aspects of my development has been earning certificates in College and University Teaching and Inclusive Teaching. While preparing for these, I encountered transformative pedagogical theories and practices, such as Universal Design for Learning. I now recognize that diverse learners are always present in our classrooms, and as educators, we must adapt. Providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression is key to creating an inclusive classroom—one that supports not only students on the margins but every student.

Teaching Assistant for History (Fall 2020–Winter 2021)

When I was first accepted into UCSB’s History PhD program, I received a generous fellowship that guaranteed five years of funding for my research and progress toward my degree. A significant portion of this support came from the University of California Press, as part of my fellowship involved working as an editorial assistant for my advisor, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser. She was the editor-in-chief of an academic journal for UC Press, which meant that for the first two years of my graduate studies, I was immersed in editorial work rather than teaching.

This changed in the fall of 2020, when I began my teaching assistantships—just as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to disrupt education. Though the university had tentatively considered a return to in-person instruction, the 2020–2021 academic year remained fully remote. As a result, my first foray into teaching took place under highly unusual circumstances. Yet, I now consider this experience invaluable, as it provided me with extensive practice in remote teaching and utilizing digital tools to support instruction. At the time, platforms like GauchoSpace, Canvas, and Zoom were necessities, but today I appreciate how thoroughly I learned to navigate learning management systems as a way to facilitate student engagement by multiple means. Digital tools are central to creating the kind of enriching classrooms I want to build, and are an integral part of my teaching methodology. I took full advantage of LMSs (formerly Gaucho Space and now Canvas) in my courses, posting multimedia content, administering Canvas quizzes, assigning group work, utilizing gamification tools, and incorporating grade analytics. I presented coursework as podcasts and online scripts in multiple file formats, and I encouraged students to submit their work online through digital files or via their own student-made portfolio websites.

Because I wasn’t managing an in-person classroom, I could focus more intently on lesson planning, syllabus design, and structuring course materials. That said, my early approaches were understandably rudimentary. Much of my teaching involved lecturing, reviewing weekly readings, and occasionally using breakout rooms to discuss key questions—an attempt to draw out students’ insights and connect them to broader themes.

Despite its challenges, this period taught me some of the most crucial aspects of course design, digital pedagogy, and crafting effective lesson plans and syllabi—skills that have continued to serve me well.

Reader for History (Spring 2021)

In spring 2021, while continuing to develop my skills in creating lesson plans and section syllabi, I received a unique opportunity to engage in more substantial course design work. Under the supervision of Professor Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, I helped redesign HIST 114A: History of Christianity to 800 CE, a course that hadn't been offered in several years. Our redesign focused on two primary objectives for the research project component: first, implementing scaffolded assignments that required students to submit research proposals early in the quarter, followed by annotated bibliographies, outlines, drafts, and final projects; and second, incorporating multimodal learning by offering students five distinct formats for their final projects. Students could choose between:

  • The Historian: A traditional 4,000-5,000 word research paper;

  • The Creative Writer: A work of historical fiction or poetry of equivalent length;

  • The Digital Humanist: A podcast episode or website (with 4,000-5,000 word scripts or 5-10 page sites);

  • The Teacher: A complete lesson plan and lecture for high school or college students; or

  • The Museum Curator: A virtual exhibit featuring 15-20 items with descriptive plaques.

Each option required an annotated bibliography of 6-8 sources to maintain academic rigor.

Beyond these structural changes, I worked to broaden the course's content to include more world-historical perspectives and highlight marginalized communities - women, children, ethnic and religious minorities, and genderqueer individuals in antiquity. I am deeply committed to making course material more relevant to students by highlighting the contributions of marginalized individuals, allowing them to engage with these perspectives. This commitment remains a significant part of my teaching philosophy to this day. This redesign process also provided me with my first opportunity to serve as a guest lecturer for a week, marking a significant milestone in my teaching development.

Students were very happy with the scaffolded projects, as they allowed them time to think deeply about their projects and lavish time on their work, as one student remarked: “I liked how the final project was stretched out over the entire quarter so it gave us a chance to really delve deep into our topics.” While the project options successfully produced high-quality, passionate work from students, some aspects proved challenging. The flexibility meant grading 100 diverse assignments (due to the online format's larger enrollment), which required individualized assessment rather than standardized rubrics. I also had to adjust my expectations about undergraduate workloads - initially assigning 100 pages of reading between classes proved unrealistic for students juggling multiple courses, jobs, and extracurricular commitments. Coming from a "block plan" undergraduate institution where we focused on one course at a time, I hadn't fully appreciated the different demands of a quarter system until seeing my students' challenges firsthand.

This experience proved exceptionally formative for my teaching development. Beyond gaining practical experience in syllabus design and lecture delivery, it taught me the importance of meeting students where they are rather than imposing my own academic expectations. I learned to balance rigor with accessibility, and discovered how student choice could foster deeper engagement. Most importantly, it showed me how to adapt course content and objectives to students' diverse needs and circumstances while maintaining high academic standards - a lesson I gained greater clarity and theoretical insight into later in my career, but that still informs my teaching philosophy today.

Teaching Associateship for History (Summer 2021)

I quickly applied the lessons I'd learned as a reader when I became a teaching associate for HIST 114A in summer 2021. This opportunity allowed me to implement improvements in course organization on GauchoSpace, refine reading expectations, and develop more effective classroom activities—both for the scaffolded projects and in-class engagement.

Teaching during the compressed six-week summer session presented unique challenges compared to the regular quarter system. While I successfully made readings more manageable for students, I struggled to condense the material effectively. Rather than strategically cutting content, I attempted to preserve the full quarter's material in shortened form, which resulted in an unwieldy workload. My teaching approach remained lecture-heavy at this stage, as I hadn't yet developed strategies for creating a more discussion-oriented, student-driven classroom.

Teaching Assistant for the History Department (Fall 2021–Spring 2022) 

When I returned as a teaching assistant for the History Department from Fall 2021 through Spring 2022, we transitioned back to in-person instruction. This shift required me to completely reimagine classroom management, as my previous experience had been entirely online. While I considered myself a charismatic speaker, I realized charisma alone couldn't sustain student engagement. My lesson planning methods proved inadequate for fostering meaningful in-class discussions. This realization prompted me to explore certificate programs in college teaching and inclusive pedagogy, though my comprehensive exams limited the time I could devote to pedagogical development at that stage. Still, I'd developed enough teaching experience to recognize significant areas needing improvement in my classroom approach.

Teaching Associate for History (Summer 2022)

My second opportunity as a summer 2022 teaching associate for HIST 114A allowed me to adapt the course for in-person learning while addressing these shortcomings. I radically redesigned the class format by replacing traditional lectures with pre-recorded 30-45 minute podcasts that students would listen to before class. These audio lectures provided necessary context for the primary sources while freeing up class time for discussion. This "flipped classroom" model successfully shifted the dynamic—instead of being the sole source of knowledge, I facilitated conversations where students could identify historical patterns and themes themselves. This has been, and still is, a major part of my teaching philosophy: that students are more engaged and critically interacting with the course materials and classroom space if they have agency over how the classroom operates and have a hand in how the course is shaped.

While this approach created a more conversational classroom environment that mirrored the successful elements of our flexible final projects, it introduced new accessibility challenges. Despite my efforts to make the podcasts more digestible through clear signposting and conversational pacing, many students struggled with the audio format. I came to understand that my own learning preferences didn't align with those of all my students, highlighting the importance of offering material in multiple modalities—a lesson that would significantly inform my future teaching practice.

Teaching Assistant for Writing Program (Fall 2022–Summer 2023)

My teaching reflections during summer 2022 were profoundly shaped by my simultaneous participation in the Writing Program's intensive preparation course. This training proved transformative - perhaps the most significant development in my pedagogical approach to date. As new writing instructors, we learned to select readings that complemented our teaching styles while operating within a flexible framework that balanced autonomy with clearly defined course objectives.

The Writing 2: Academic Writing course introduced students to university-level writing fundamentals with these objectives:

“Welcome to Writing 2: Academic Writing! This course is your introduction to the foundations of writing at the university level. We will study and practice writing every week in order to reach our primary goal: awareness of how writers construct texts and how readers interpret those same texts. Studying writing genres and their conventions allows us to see “good writing” as something that transcends the fixed rules of grammar, style, and citation. This course will invite you to think of “good writing,” rather, as the product of practice, revision, and a willingness to approach new writing situations with curiosity and attention to context. Our focus on genre and writing techniques will allow you to detect and construct textual patterns of all kinds. In the process, we will cultivate a number of skills, strategies, and habits of mind that will help you become a more effective writer and thinker.

“By the end of this course, you will learn that reading and writing are:

  • related in important ways to each other,

  • processes that can be taught and learned in a variety of academic disciplines and genres,

  • consisting of many genres, and writers working in those genres write to a huge range of audiences for an equally broad set of purposes,

  • ongoing, purposeful processes of creation and revision,

  • directly tied to research processes like analysis, synthesis, and interpretation.

  • either informal or formal experiences—but both kinds matter,

  • and not chores to be performed, but activities that should provide you with intellectual stimulation and can provide a feeling of joy and accomplishment!”

This intensive training introduced me to numerous valuable techniques for effective lesson planning. It provided crucial insights about student attention spans and the importance of incorporating diverse activities to maintain engagement throughout class sessions.

I developed a structured approach beginning with free writing time at the start of each class. These sessions allowed students to write freely about topics of their choice, though I sometimes provided optional prompts to stimulate ideas. The primary goal was to get students actively thinking about composition spontaneously. This warm-up exercise helped students transition into the thoughtful, writing-focused environment I aimed to cultivate in our classroom. I also used these free writing sessions as exit tickets, having students submit their writing at the end of class rather than taking roll calls.

I organized the remaining class time into focused segments of no more than 30 minutes each. We would begin by discussing the assigned readings from the previous week, with students breaking into small groups to explore questions about the texts. These guided discussions served multiple purposes: they helped students articulate their thoughts, review key concepts from the readings, and collaboratively develop their understanding. By focusing on central themes, these discussions ensured students engaged meaningfully with the core ideas while becoming more comfortable sharing their perspectives in a low-pressure setting before potentially speaking to the whole class.

After this, I used what I called "activation" activities - exercises designed to help students apply concepts from the readings in practical ways. Typically conducted in groups, these activities required students to work together to implement their understanding of the material. For instance, when discussing how different genres affect message conveyance, I had students translate a reading's primary message into various genres. After these activities, I prompted students to reflect on their thinking processes through metacognition exercises, encouraging them to analyze how they approached the task and what they learned from the experience.

Metacognition formed a central pillar of the writing program's pedagogical approach, teaching us to engage students in reflecting on their own writing and thinking processes. This emphasis on self-reflection served multiple purposes: it encouraged students to approach assignments with greater intentionality, helped them understand their personal writing and research methods, and provided me with valuable insights into their thought processes. These insights allowed me to offer more targeted support and guidance during their writing.

Following a short break, I would shift focus to writing style, dedicating a brief segment to practical style tips drawn from Strunk and White's Elements of Style and Macmillan's Pocket Style Manual. Students typically welcomed this more technical, hands-on component as a refreshing change from the more conceptual discussions.

The second half of class featured what we called "delving" activities - collaborative group exercises that required students to apply their reading insights through more intensive teamwork. These multi-part activities were carefully scaffolded to build understanding. For instance, when examining genre adaptations, I would have students analyze pop culture examples they enjoyed, then explore how core ideas transformed across genres - what was lost in translation and what remained effectively preserved. Each delving activity culminated in group presentations, where students shared their discoveries and engaged in whole-class discussion of their observations.

To end class, I would preview the following week's material, including a concise one or two-sentence overview of the assigned reading's main themes. As I gained more experience with the course, I began supplementing these previews with student feedback, highlighting what previous students had found particularly valuable or insightful about each text.

My work in the writing program taught me more effective ways to scaffold major assignments. In WRIT 2: Academic Writing, our culminating project required students to compile a portfolio of their classroom work along with a final reflective analysis of their writing development. To prepare for this, students completed two themed writing projects addressing core course concepts: first, exploring genre as a communicative tool for different audiences and situations; and second, examining how academic research involves entering ongoing scholarly conversations rather than simply reporting information. We carefully structured each project with incremental steps, allowing students to progress at a thoughtful pace while understanding the purpose behind each assignment.

This experience highlighted a crucial pedagogical lesson: the importance of clearly communicating to students both what they're doing and why they're doing it. This transparency helps students engage more meaningfully with their work while simultaneously challenging me as an instructor to carefully consider the purpose behind each assignment. What specific learning objectives does this activity serve? What skills or knowledge should students gain?

Perhaps most significantly, the writing program shifted my focus from content delivery to learning outcomes. While my previous history courses had prioritized selecting historical content and topics, I now approach course design by first establishing clear objectives, then ensuring every component—from final projects to scaffolded assignments, readings, class sessions, and activities—directly contributes to those goals. How does the final project demonstrate achievement of these objectives? How do preparatory assignments build toward them? This objectives-first methodology has profoundly influenced my teaching philosophy, pedagogical approach, and course design strategies, proving invaluable to my development as an educator.

Teaching Associate for History (Fall 2023)

Having absorbed these lessons, I initially planned a comprehensive redesign of the HIST 114A syllabus, but found this challenging to implement. My dissertation writing demanded priority attention, and my new role as lead teaching assistant for the History Department brought additional mentoring responsibilities and summer training that introduced fresh concepts. Despite these constraints, I worked to incorporate insights from the writing program into my teaching, particularly in breaking up lectures into varied activities, providing clearer assignment instructions, and creating more opportunities for student-directed learning.

During this period, I began actively considering requirements for the Certificate in College and University Teaching while intentionally shaping my HIST 114A course to serve as an evidence-based teaching project. While I had already adopted podcast lectures for flipped classroom delivery, I now focused more deliberately on accessibility, a key component of my emerging teaching philosophy. My lead TA training had exposed me to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), its research foundations, and its practical guidance for educators. Through this lens, I recognized how many writing program practices I admired were rooted in UDL principles.

Both the writing program approach and my HIST 114A final projects exemplified multiple means of engagement and access—key UDL components. These methods honor students’ diverse interests and identities across dimensions like race/ethnicity, culture, gender, language, and disability. The writing program operationalized engagement through its foundational "no 'what' without 'why'" philosophy, ensuring students understood each activity's purpose. We implemented scaffolding to support ambitious goals while fostering collaboration, belonging, and actionable feedback. Among the most innovative concepts was contract grading, where classroom expectations became a mutual agreement between the instructor and students rather than a unilateral decree. Our metacognitive practices—through writing reflections, free-writing exercises, and final project cover letters—cultivated crucial developmental skills in emotional recognition, thought management, and behavioral regulation. These approaches acknowledged emotion as integral to (rather than opposed to) rational learning processes, helping students develop self-regulation capacities to advance their learning journeys.

The same principles applied to multiple means of representation and perception - we provided various ways to access information and engage with diverse perspectives through our course materials. We ensured multiple means of representation and support by clarifying language, explaining unfamiliar idioms and jargon, and using varied media formats. Our approach also built upon students' prior knowledge, particularly through allowing them to choose genres that interested them in writing assignments and select their preferred project formats for history research.

Regarding multiple means of action and expression, we diversified how students could respond to readings through written reflections, verbal discussions, group collaborations, and project-based work. We carefully varied activity types to accommodate different learning styles, incorporating internal reflection, relational exercises, kinesthetic tasks, and visual/spoken components. Students could also demonstrate their learning through their choice of final project format. We supported executive functions by establishing clear and meaningful goals, anticipating potential challenges, maintaining flexibility, organizing accessible resources, and providing consistent feedback.

I strived to incorporate all these insights into my HIST 114A course design. My syllabus aimed to welcome students' diverse interests and identities while offering autonomy in project selection, research methods, and media formats. Following the writing program model, I clearly articulated goals and rationales for each assignment. I also scheduled regular one-on-one meetings with students to better understand their expectations, beliefs, and motivations, developing emotional awareness that helped me support their individual learning journeys.

I expanded the podcast materials when I recognized they only served auditory learners, neglecting visual and kinesthetic learning styles. Along with the audio recordings, I provided written scripts of the podcasts within the time constraints I faced. While I had hoped to develop video lectures with supporting slides to better illustrate concepts, I instead focused on making primary sources more accessible by providing paragraph introductions to contextualize each document and consciously avoiding undefined jargon. This helped lower the barrier to entry for engaging with challenging materials. I maintained the practice of using the final project to bridge prior knowledge with new learning.

To support multiple means of action and expression, I allowed students to present their final projects in various media formats while building on existing knowledge. I implemented diverse assessment methods, including low-stakes quizzes, group presentations at the start of each class, discussion participation grades, and scaffolded projects.

While these adaptations represented progress, they fell short of my vision for a comprehensive, ground-up course redesign. The fundamental challenge of balancing quality teaching, thoughtful course design, and rigorous research became apparent - each demands significant time investment. Ultimately, my ambition to fully adapt HIST 114A using Universal Design for Learning principles proved too expansive to undertake at that time.

Teaching Assistant for Various Departments (Winter 2024–Fall 2024)

I was still able to take a lot of these insights with me into teaching for multiple departments. I taught for the Religious Studies department, and my students greatly appreciated my classroom presence and many of the UDL approaches that I used to teach them in their sections. In reflecting on what was most helpful in supporting their learning, students almost uniformly commented that my sections were indispensable: “Sections were very helpful, they complimented (sic) the lectures well. I liked that we had opportunities for interactive learning;” “I really enjoyed our sections with Mr. Ander[s]son, he did a fantastic job synthesizing the material we learned in class, going over complicated subject matter, and answering questions;” “Having Mr. Andersson discuss and answer any questions I had helped with a deeper understanding of my knowledge. Participating in the activities that happened during sections helped me to know and process the information from lectures and readings;” “My section also helped to facilitate my learning because it is nice to talk things out in a small group. Mr. Andersson was very helpful and knowledgeable. He is my favorite TA I have had so far!” Much of the work I did in these sections involved interactive learning activities, gamified reviews, and discussions. Students clearly appreciated the power of these activities.

Final Thoughts

The process of preparing for the Certificate in College and University Teaching has profoundly shaped my teaching philosophy and methodology. Developing my portfolio for this certification introduced me to numerous pedagogical tools, theories, and approaches that have enhanced my teaching, making it more nuanced, effective, and student-centered. Through years of experience as a teaching associate—designing curricula, creating course materials, and developing syllabi and assignments—I've come to appreciate the iterative nature of curriculum design and how becoming a more effective educator requires continuous reflection and implementation of improved teaching strategies.

My participation in the Writing Program's intensive summer training exposed me to valuable curriculum design frameworks and classroom techniques that will inform my teaching for years to come. However, it was during my time as a lead teaching assistant that these diverse insights coalesced into a coherent theoretical framework. I came to understand why the approaches I'd developed as a teaching associate and writing instructor had proven so effective—I had been intuitively engaging with Universal Design for Learning principles without fully recognizing the theoretical foundation behind them. Once I understood UDL's comprehensive methodology, I consciously sought to implement its principles at every opportunity in my teaching practice.

These transformative experiences—the certificate preparation, Writing Program training, and lead TA position—have been instrumental in shaping the educator I am today. I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to have engaged in this certification process, which has provided both the theoretical grounding and practical tools to continually refine my teaching approach.