As a sociolinguist, I view my instructional activities as a central concern of my faculty career. From the introductory course in college composition to the advanced Writing, Rhetoric, and Language elective seminars I teach at York, a central mission in my teaching is to help students recognize and leverage the validity and utility of their own language varieties and deconstruct the mythology of Standardized Academic English, while evaluating and understanding the power that variety is accorded. My pedagogy thus aims to develop students’ flexibility in the use of an integrated repertoire of linguistic and rhetorical forms. I have been active in developing new curricular offerings, including Language, Technology, and Society, a course covering the development of language technologies beginning with the invention of writing, and an interdisciplinary minor in Digital Studies developed in collaboration with Andie Silva. I have also been active in adopting and adapting new developments in educational technology, and have redesigned several courses through the development of Open Educational Resources and zero-cost curricula; I view these efforts as vital in ensuring that technological innovations in pedagogy serve to respond to students’ material conditions, rather than complicating them while enriching corporate publishers.
Full list of courses taught:
2017-: CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY.
- Introduction to Sociolinguistics (with Cecelia Cutler)
- Introduction to the Sociolinguistics of Computer-Mediated Communication (with Cecelia Cutler)
- Language Contact
2014-: CUNY York College, Jamaica, NY.
- Introduction to College Writing
- Introduction to English Grammar and Syntax
- History of the English Language
- Special Topics in Writing, Rhetoric, and Language: Language, Technology, and Society
- Language, Technology, and Society
- Seminar in Writing, Rhetoric, and Language (Topics: Pidgins and Creoles, Discourse Analysis)
- Introduction to the Sociolinguistics of English
- Senior Research in English (Topic: Language contact phenomena)
- Independent Study (Topic: English and comparative morphology)
- Honors Research in English (2 semester sequence) (Topic: Semiotics of Internet memes)
2013-14: Murray State University, Murray, KY.
- Introduction to English Linguistics (graduate/undergraduate)
- Language and Culture (graduate)
- Ethnolinguistics in the US
- Computer-Assisted Language Learning (graduate)
2011-2012: Parkland College, Champaign, IL, Richland Community College, Decatur, IL, Lincoln College, Lincoln, IL.
- English Composition
- ESL Composition
- Public Speaking
- Introduction to Communication
2008-2011: University of Illinois, Urbana, IL.
- Language Diversity in the USA (instructor of record)
- Language, Technology, and Society (instructor of record)
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