My teaching philosophy aims to foster a learning environment that maximizes the potential of diverse learners. The core elements in my teaching include designing curricula that are inclusive of diverse perspectives, creating opportunities to apply knowledge to lived experiences, and building mentorships that are empowering, collaborative, and beneficial to rising scholars. 

First, I design curricula with diversity and inclusivity in mind, with thoughtful consideration of the cultural and developmental needs of diverse learners. Reflecting my own research, I am committed to incorporating discussions of culture within classrooms to broaden students’ understanding of the diversity in human development. This entails creating assignments, activities, and materials that reinforce and challenge the learning of students with diverse skills. This also includes leveraging students’ funds of knowledge and inquiry-based teaching strategies to get a sense of what learners need and want to know. 

A second key element of my teaching is to create opportunities for students to apply new knowledge and concepts to their lived experiences. Through generative activities and small and large group discussions, I encourage students to use their own funds of knowledge and envision how they may put the developmental and psychological concepts they are learning into their own lived experiences and concretize their understanding of psychological phenomena. 

Finally, going beyond the classroom setting, an essential element of my teaching is to mentor rising scholars in ways that are empowering, collaborative, and beneficial for their careers. In the lab, I help my mentees cultivate competence and autonomy in research methods by systematically scaffolding their research skills and individualizing their learning through one-on-one, hands-on demonstrations and exemplars of research tasks. I also consistently position my mentees as important cultural assets and collaborators to my research and outreach work, encouraging mentees to use their cultural knowledge to inform the content of data collection materials and the interpretations of our data findings. 

Overall, my goal is to ensure that scholars have fundamental theoretical knowledge and research skills that they can benefit them in the next phase of their careers.