My pedagogy at its core, holds the belief that learning is not enabled through instruction, but a set of conditions. Some of these conditions that permeate through my courses are safety, community, trust, well-being, justice, and most importantly, joy. I consider a classroom the ground upon which we introduce and nurture these conditions. I address the work that happens in my classrooms as being done by us, because I cannot teach without students, and the conditions we nurture in the classroom are only as rich as we make them. I do not instruct in my courses. Rather, learning occurs. My pedagogy at its core, is a co-creation of conditions that makes learning inevitable.

As a queer and trans, brown, immigrant femme, I live, and teach, from the margins, and center those in margins similar and dissimilar to me. My syllabi begin with a ‘Social Location Acknowledgement’ that acknowledges these subject-positions, and models the importance of self-awareness. We begin from this place that values justice and acknowledges injustice, to co-create a safer space that is simultaneously free and accountable. Diversity and inclusion aren’t mapped onto my pedagogy; they are weaved through its very structure and praxis.

As an artist and writer, I have always believed that my practice is a lived one, inseparable from my politics and values. As an educator, I rely on this archive of lived experience to meet students where they are and co-create spaces of learning that are creative, critical, honest, joyful, and always, always, always, a little bit silly.