I have previously taught first-year composition (FYC), with two sections of English 110 in the fall semester and English 225 in the spring. I have also previously taught upper-level undergraduate specialized seminars in psychology about anger management and sex, gender, and sexuality (SGS). I also have experience as a sex educator, working as part of the Sexual Health Ambassadors from the Women’s Research Center & BGLTQ+ Student Center at the University of Central Oklahoma to teach comprehensive sex education to undergraduate students and the community surrounding UCO. In the future, I hope to teach FYC as well as rhetoric courses focusing on pop culture, theory, SGS, and numerous other topics.
The best way to briefly describe my teaching style is to borrow from a line from the Pokémon theme song: you teach me, and I teach you. In my classroom environments, I encourage everyone (myself included) to embrace the simultaneous roles of teacher and student, where everyone is a subject-matter expert in something, whether it’s their major, their present topic, or their own experiences. I want everyone to stay curious (to quote sex educator Dr. Lindsey Doe of the YouTube channel Sexplanations) and learn from each other while teaching to each other. Students use their assignments to learn new concepts by relating them to things they already know, whether they just read them for class or they’ve experienced them in their lives. Above all, I want students to find their authentic voices in their assignments, since creation of texts (whether written or otherwise) can serve liberatory and self-fulfilling purposes, no matter how mundane it may seem on the surface.
On Grading and Assessment
These two factors are important parts of teaching, as they are some of the most looked-at aspects of the job: how did the student do, and how were they measured? Traditionally, the teacher assesses a student based on instructor rubrics and judgments, awarding that student a grade based on a standard where the professor (or a group above the professor) has ultimate say. This idea feels unfair to me, as universal standards remove the nuance and messiness of human existence in the name of fulfilling socially constructed norms of aptitude based on one dominant group. As such, I prefer to grade based on student self-assessment, with me providing them my own viewpoint on how I perceive performance but letting them tell the story of how they navigated assignments and classes before giving me what they feel is a fair assessment of their progress. I’m constantly learning more about the nuances of this method, but if you’re interested in more, let’s talk!
Courses and Materials
English 110, English I: Intro to Academic Prose
The baseline first-semester English course at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, this course introduces students to reading, writing, and analysis at the collegiate level. Students focus on analyzing and creating texts across numerous genres and threshold concepts of writing with a focus on multiple rhetorical situations and cultural matters related to writing. There are also mechanical aspects such as analysis, revision of individual work, and academic documentation.
English 225, English II: Intermediate Academic Prose
Immediately following English 110, this course takes the learning from the previous course and extends it with an additional emphasis on research and transfer of writing skills across multiple contexts and genres. Students work with both primary and secondary research while developing research projects within the field of writing studies. This course also examines mechanical aspects of writing as mentioned above.
Miscellaneous Materials
Below are some materials I have created either for courses I have taught or for courses I want to teach. These mainly include curriculum plans, assignment sheets, and lesson plans.
Jacob Jardel 