# My teaching philosophy **July 2025** I believe that excellent **teaching demonstrates leadership** to be emulated. As an teacher I see my role as being responsible to demonstrate preparedness, engagement, empathy, a willingness to experiment, a care for equity, and to provide meaningful feedback. This belief has been shaped by 4 years teaching internationally and 4.5 years teaching pre-service K-12 teachers in the US. It has additionally been influenced by many years of experience creating educational products in higher-education, international organizations, and the private sector. My approach to teaching and classroom management is guided by three principles: 1) learner-centered design, 2) authentic learning experience, and 3) meaningful reflection and feedback. Fundamentally, I think about creating learning environments that embrace student goals in parallel with my goals and those of the institution. This reveals itself in my deep care for learners to be empowered to create products that can be used beyond the classroom, be it for an interview or in professional practice. To support this occurring, I strive to create environments with one-on-one communication, solid partnerships that promote feedback, space for reflection, and responsive modifications to the teaching and learning experience. The nature of partnerships in teaching is changing. When I was last teaching, guiding pre-service K-12 teachers, all connections and partnerships were human driven. Since early 2023 however, there are emerging human-AI partnerships. As such, a fundamental shift in my teaching philosophy is that teachers and students need to experiment together with Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a partner in the classroom (and beyond). Still, I continue to believe it is important to motivate students by connecting the content to their goals and allowing them to make choices in their learning journey. Because of this, I like to use project-based learning with opportunities for students to design and create outputs in partnership with AI so they may experience both the benefits and drawbacks of this collaboration. And it is here where a real challenge and gap lies — _what are the right partnerships, and_ _how much AI partnership is too much_? I do not know this answer, and I have struggled with these since the emergence of generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI). In alignment with the principles of my philosophy and professional experience, I believe that planned teamwork putting empathy before efficiency, experimentation before the _right answer_, and allowing multiple pathways to an outcome, may help us all work toward answers. In recognizing AI as a learning partner, I believe that it is important to incorporate AI literacy into teaching because of the opportunity it represents to allow innovation in practices, potential to accelerate human learning, and enabling new activities and interactions. Because I see the emergence of AI as similar to that of the Internet in the 1990s, I believe that my classroom should help construct student knowledge of AI, awareness how they may partner with AI, allow practicing skills for engaging with AI, and jointly formulate ethical guideline for the development of their competencies collaborating with AI. In short, being able to answer what it is, what it can do, how it works, how it is perceived, and the range of ethical considerations/conflicts found across domains. And critically, I believe it is imperative to help learners maintain their agency by answering, _when to begin to use AI_ and _when to stop using AI_. **Teaching is leadership, but it is equally being a part of and/or a driver of community.** Just as in most professional contexts, a community led by mutual respect, trust, empathy, and high yet achievable expectations create the conditions for deep learning and new possibilities. In my previous teaching experience, I have taught more than 1000 students in China and more than 500 pre-service teachers in the US. In professional contexts, I have mentored approximately 10 junior and mid-career staff. And importantly within my higher-education experiences I have been a contributor to and creator of multiple communities. Notably, during my time at George Washington University, I established the Generative AI in Teaching group (GAIT) — formally the [[genAI Faculty Advisory Council]] — bringing together faculty from across the entire organization to tackle questions and generate recommendations for genAI in teaching practice. Additionally, for a time I formed a genAI Staff Working Group to discover with librarian staff how to address faculty and student needs with genAI. My commitment to providing leadership in teaching and community is evidenced through these activities and more. **Excellent teaching in practice should never be static.** It should evolve with the experience of the teacher, the inclusion of perspectives beyond one’s domain, shift with the findings of research, and occasionally by the forces of technological change reconsider everything all over again. Artificial Intelligence represents a massive shift in communications and information access that will continue to impact teaching and learning far into the future. As such, teaching and learning design and practice needs to evolve. As related to the mission of the university, I believe that demonstrated leadership in this change can best be exemplified through the collegial exchange of ideas, the uplifting of community, and the maintenance of integrity, trust, and respect in teaching practice. In conclusion, teaching to me is fundamentally about embracing change and fostering human connections. With or without technology, it always bears the responsibility to demonstrate characteristics that empower others to strive to be better.