Teaching

Teaching philosophy & recognition

My teaching philosophy is grounded in equity, empathy, and ensuring that every student who enters my classroom is welcomed and supported. I make ongoing professional development focused on equitable teaching practice a priotity, with past work including:

My teaching practice has been recognized by Stanford's university-wide Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, with my citation emphasizing “his innovation in deploying a range of techniques to engage many learning styles beyond text and photos, including virtual reality exhibits and landscape and environmental data,” “generously sharing his models and approaches with other graduate students and faculty,” and “his sensitivity in communicating with students, ensuring students felt heard and respected.” 

I have also received the Excellence in First-Time Teaching Award from the Department of History at Stanford and have earned consistently high teaching reviews from students in each course I've taught.

Teaching examples

My teaching has engaged topics in modern American, Asia,  and global history as well as the interdisciplinary approaches to war and environmental change in the modern world. In selecting sources, planning classroom activities, and designing assements, I emphasize a range of learning styles, making history accessible regardless of previous level of historical study, making interdisciplinary connections, and emphasizing how skills developed in history courses help students pursue many career paths. 

Vietnamese Communist soldiers sort through the wreckage of a U.S. Navy Plane downed near Hanoi, Sept. 1972, Doan Cong Tinh (photographer)

Research seminar: syllabus

Entitled The Vietnam War / the American War, this course asked students to consider one of the most complex conflicts of the twentieth century from a range of diverse, often divergent, perspectives of different subject-positions of gender, race, nationality, class, religion, and political orientation

As a capstone project, students completed their own original archival or oral history research.

I designed and led this course in 2020. 

Woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi of a group of people looking at chrysanthemums, 1843-7, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Survey course of modern Japanese history: section syllabus

I was the teaching assistant for this course, led by Jun Uchida, in 2017. I prepared this syllabus for the weekly sections I facilitated to structure learning activities, assignment expectations, the norms of the learning community. 

I received the Excellence in First-Time Teaching Award for my work in this course.

Mary McLeod Bethune Mural (1977-1978) in Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Exposition Park Branch, Los Angeles Public Library. The mural was painted by Black artist Charles White (1918-1979) to celebrate Bethune, a Black activist, educator, and presidential advisor (1875-1955)

Survey course of modern American history: syllabus

This is a sample syllabus I have prepared to demonstrate how I would ground a future course U.S. history from 1877 to the present in a diverse range of perspectives, source types, and connections to Californian and global history.

I have taught modern U.S. history as a teaching assistant in 2018. I was invited the following year back as a research coach in the same course and as a guest speaker on the Vietnam War. 

Photo by Oliver Kornblihtt / Mídia, CC BY-NC 2.0, Climate Justice March in Glasgow at COP26, November 5 2021

Global climate justice classroom activity toolkit 

This is a toolkit for simulating negotiations at a United Nations Climate Change Conference with key twists that invite students to think critically about justice and power. The exercise engages challenges of coordinating a global response to the climate crisis on a planet defined by deep inequalities. While debating policies among nation-states of varying levels of wealth and historical contributions to climate change, students respond to protesters at the conference, an unfolding global financial crisis, a delegation of non-human nature, and more. I designed and led this activity as a teaching assistant for Mikael Wolfe in his climate change ethics course in 2019. 

I shared this toolkit through a Creative commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) and added it to teaching resources being compiled by the Environmental Historians Action Collaborative. (Photo by Oliver Kornblihtt / Mídia Ninjia, CC BY-NC 2.0)