As a sociologist of culture, I appreciate that context influences outcomes; as a student, I am aware my teachers powerfully impact my learning; as a teacher, I recognize I affect students’ learning processes and educational experiences, as students, in turn, affect me. I do not take the multiple roles within the classroom context lightly, but assume the teacher and students integrally produce the context in which learning occurs. Consequently, I view teaching and learning as dynamic processes that evolves as each new classroom context emerges, as opposed to a static, formulaic experience in which names and faces can be easily replaced with each passing semester.

This perspective reflects my belief that each student and every teacher is unique: students and teachers, both, come from a variety of backgrounds and bring with them vastly different experiences and expectations; we all learn differently with varying levels of motivation. I believe that acknowledging, and perhaps even appreciating, these differences, by creating a classroom community founded on relationships among all participants of the learning experience best facilitates students’ success in learning. By emphasizing relationships, as opposed to the isolated learner, I find each member of the class develops a sense of responsibility towards their own and other class members’ learning experiences. Not only does this approach support a variety of learning styles, but a community oriented classroom encourages students to explore varying perspectives, approaches, and evaluations towards the academic conversation generally and the sociological imagination specifically.

My interaction-based approach allows learning to take place through multiple avenues, such as discussions/debate, group projects, and writing, as opposed to restricting learning to an event performed in isolation. By employing a variety of learning activities, students learn to grapple with an array of dimensions foundational to sociology as a discipline: audience, epistemologies, appropriate evidence, sources of credible evidence, the role of theory in research, and assumptions within theoretical perspectives. Challenging students to understand these dimensions, to recognize when others violate sociology’s conventions, and to formulate informed actions based on sociological thought, gives students tools to effectively navigate challenges in their lives and make a positive impact on society long after the classroom experience concludes.

Generating a classroom community requires much effort and rarely occurs organically. I find simple techniques, such as knowing and using each student’s name, build cohesion. Further, to attain a sense of enduring, if impermanent, ties, I incorporate group work early in the semester and repeatedly throughout the course in order to facilitate interactions. In addition, and most importantly, I make discussion central to the classroom learning process, defining discussion as interaction among all members of the classroom and not as a series of discreet exchanges between me, as teacher, and individual students.

Through these methods, I strive to enable student success by establishing a context dedicated to the learning process as a dynamic enterprise. My sociological insight that context influences outcomes, that culture matters, informs how I practice the art of teaching. I believe that the classroom community is central to students’ learning and I emphasize not only my role in that process, but each and every student and their unique contributions.