Experiential Learning through Fieldtrips and Media
In the ANT 4403 Environment and Cultural Behavior class that I taught for four years, I used fieldtrips with local scholars and field experts to get students outside of the classroom and engage in 
hands-on scholarship. I have taken my classes to the Natural Areas Teaching Lab on campus so that the students could learn basic principles of ecology like habitat fragmentation, ecosystem dynamics of upland pine and hardwood forests, and then apply these concepts through a role-playing exercise in which they are grouped into dairy-farmers, local residents, ecotourists, and conservationists to understand how environmental policy is values-contingent.
Students at Ethnoecology Garden at UF.
My Teaching Philosophy
My work, my research, and particularly my teaching, is focused on integrating critical and applied interdisciplinary environmental and visual studies into the learning experience. Consequently, I explore pedagogical techniques that take students out of the classroom and into engaged learning experiences to aid their scholarship and their research.
For example, in the classes that I teach at the University of Florida, I have been able to involve undergraduate youths in the analysis and creation of media that supports community development efforts through applied research projects, discussion groups, writing assignments, and civically-engaged activities.
fieldtrips