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Recent Student Evaluations of Teaching, UC Davis, Spring 2020 [online due to COVID-19]

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"Excellent at helping students individually and accommodating the online schedule. Added interesting socio-phonetics section at the end of the course and was very fair with grading" -- Student Evaluation, LIN 112: Phonetics, Spring 2020

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"Professor Masters really knows the subject and is able to explain it in an interesting way. She's also very good about responding to student questions and giving feedback on assignments" -- Student Evaluation, LIN 112: Phonetics, Spring 2020

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"This course is strong in its applicability to real life situations. What I learned and was asked to reflect on was very personally relevant -- language is something everyone's experienced, so it was easy to engage with the course material since I could constantly relate it to my own personal life experiences. I also thought the level of student engagement and participation in this course was very well done for an online class, as I looked forward to discussion sections and felt somewhat connected to certain students in the class, despite never meeting them in person. I also enjoyed seeing the professor and TAs very actively engage in the weekly reflection posts!" -- Student Evaluation, CMN/LIN 005: Global English for Communication, Spring 2020

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"Professor Masters is so knowledgable in her field of study. She often adds in real-life examples and even her own experience when it's applicable. The readings and assignments were also on par with what I believe she wanted us to learn from the course. Additionally, I like how the lecture and discussion material was different; we always had something new to talk about each week" -- Student Evaluation, CMN/LIN 005: Global English for Communication

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Teaching Statement

 

Now more than ever, all faculty, regardless of research or teaching tracks, must be able to address false information about science, truth, and humanity, which have been targeted by frames like "fake news" and "woke culture." Trust in higher education and science have eroded due to the pandemic's effect on an already-strained education system, and now academics are seeing AI technologies like ChatGPT undermine learners' thinking and writing processes, framing the acts of writing, reading, and thinking as elements that are "in the way" of a college experience that students feel they just have to push through. These are very large issues that, if we truly care about a democratic and just education that propels young people to make change in their rapidly-changing world, we must address in our classrooms by thinking about our pedagogy. My understanding of teaching sees development as process, not product, and the role of the teacher as a mediator in the fluid, nonlinear development of the student. It is also based on an understanding of language as a vehicle for social interaction among humans and thus inseparable from its users in the sociocultural and historical environments in which they use it. Language is activity and, because of this, it is always connected to power and politics. When we view our students' development as in process, when we show we care about what they write and say, and when we tweak our classroom processes in ways that allow students to practice their thinking, writing, and reading in class on topics that both challenge and excite them, then we can change long-term learning outcomes for our students, as well as make teaching more enjoyable and fulfilling for ourselves. 

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Language as activity. My classes push learners toward understanding language as more than an object with rules to learn, but as an activity in which they participate. Spring semester 2019, for example, I co-taught “APLNG 493: Teaching English as a Second Language,” a requirement for the undergraduate ESL certificate and the MA TESL degree (Teaching English as a Second Language). Although we built students’ knowledge of the structure of language, our main focus was on providing teachers ample opportunities for praxis, where they could do the activity of teaching, make meaning with students through this activity, reflect on what they did and continue their development. The course was a rigorous but supportive environment for students as they completed a series of project-based assignments, including working in small groups on a team-teaching project, designed to provide them with actual classroom teaching experience. For the project, each group was required to observe a different ESL class taught by our instructors in the department. Students then created a lesson plan to teach a specific set of skills or concepts that were part of the objectives for the ESL course they observed. Groups planned and practiced the lesson in APLNG 493 first before they team-taught their lesson to the actual ESL students. We video-recorded their teaching and reviewed it with them afterwards. This was one of many tasks embedded in the course that allowed pre-service teachers opportunities to learn by doing.

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Language as power. Language is a vehicle that both empowers individuals and renders them voiceless, so for my English-language-learning students, I incorporate activities that strengthen their voice. In my “ESL 114G: American Oral English for Academic Purposes” course at Penn State, for example, I learned from my international graduate students that they had not yet developed the pragmatic ability to confidently speak up in conversations in their other classes. They expressed that they had a difficult time “jumping in” to classroom conversations, which, according to them, were dominated by U.S.-born students comfortable with interrupting others, extending discussions, and asking questions. I developed an activity in which one student would begin his or her argument on the topic at hand (e.g., benefits and concerns of genetically-modified food), and during the student’s turn, I would toss a small, fluffy ball to another student who had ten seconds to interrupt the speaker to extend or refute the point. Though the activity took place in the safe, simulated environment of my classroom and could not truly represent the often high-stakes and face-threatening nature of real discussion in doctoral candidate classrooms, students were appreciative of the practice. In student ratings of teaching effectiveness that semester, responding to a question about what helped them learn in the course, one student wrote, “Speaking out confidently,” and another that “The class helped me to interact more with native-American [sic] speakers outside of the classroom” (Fall 2017, ESL 114G). Instead of telling or showing them how to interrupt or contribute, I provided a space for them to dialogue and figure out social rules and pragmatic language use with my guidance.

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Language as political. In sociocultural linguistics courses, I connect coursework to issues of power, identity, and ideology. At Penn State, I have co-taught courses in sociolinguistics, including a doctoral-level course in language policy and planning and an undergraduate course on language, culture, and society. I use real data in the classroom in the forms of print, audio, and video to demonstrate language as a political activity. When I teacher-assisted “APLNG 210: Ecology of Global English,” I presented data from my dissertation research for a unit exploring positive aspects and negative consequences of the global spread of English. That day we discussed the ideology of English for development in low-income countries. Students listened to interview data and watched a video clip of Nicaraguan English teachers struggling to speak English but having to teach English due to a mandated language policy. They explored the ideologies the teachers confronted in imagining English as a part of their present and future lives, and how global English ideologies were represented in the current teaching practices and teaching-learning materials that were used in the classroom. Bringing real-world data into the classroom helped students understand that the view that English brings opportunity to all people is an uncritical assumption that has real consequences for people in low-income countries.

 

I understand teaching as a career of lifelong learning. I take the feedback that students provide me seriously by making small adjustments each semester, and I have consistently high teaching evaluations because of this reflexivity. In a student rating from a developmental writing course that I taught at San José State University, a student wrote, “Thank you for breaking my boundary professor. I will always consider you one of my most effective professors” (ENGL 100A, Spring 2013). I am pulled toward understanding the student’s metaphor of “breaking my boundary” as representing a student who was perhaps resistant to having to take my class (one in which students were required to take after failing a university writing requirement), but who was made to feel comfortable enough to struggle with the material and move towards a new stage in his or her development. Breaking a boundary means crossing over, and this student felt that he or she qualitatively changed in my classroom, which is exactly what I strive to do for students each semester. In 2013, faculty and students in the Department of English at SJSU voted me “Lecturer of the Year,” an honor that continues to remind me that I can be trusted to teach a variety of impactful courses for learners of language, linguistics, and education.

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