Teaching Philosophy

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The classroom is my homeground—a place where I grow every day alongside my students, and where learning feels most alive. Graduate school introduced me to critical pedagogy and decolonial theories, but I quickly realized that such frameworks cannot exist apart from practice. Without practice, “critical knowledge” loses its power. That is why I value the everyday work of teaching: it is the true site where my scholarship takes shape, and where I, as both a person and a teacher, evolve in dialogue with my students.

Students working on a collaborative mural with tissue paper inspired by Justin Favela.

Inspired by critical pedagogy, I place students’ lived experiences at the center of my teaching and strive to build a communal space for learning. At the start of each semester, I devote time to cultivating this community—sharing stories, listening deeply, and learning about one another.

Zine offers a powerful way to share stories and learn from one another. Zine-making is a gathering of voices, stitched together in paper and ink. Thoughtfully created zines carry stories that slip past dominant narratives offering lived experience and sparks of DIY imagination. I love the tactile rhythm of folding and binding, the way materials speak through our hands. More importantly, I value the collaborative energy that turns individual voices into a chorus. In my courses, the act of creating and sharing zines has become a ritual—an opening where students discover that their words, images, and gestures can transform into bridges of dialogue, connection, and community.

Zines created by students.

Similar to my zine pedagogy, building a sense of community is crucial in my pedagogical practice. I guide my students to find and nurture their own communities. This is especially important in critical pedagogy, where students and teachers are encouraged to question dominant narratives and embrace discomfort as part of the learning process. Building that sense of community is never simple—it takes courage to step outside our comfort zones, to speak with others in real time, and to face the inevitable disappointments and challenges along the way. I want my students to recognize these difficulties not as obstacles, but as integral parts of the process of community-building, and to learn how to embrace them as opportunities for growth.

Art can be a powerful tool for initiating community-building efforts. Thoughtfully planned and organized art-making can create a space for more open and authentic conversations and connections. This is why I encourage my students to organize a pop-up art event, in the form of guerrilla art or artistic intervention, to directly interact with their communities and start the conversations through art. When my students organize the events, they often admit to feeling nervous at first. Yet in those moments, they begin to see ordinary spaces as sites of transformation—places where genuine interaction, connection, and community can emerge.

Pop-up events organized by students in "Arts in Action" at CSUSB.

Equally vital to my teaching is nurturing students’ capacity for critical thinking. I invite them to pause and question the taken-for-granted beliefs, dominant ideologies, and pedagogical practices that shape their learning. Together, we ask: Whose voices and artistic practices are amplified or silenced within our education system? Which artworks fill the pages of textbooks or appear in lecture slides, and which forms of art are omitted or underrecognized? What possibilities emerge when we view the arts not merely as expressions of social reality, but as forces that can imagine and shape new ones? I also encourage students to reflect on their own educational experiences, tracing how their personal histories and backgrounds intersect with the structures of schooling.

Through these conversations, we uncover how concepts that appear “neutral” or “natural” are, in fact, socially and historically constructed. This recognition opens the door to agency: educators and artists can reimagine curriculum and instruction in more just and liberatory ways.

These critical and reflective practices become a foundation for imagining education otherwise. Students begin to envision classrooms built upon the knowledge of historically marginalized communities, spaces where art is not only taught but lived as a form of resistance and renewal. At the heart of it all, I want my students to feel the thrill of possibility—to dream boldly about their futures as artists and educators who can transform the world.

Block printed cards symbolizing students' teaching values.

The students, pre-service art teachers, wrote letters to their future students.