TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
Risograph-printed zine that I hand out to all students on the first day of class:
STATEMENT:
In 2023, I began teaching as an Assistant Professor at York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. One of the first courses I was assigned was Ethics in the Arts. This course terrified me. How could I teach art students about something so broad? What exactly are ethics in the arts? Why did it sound so intimidating—and, frankly, boring? These and many other questions consumed me as I spent countless hours crafting a plan for the course.
After teaching it twice, it’s one of my favorite classes. Here’s why:
● It’s challenging – Students engage with provocative and controversial art from history, exploring these works through discussion and experimentation.
● It’s experiential – Ethics doesn’t have to live solely in essays. We embody ethics through debates, manifestos, and the creation of artwork.
● It’s meaningful – Students reflect on what matters most as artists, finding new ways to express their values. Their artistic intentions grow sharper, as does their work.
York University wasn’t my first teaching experience. From 2017 to 2022, I was a full-time Lecturer at the Stamps School of Art & Design. There, I taught courses such as Live Art Survey (a history of experimental theatre and performance) and Social Spaces (a course on social engagement in the arts). Both explored the relationship between artists and the public, embedding ethical considerations into the conversations and contexts surrounding the work.
When I began teaching “Ethics in the Arts,” I drew inspiration and content from those earlier courses. All three classes examine how artists navigate their responsibilities to audiences, communities, and themselves—making ethics not an abstract concept but a dynamic, lived experience.
Social practice and experimentation are central to my artistic process and my teaching. The boundary between my art and teaching often feels fluid. First and foremost, I focus on fostering a sense of community within the classroom.
On the first day of my Ethics in the Arts class, we held a debate inspired by Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s lecture “Radical art, radical communities, and radical dreams” to address the question, “Is art necessary?” To keep the debate engaging and lighthearted, I drew inspiration from the children’s podcast debate show Smash Boom Best. The students separated into two teams —“Art is Necessary” and “Art Is Not Necessary”— with many assigned to argue a side that opposed their personal beliefs. This challenge made the debate both fun and thought-provoking.
Through the exercise, students had to creatively and collaboratively invent arguments for or against art, leading to a lively and provocative conversation. More importantly, it established an ethos of fun and supportive dialogue within the classroom. The energy and openness from this activity carried through the semester and culminated in a group exhibition. One group chose to revisit the original question by creating a participatory project that invited people of all ages to engage in the debate themselves through an interactive art installation.
In my Live Art Survey class at the Stamps School of Art & Design, hands-on experimentation wove into the study of performance art history. When studying Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece,” for example, students created their interpretation in the form of an interactive hair salon that explored questions of gender through live-action hair cutting. Another student, inspired by the late William Pope.L’s The Friendliest Black Artist in America, developed an in-class workshop, America’s Most Un-Friendly Black Artist, in which she led the class through a series of performative exercises that challenged them to engage collaboratively in difficult conversations about race.
Live Art Survey culminated in a group performance event at an off-campus experimental art venue, where students took on multiple roles — not just as performers but also as lighting designers, technicians, and sound engineers. The class became a collective, and the final project became a shared production.
I’ve carried this model forward to York University’s AMPD, where my Creative Methodologies course for first-year students similarly culminates in a collaborative public event each semester. Giving students ownership of their work fosters collaboration and commitment to creating something original for an audience.
Inclusivity is at the heart of my teaching philosophy, shaping both the content I introduce and how I approach accessibility within the classroom. I consciously move away from a Eurocentric, white male-dominated curriculum by incorporating a broader spectrum of voices, including those of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, immigrant, feminist, disabled, and non-Western artists.
I was awarded a fellowship from the Center for Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan to redesign the Live Art Survey syllabus, expanding its scope beyond Western and Eurocentric contexts. Additionally, I received two Anti-Racist Pedagogy grants to invite visiting artists who are people of color, queer, transgender, female, and/or belong to other historically marginalized identities. These efforts provided students with a richer and more representative understanding of contemporary art practices.
My commitment to a decolonial education framework has become even more central since I began teaching at York University in Toronto, an access university that serves a highly diverse student population. The program I teach and coordinate, Integrative Arts, is itself an access program, offering students without a traditional creative portfolio a pathway to pursue interdisciplinary arts. Most of my students are racialized, first-generation college attendees, queer or non-binary, and/or living with disabilities.
In this context, I strive not only to make my classroom accessible to individual needs but also to ensure it is a space where students feel represented and empowered to tell their own stories. My goal is to foster an environment where their voices are heard and where they feel supported in creating work that challenges dominant narratives and reflects the world they want to see.