Philosophy

When I teach, my goals are always threefold: to learn, to connect, and to challenge.

Learn. First, I do not believe that education is a one-way street. Educators have as much to learn from students as students do from them. I approach the classroom as a co-learning experience. In the future, I want to experiment with un-grading.

Connect. I typically require students to meet with me at least once during office hours. This ‘assignment’ gives me an opportunity to know each of them outside of a classroom setting. I learn about their goals, personal, and academic challenges and specifically what they wanted to get out of the course. I use these one-on-ones to develop ways to connect the course material to their interests.

Challenge. The most important aspect of my teaching is challenging students to critically think about systems of power. My training in sociology informs how I approach the study of public health issues. I want my students to leave the classroom better equipped to critically evaluate the status quo and creatively imagine a more just world.

UCLA

Problems at the Biology/Society Interface: What is Race?
Teaching Assistant, Institute for Society and Genetics, January – March 2019 
Professors: Terence Keel and Aaron Panofsky

Required upper division course for Human Biology and Society majors at UCLA. The course explores biological/genetic explanations of human diversity and compares them with anthropological and sociological understandings of race as a social construction. I taught three discussion sections with 20 students each. I held one-on-one and group meetings with students throughout academic term (3 hours per week).

TA Evaluations, Spring 2019

Rebekah was a great TA and I am glad I had her. What I appreciated most was that Rebekah always supported her students and was looking out for us. A lot of us seemed to be struggling with the quizzes and it was great that Rebekah made it a point to address our concerns and then bring them up with the professors. I think that shows she really cared about student learning and wanted us to do well in the course.

I really loved and am so grateful to have had Rebekah as my TA for this course. SocGen105B asks many thought-provoking and complex questions and taught many concepts that were new to me. However, Rebekah was able to create a safe space where we were able to collaborate with our classmates to work through the concepts in class as well as for our essays. Rebekah also constantly pushed us to think critically and encouraged us to expand upon our knowledge taught in lecture by giving us additional resources to read and watch. She is also very knowledgable and offered us a different perspective from our professors about the content discussed in class; having her address our concerns and confusions in discussion made the section worth waking up for and really made me feel less lost in this class.

I think Rebekah was a wonderful TA. I loved how she used the section time practically, and allowed us to work on or brainstorm ideas for our papers during class time. I also loved how she understood that, during midterm season, people were bound to be behind on readings, and so she made us summarize specific readings in class . That activity really helped me with one of my later papers, because it saved me so much time. I don't have any complaints about how she runs section!

Rebekah created a safe space for personal and deep class discussions while also challenging us to ask difficult questions as well as accepting and enabling everyone to share differing points of view.

American University

Contemporary Social Problems
Teaching Assistant, Department of Sociology, August 2012 – December 2012
Professor:  Michelle Newton Francis

U.S. Society
Department of Sociology, American University, January 2012 – June 2012
Professor: Bette Dickerson