Teaching
My teaching encourages students to use anthropology to approach familiar questions from new perspectives. I have taught Cultural Anthropology as instructor of record and have additional teaching experience across cultural and linguistic anthropology. My pedagogy emphasizes active learning, multiple perspectives, and creating classrooms where students can engage critically with unfamiliar ideas while developing their own arguments.
Student Testimonials
"Kyle provided exceptional feedback, remained engaged with students and material, and was regularly available throughout the course. I would highly recommend this course and instructor to friends and other students."
"It was excellent. I loved the way he interacted with the class and related things to his personal experiences."
"Even though I took this class to mainly fill a gen ed, I do think I learned a lot. I am able to look at my workplace, and really any place I go, from a completely different perspective which is always fun for me. Even if it means I wont use a lot of the tools offered in this course going forward, there are little bits and pieces I think I can take with me."
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching is guided by the Hawaiian concept of aʻo, which means to teach, to learn, and to counsel. I first encountered aʻo as an undergraduate at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and its understanding of teaching and learning as reciprocal has continued to shape how I approach the classroom. Those who learn have a responsibility to teach, while those who teach have a responsibility to continue learning. I therefore approach teaching not simply as the transmission of knowledge, but as a process in which students and instructors learn through engagement with one another.
Anthropology is particularly well suited to this approach because it asks students to encounter unfamiliar ways of understanding the world while reconsidering assumptions about what they already know. I design courses that expose students to perspectives they may not encounter elsewhere and provide new ways of approaching familiar topics. In my proposed course Beyond Machismo, for example, students encounter topics common to gender and sexuality studies, including economics, sex work, and families, but examine them through scholarship on masculinities in Mexico. Applying feminist theories to men and masculinities allows students to consider how gender and sexuality are constructed relationally rather than treating different gendered experiences as separate subjects.
Creating opportunities for students to encounter different perspectives also requires a classroom in which they can question them. I tell students that no course can encompass every perspective on a subject and that I do not necessarily agree with every argument I assign. Students are encouraged to disagree with readings, with one another, and with me, provided they can demonstrate that they understand the argument they are challenging and support their own position. I pair this openness with readings representing multiple perspectives and contexts. Rather than repeatedly associating particular issues with particular populations, I ask students to consider how similar questions appear across different groups and places. This helps students recognize difference without treating particular communities as inherently defined by the problems scholars study within them.
I also use active learning to make participation a normal part of the classroom. In discussion sections for Introduction to Language, Culture, and Communication, for example, I ask students to arrange themselves according to the last digit of their phone numbers without speaking, writing, using their fingers, or tapping out the number. The exercise requires them to develop alternative ways of communicating together and, because it is intentionally a little awkward and playful, helps lower the barrier to speaking and participating with classmates. I reinforce this throughout the semester through small-group activities that give students opportunities to work through ideas before entering larger discussions.
Finally, aʻo requires that I remain a learner in my own classroom. I continually assess whether my teaching methods are working rather than assuming that a successful approach in one class will necessarily work in another. I adjust explanations and activities when students are struggling with material, solicit midsemester feedback so that I can make changes while a course is still underway, and use end-of-semester evaluations to revise future courses. Teaching, for me, is therefore an ongoing process of learning from students while helping them develop the tools to question assumptions, engage seriously with perspectives different from their own, and apply anthropological thinking beyond the classroom.