Mia Zamora’s Teaching Philosophy
“When I think about teaching, I also think about the possibility of learning as joy and transformation. I am a passionate teacher, but what I really am is a co-learner. Every time I design a new learning experience, I am truly excited because I know I will be surprised by what I don’t know yet. I will learn from the new people I meet, and I will learn from what they see in this complex world around us. My networked classes are an open arena for exploration and mutual participation. By design, my courses inherently require the unique knowledge of each individual student. Our discussions and exchanges embrace different cultural ways of knowing and of self-actualization. My students learn to network in an open context in new ways that prove significant both personally and academically, leading to previously unanticipated futures and new networks of action/support. When I teach, I am also reimagining education and realizing democratic aspirations.
My greatest concern for our collective future is an inability to imagine. How can we shape a better world together if we cannot exercise our imagination? The imagination is as critical a literacy as the ability to read one’s world with nuance and wisdom. Imagination is when becoming literate is an opening of spaces, an end to submergence, a consciousness to ask why (Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination, 25). Imagination is where true freedom is born.”
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Below are links to various learning experiences I have designed and directed. I invite you to browse some courses I teach, as well as the learning networks I have imagined and have co-founded.
MA in Writing Studies-Kean University website
