My teaching philosophy is rooted in Paulo Freire's notion of co-intentional education, where students and teachers engage together to create knowledge. I believe that supporting students to critically question and understand the world helps them to become active and engaged learners, which in turn, leads them to be active and engaged educators and citizens. This philosophy, coupled with rigorous inquiry and experiential education, has proven to be very effective. Many of my students have gone on to be successful teaching artists who are committed to equity and an expanded role for artists in society. Freire wrote that, "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other (Freire, 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 53)." I strive for my work to engage in the type of restless and hopeful inquiry that Freire believed had the power to reinvent-or perhaps even repair-the world.

My classes use arts-based experiential learning in school and community settings. John Dewey asserted that education is not preparation for life but is life. He believed that educators were responsible for creating the framework within which authentic, active learning could take place. He believed that action needed to go hand-in-hand with reflection and suggested that, "A separation of the active doing phase from the passive undergoing phase destroys the vital meaning of an experience" (Dewey, 1916, Democracy and Education, p. 151). This belief informs my pedagogy and compels me to provide my students with opportunities to engage in meaningful action and reflection.