ZEINA ISMAIL-ALLOUCHE

My aspiration as a learning facilitator is to contribute to the establishment of a stimulating, inclusive, and collaborative environment that acknowledges the students’ narratives and builds on the individual learning competencies. By nurturing my teaching profession, I aim to contribute to social justice processes that bridge between practice and theory in an applied context.

My interdisciplinary approach to teaching is grounded in Indigenous Ways of Knowing that are holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational. It builds on my long years of community engagement, social activism, and academic teaching. I am committed to ensuring an enjoyable learning space that respects diversity and allows open introspective exchanges. My promise for the journey is to be culturally safe, flexible, inclusive, stimulating and engaging enough to the horizons further.

Engaging in social justice issues necessitates that I unpack my own social locations and privileges by promoting a culture of shared authority with the students who are the owners of the learning process. It is an evolving journey that invites me to commit to a steady self-reflexive practice that is embedded in Paolo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed where education is a means of conscientization.

I commit myself to contribute to learning through:

• Student’s centered learning that individualizes the learning process. I will promise an active learning dynamic that engages the learner in designing, implementing, and assessing the outcome. I will constantly adapt the content and revisit the learning objectives and strategies to better meet the learners’ expectations within the framework of the general learning outcomes.

• Critical thinking that empowers the learner to engage in deepening the analysis in views of the practical experiences and in relation to contexts. I will ensure applied learning opportunities to explore new conceptual frameworks and enable learners to think outside the box.

• Community engagement that establishes a direct link between conceptual learning and social justice issues. I will deploy a wider spectrum of approaches to assessment that acknowledges self-reflexivity as an evaluation tool among others.

Learning is a reciprocal process that engages me, as a teacher, in an enthusiastic and process towards sustainable contributions. It is beyond a job, it is my commitment and to ensure Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the most silenced voices.