Dustin Kidd

This summer, I taught my first section of Intellectual Heritage, the program I have directed since 2017. IH offers 2 courses, required of all students at Temple: The Good Life and The Common Good. I taught The Common Good in Summer 1, a 6-week intensive session that was taught online due to COVID-19. Image of the Code of Hammurabi I taught the course asynchronously, which is standard practice in IH. Asynchronous courses, when correctly designed, provide the best opportunity for student engagement and retention. Recognizing that many students are living at home where they may either be competing with family members for internet access, or they may not have it at all, the asynchronous format allows them to complete assignments and discussions at times and places that suit them. I had students who did their work from their dining rooms, and students who did their work while at their jobs (usually because that was their best internet access point). The Pillow Book by Sei Shônag...

Dustin Kidd – Teaching Philosophy – From Play to Art The building blocks for my courses are play, voice, empathy, understanding, and art. Play Adults need to play as much as children do. We often forget that. The classroom should include opportunities for tinkering, practicing, and experimenting. Play is written into most of my assignments. For instance, in my increasing use of social media in the classroom, I ask students to spend time playing—reading, following, and randomly posting—before they jump straight into performing the assignment.  Voice Being creative and communicating are natural parts of the human experience, but we all learn to communicate in specific ways for specific settings. So we have to constantly learn to understand our own voices in a variety of communication types—from email to tweets, from formal papers to memos. I work closely with my students on discovering their voices in these different settings and I use iteration as the central tool fo...

This is an old teaching philosophy from several years ago. I've used the mantra "don't be an asshole" a few times lately, when I felt particularly annoyed by certain behaviors from my students. I thought I'd dig this back up. -------------------------------------- Writing this statement was inspired by a conversation I had recently with an undergraduate who was preparing for a career in cooking instruction. “What advice do you have for an aspiring teacher?” he asked me. Given our very different fields, it was clearly important to think beyond the strictly sociological (“always teach theory and methods as one”), and even beyond the arts & sciences (“bravely embrace seemingly new traditions”). What could I tell this young person about teaching that would apply as well to him—a chef who teaches others how to cook—as it does to myself as a teacher of sociology? “Do yoga,” I told him. We were sitting outside of our classroom, before an 8:40am c...