Welcome

I have been an educator for over 14 years, serving as a classroom teacher, a student advisor, a tour guide, and an athletics coach. I began teaching English Language Learners through four years of ethnographic-style immersion in Southern European, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian countries. These experiences inform my approach to teaching students who come from a variety of cultural backgrounds, and they have broadened my ability to teach social concepts through strategies outlined in the Teaching Philosophy below. 

I developed this site to showcase the courses I have developed and the techniques I use in the classroom, each of which are featured in the drop-down links above. 

If you believe your department or school may find utility in the skillsets and/or courses I offer, please contact me.

Thank you,
Ryan M. Genova, M.Ed.

Teaching Philosophy

During the first semester of graduate school, Dr. Scott Richardson told our class, “Students of any age want relevance. They want to learn about what’s important to them.” This advice spoke to my own experiences as a student, and I keep it in mind when I develop and instruct a course. Since Dr. Richardson’s class, I have had the opportunity to learn more about what is important to college-aged students through overlapping roles in and out of the classroom setting.

I try to build my courses around that knowledge. By engaging students' areas of interest, I am able to expose students to concepts, techniques, and points of view which can be translated into daily life. I begin each course with a distillation of the epistemologies and worldviews we will be engaging with throughout the semester. I ask students to reflect on that which they don’t know as individuals, and on that which we don’t know as a collective. I address the various processes by which human beings fill in their knowledge gaps, the spectra of worldviews that emerge from those processes, the sociobiological reasons for those worldviews, and how one might engage viewpoints and value systems which differ from one’s own.

As Anne Sliwka writes in The Challenges of Teaching Controversial Issues, “Knowledge is a precondition for making sense of issues.” I teach the foundations of the course’s focus over the first four to six weeks. I provide students with an overview of the ways in which diverse thinkers have approached course content. I provide qualitative and quantitative empirical examples of research, and I provide examples of academics, public intellectuals, and experts who have interpreted the available evidence from different points of view. This approach lays the groundwork for critical thinking: What does consensus look like? Why do experts sometimes disagree, and what can we learn from their disagreements? How might cognitive biases affect an expert’s perspective? How do we go about deciding what expertise looks like? Deciding who is reliable? Might all sides of a disagreement contribute to the discussion in their own way, or can we rule some perspectives out for this or that reason? These are the types of questions students grapple with throughout the semester.

A properly framed controversy provides students with an opportunity to defend and reflect upon their most basic assumptions. During the course development process, I explore competing perspectives, in part to deepen my knowledge base, in part because those perspectives are likely to be shared by students. I do not wish to alienate any viewpoint from my classroom, and I take the idea of inclusion seriously. My students have come from rural and urban areas; from conservative and liberal families; from every continent on the earth. Each student brings valuable, first-hand insights to the issues we discuss in class, and I believe it both emotionally and cognitively healthy for students to engage one another with a diversity of perspectives.

I reserve the semester’s second half for higher-order reasoning, formal written assignments, and guided individual and group projects. I change my role from an instructor/lecturer to that of a facilitator. In this role, my goal is to help the learners to analyze, evaluate and critically reflect on their own experiences and points of view. To achieve this goal, I design activities that encourage information literacy, self-reflection and peer-to-peer interaction. I want students to know how to find, evaluate, and communicate information. I ask students to use Gerald Graff’s “They say / I say” approach to argumentation and analysis in their spoken and written assignments (What have others said on the matter, where do I stand, and why should someone else care?). Based on course evaluations, I have found that these strategies facilitate student learning in both face-to-face and online environments.

Many of my electives address the intersections of education, religion, and politics. I fell in love with religious practices and spiritual belief systems through an informal five-year study of the human condition which spanned 38 countries, four continents, and several domestic subcultures, experiences for which I am eternally grateful. I fell in love with politics during graduate school: the program raised several questions about social inequalities which I wanted to better understand. Upon graduation, I was fortunate to serve three years as a research assistant for Eric Epstein, a Harrisburg-based politician, political activist and former visiting professor of humanities at The Pennsylvania State University. Mr. Epstein taught me to consider all sides of a given issue, and his mentorship made me a better thinker and a better educator. 

My research foci today are a reflection of those formative experiences, and my classes are an expression of that research. I use a 50-100-200 rule to ensure that my knowledge base for a given class will meet the rigorous expectations of a college-level course. I read approximately 50 discipline-specific books, I listen to at least 100 hours of debates, lectures, podcasts, et cetera, and I read at least 200 popular and peer-reviewed articles. I take detailed notes in each medium (available upon request). I consult with department chairs and field experts to check my understanding and guide my research methods. I love the challenge and the creativity of course development. It's a chance to weave vast, often conflicting sets of information into a coherent series of questions and answers.

First-hand experiences inform and frame many of the ideas I share in class. I think it is important to demonstrate to students that I have seen, heard, and touched that which I am teaching. I talk about my experiences with Islamic, Jewish, evangelical, Catholic, atheistic, Amish, LGBTQIA+, urban, rural, and clothing optional communities. First-hand accounts engage student interest, animate course content, and reinforce academic perspectives. Teaching English language learners has kept me in touch with many of those experiences, and I believe I learn as much from them as they learn from me. I listen carefully whenever the focus on language acquisition presents an opportunity to learn more about our world as it relates to the courses I teach.

Three engaging guest speakers I invite into my classrooms are Dr. Terrie Lewine, Pastor Luke Billman, and Ashley McMichael, a friend. Dr. Lewine, “the reluctant medium", speaks to students about her inadvertent experiences with mediumship and her understanding of the concept. Pastor Billman is intimately involved in the Hope Park/Kensington community through his personal background and the regular services he provides. Mrs. McMichael nearly passed away before my eyes in 2015. Her road to recovery was long and painful, and she speaks passionately about her experiences with Alcoholics Anonymous. I owe each of these individuals, as well as a growing handful of other guest speakers, a huge debt of gratitude for improving the quality of education I try to offer in my classroom.

In addition to these individuals, Professor Emeritus Alan Powell has helped me to improve my courses through a mentorship role. In co-running excursions to Central America, I have come to appreciate Alan’s approaches to education via 30+ years in Media & Communications departments. He has offered me extensive critiques, suggestions, and travel safety wherewithal, and for that I owe Alan a debt of gratitude for giving me a chance to collaborate and learn from him. 

Works Cited

Richardson, Scott. “John Dewey and Today's Education System.” Social Foundations of Education. Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Millersville, Pennsylvania. 5 October 2010. Lecture.

Birkenstein, Cathy, and Gerald Graff. They Say / I Say. 4th ed., WW Norton, 2018.

Claire, Hilary & Cathie Holden. The Challenge of Teaching Controversial Issues. Trentham Books, 2007.