�鶹��Ʒ

            My Teaching Philosophy and Methods

Teaching is one of the more important things that I do to contribute to our society. I believe that enabling the individual to reflect on himself or herself can produce wisdom (self knowledge) resulting in a way of understanding the world we live in. My courses are constructed to be useful for cultivating the students’ emotional intelligence competencies, improving their personal relationships, strengthening their critical thinking, as well as developing a professional vision that will be required to navigate successfully after graduation.

The more I study and teach, the more I love my role as a sociology faculty member. No other area of intellectual work overlaps with so many other fields of knowledge; none connects the sciences and the humanities so directly or offers such a variety of insights into our current world. Sociology is distinctive in the attention it pays to what lies between people, to what links individuals with others in the social world. We are people watchers. There is a commitment to use observations of the real world over time to develop explanations that are even better than the ones we already have.

My personal journey:  My firstborn son, a �鶹��Ʒ junior (a 21 year old accounting major) was savagely stabbed to death at a sports bar – in a case of mistaken identity (2/4/1994). With his brutal murder, I realized the lost things that I can never get back are my precious child Louis and the blessed ignorance of acute, indescribable grief.   However, I’ve learned that grief is the price we pay for love.  Grief NEVER ends, but we learn to live with pain and hide our suffering.  I see my grief as a passage, not a place to stay.   It is neither a sign of weakness nor a lack of faith. My students, colleagues, and teaching give me my reason to continue to live and to work.   My students have become my Louises and restored my will to live. 

The night Louis died he was with so-called ‘friends’ who watched what happened; not one helped him or came forward with information for police (because the murderer’s father was the Lucchese Crime Family’s capo).  Since life did not make sense to me anymore, I had to decide if I would rollover and bury myself with my son or use what I know  (sociology and teaching) to help my students to avoid Louis’s fate.  I believe that Louis did NOT listen to his INTUITIVE sense. He did not perceive the evil that surrounded him and he ‘trusted’ the wrong people. Now my main mission is to invite my students to think beyond individuals in isolation and focus on competencies for building connected TRUSTING relationships and good communication. The aim is to broaden students’ horizons, improve their emotional intelligence, sharpen their observational skills, and strengthen their analytical capabilities. The focus of my teaching is on TRUST, self-worth, listening to your intuitive sense (your ‘gut feelings’), values, goals, moral code (whether we are active producers or passive receivers of our moral code), roles, statuses, and healthy relationships. I take great pride in helping them evolve into their best self. Some students are younger traditional undergraduates, while others are older adults going back to school after many years in the real world. All want clear information about not only surviving in their social world but also thriving in it. Throughout my teaching, I make an effort to strike a balance between theory and practice. My courses enable the student to take an introspective journey of self-awareness, self-motivation, self-regulation, empathy, and social competencies. The emphasis is to help them to understand the self, whom to trust, how to understand others, and how to negotiate in order to have successful trusting relationships. My thesis is based on the belief that understanding whom we can really trust is critical in life because evil exists.

My general philosophical approach to teaching:  The pedagogy that I find most success emphasized the application of learning; that is, to improve critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making. Pedagogical techniques and strategies enable a deeper learning of fundamental principles, generalizations, and theories, as well as factual knowledge (terminology, classifications, research results).

                        Ben Franklin (who took this from a Chinese proverb) sums it up:

                   “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn”

 Evolution of my teaching experience: From my Mercy students and colleagues I have gained insight and understanding of the diversity of life experiences, perspectives, and world views. Every class in some important way incorporates learning from previous semesters. My students and colleagues have simultaneously managed to keep me young and make me old. Being recognized for ‘teaching excellence’ by my peers several years ago was an incredible honor. Inspired by this confidence I decided to codify and share my specific teaching strategies, techniques, activities, and exercises by creating a textbook for the foundation conflict students [Managing Human Conflict: An Introspective Journey To Negotiating Skills (2018) CA: Cognella Academic Publishing].  

Managing Human Conflict: An Introspective Journey To Negotiating Skills (2018) CA: Cognella Academic Publishing.

Italian American Review, a semi-annual journal of record focusing on the Italian American community (Verrazzano Institute At �鶹��Ʒ publisher) 1992-1995.

Several research articles published on:

gender, sexuality,  ethnicity and inter-generational families...