Teaching

The syllabus is important. What happens after I hand it out is more interesting.

I've taught high school history, worked in special education, and now spend most of my classroom time teaching neurodivergent young adults at Foothill College.

Different subjects, different students, different expectations. But I've found that good teaching comes back to a fairly consistent set of ideas: make expectations clear, give people opportunities to practice, provide useful feedback, and remember that learning something isn't quite the same as being able to use it.

I'm not particularly interested in making students think like me, act like me, or become experts at guessing what I want. I want them to develop skills, confidence, and the ability to make informed decisions without someone hovering over their shoulders.

Preferably before I run out of whiteboard markers.

The Rules of the Room

Make the invisible visible. Education is full of unwritten rules, mysterious expectations, and assignments that apparently require telepathy. I try to be explicit about what students are learning, what they're expected to do, and what success looks like. Knowing the rules shouldn't be the hardest part of the assignment.

Practice before polish. Creativity matters, but so does being able to follow a specification. If the assignment asks for a paragraph in bold, making the entire document bold isn't extra credit for enthusiasm. We practice fundamentals first, then build the confidence to experiment.

Mistakes are information. I believe in useful feedback, opportunities to improve, and figuring out why something went wrong. When students have a chance to revise their work, the goal isn't simply to recover points. It's to understand what they missed and demonstrate that they can do it differently.

Support without taking over. Independence doesn't mean doing everything alone, and support shouldn't mean having every decision made for you. My job is to provide enough structure for students to succeed while gradually making myself less necessary.

There are expectations, deadlines, and grades. There are also accommodations, second chances when appropriate, and the understanding that different students may need different routes to the same destination. These ideas are not mutually exclusive.

From My Side of the Whiteboard

The subjects change from quarter to quarter, but these three give you a pretty good idea of what happens in my classroom.

Communication Skills

Communication is fascinating because two people can participate in the same conversation and leave with completely different understandings of what just happened.

We practice giving instructions, listening, asking questions, navigating tone and context, and advocating for ourselves. Sometimes that means writing professional emails. Sometimes it means describing a drawing to someone who can't see it.

The resulting artwork is rarely suitable for framing. The lessons are considerably more useful.

Word Processing & Spreadsheets

Knowing how to use a computer and knowing how to get useful work done with one are surprisingly different things.

We practice creating documents, organizing information, using formulas, formatting data, managing files, and following instructions using everyday productivity tools.

The goal isn't to memorize every button or produce the fanciest document possible. It's to develop practical skills students can use in college, at work, and in their own lives.

Sometimes that means learning that making everything bold isn't quite the same as knowing when to use bold.

These courses also serve as prototypical college classes, helping to teach precision, direction following, and the hidden curriculum of being a college student.

Public Transit

Skills

Getting somewhere independently involves considerably more than knowing which bus to board.

Students learn to plan routes, navigate transit systems, pay fares, anticipate problems, and figure out what to do when things don't go according to plan. We practice with real destinations and real transportation systems, building toward actually making the journey.

When we introduced the course, only one or two of our students regularly used public transportation. Today, nearly half do.

That's a pretty remarkable change, and one of my favorite examples of education translating directly into greater independence.

The Bigger Picture: TTW

Most of my teaching happens within Tools for Transition & Work (TTW), a one-year college and career readiness program for neurodivergent young adults at Foothill College. I'm also the program's director, which means I get to help design the experience as well as teach within it.

TTW isn't college-lite or a waiting room for adulthood. Our students are college students. They have assignments, deadlines, instructors, classmates, and responsibilities, alongside intentionally designed support to help them navigate those expectations.

The program connects academic skills, executive functioning, communication, technology, self-advocacy, independent living, and real-world work experience. Students now have the opportunity to earn a Certificate of Achievement in Independence and Career Readiness.

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is watching something we practiced in class show up somewhere completely different. A student advocating for themselves with another instructor. Someone independently solving a transportation problem. A student recognizing that a workplace challenge is something they can address rather than something that has simply happened to them.

That's when I know we're getting somewhere.

For the full program description, curriculum, admissions information, and other details, visit the official Tools for Transition & Work website.

The Real Final Exam

I don't think the most meaningful measure of teaching is how well students perform while I'm standing in front of them explaining exactly what to do.

It's what happens later.

Can they recognize when a skill might be useful? Can they approach an unfamiliar problem without immediately deciding it's impossible? Can they ask for help effectively, make a decision, recover from a mistake, or recognize when something isn't working?

Not every student will master every skill on the first attempt. Some won't master certain skills at all. That doesn't mean the experience was wasted, and it certainly doesn't mean the student has nothing to contribute.

I'm interested in progress that matters to the individual, expectations that respect their abilities, and education that prepares people to exercise genuine agency in their own lives.

Also, I wouldn't complain if everyone remembered to name their files correctly.

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