Pedagogical Approach

Larissa’s goals for student learning include cultivating students’ critical thinking skills, encouraging intersectional critique, and fostering sociological praxis, especially community engagement. The specific skills that she equips students with beyond critical thinking include news and media literacy, policy analysis, civic engagement, time management, and the ability to assess the effectiveness of solutions to social problems.

Larissa aims to foster a respectful, inclusive, and student-centered classroom environment. She does this, in part, by allowing parents to bring children to class when necessary, using a microphone during lecture, and enabling closed captions on videos so students can easily follow content. Larissa also meets with each student one-on-one to learn about their sociological interests, and integrates corresponding reading material throughout the term in order to incorporate students’ knowledge, experiences, and interests. For more details, including sample syllabi and assignments, please see her teaching portfolio.