How Pop Cultures Makes For Better Teachers

In this talk, I will discuss the benefits of pop culture for educators in two distinct but obviously connected ways: (1) how implementing pop culture in classroom curriculum (in both specific and general ways) can engage our students and improve their overall experience and performance and (2) how academic pop culture research and writing paves a path toward teaching excellence (even when the research is not pedagogically driven). As an Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, I can use examples from my own teaching and research (and how I have managed to merge them together), including how I improvise pop culture references based on class discussions, the ways I discuss my research with students to create connections, and how my research efforts have influenced my teaching in positive ways. In addition, I would like to use the example of how teaching remotely from my home office made me consider how my teaching background could improve my ability to connect with students (and how filling that visible space behind me with pop culture figures and artifacts would help shape my classroom persona).