Laura Widener

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Name: Laura Widener

Your title / role on campus: Assistant Coordinator for Prevention Education

What I do: Educate the campus community about power-based violence prevention

Also: Loves art, reading, and engaging with other people

Carillon Communities represented in your section: Once & Future Planet

 

What do you do for fun? In my spare time, I participate in a book club, go outside for a walk, and travel down rabbit holes on the internet about topics that interest me.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? What about now?  As a child, I wanted to be a teacher in the K-12 system. Now, I enjoy being an educator who creates my own curriculum, and I foresee myself always being an educator in some form.

What is an experience that shaped you as a teacher (or learner)? I read chapters of bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom in undergrad and grad school, and I try  to incorporate her writings on engaged pedagogy into my pedagogy as an instructor. I even have my students in my PEER312 and PEER322 courses read her writings and incorporate them into the creation of their own pedagogy.

What is your favorite part about teaching? I enjoy learning from my students. I believe that every individual has lived experiences and knowledge that they can contribute to the classroom.