Teaching & Mentorship

Instructional Expertise

Award-Winning Professor & Educator — Saint Lucian American

Overview

Teaching at USF, TTU & UIUC

As a Saint Lucian American Professor & Associate Dean of Faculty Success and Excellence in the Literacy Studies Program at USF, I have successfully taught undergraduate, masters and doctoral literacy courses, as well as courses focused on diversity, culture, and language. This extends my teaching experience as a former faculty member at Texas Tech University (TTU) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where I taught undergraduate and graduate courses as well as mentored doctoral students in research.

*The UWI RISE Caribbean Team Members Visiting USF for the 2023 RISE Caribbean Conference*

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy & Goals

My professional mission involves examining cross-linguistic, cross-racial and cross-cultural experiences to facilitate teachers’ understanding of, ability to address and advocate for students’ cultural and linguistic differences in literacy assessment, teaching and learning. This mission is reflected in both my teaching of undergraduate and graduate students and my supervision and mentorship of graduate students.

I draw from a transdisciplinary approach to teaching, functioning as a facilitator who enables students to engage in practices surrounding knowledge-building that transcend the traditional boundaries of natural and social sciences, while considering how united intellectual frameworks can provide insights beyond disciplinary divides and perspectives. Through this approach, I aim to reconcile the long-standing focus on the intellect in education with human sensitivity and the body as envisioned by Basarab Nicolescu in a “new kind of teacher education”.

Integrating my prior K-12 teaching experience with this transdisciplinary lens, I pursue three goals in my teaching: (a) guide students to develop the transdisciplinary knowledge required for literacy practice in cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and cross-racial contexts; (b) facilitate students’ systematic inquiry into instructional challenges observed in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural literacy assessment, learning, research, and teaching; and (c) equip students to sufficiently connect with the relational dynamic between self and others in ways that allow them to advocate for K-12 students’ cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and cross-racial literacies.

*Dr. Patriann Smith teaching students in her role as a TTU Literacy Champion in Lubbock as part of the USDOE East Lubbock Promise Neighborhood Grant*

Teaching Experience

Course Categories

During the past five years at USF, I have taught fifteen (15) undergraduate, masters, and doctoral classes, some of which have been the same course taught in multiple iterations. This teaching experience is part of my exceptional teaching trajectory established during my past ten (10) years in the academy where I have taught twenty (20) graduate, two (2) mixed-level (graduate and undergraduate) courses, and two (2) undergraduate courses, many of which were offered repeatedly and blended/online.

My yearly teaching assignments have varied from 1-1 (i.e., one course in Fall, and one course in Spring semesters) based on grant management buyouts or negotiated teaching load to 2-2 and 3-3 during the advanced years of my faculty positions. The courses to which I have been assigned typically fall into three broad categories: (a) literacy instruction; (b) literacy assessment; and (c) diversity.

The courses focused on literacy instruction were: LAE 4414: Diverse Children’s Literature (2021); RED 6247: Supervision, Coaching Literacy (2021); LAE 6317: Teaching Composition in Elementary Classrooms (2022); RED 6749: History and Foundations of Reading (Masters/Online) (2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022); RED 6544: Cognition, Comprehension and Content Area Reading: Remediation of Reading Problems (Masters/Online) (2020); RED 6247: Curriculum and Supervision Problems in Reading (Masters/Online) (2020); EDLL 5356: Trends and Issues in Adolescent Literature (2018) EDLL 5341: Developing Academic Literacy in the Disciplines for Adolescents (Masters/Online) (2017 | 2019); EDLL 5351: Children’s Literature in the School Curriculum Doctoral/Masters/Online) (2016); CI 475: Teaching Elementary Reading and Language Arts I (Undergraduate/Blended) (2015); and CI 502: Introduction to Reading (Graduate/Online) (2014). In these courses, which focused primarily on foundational knowledge, I emphasized the solidification of students’ understanding that a variety of diverse knowledge bases were necessary for understanding how diverse populations of learners reflect their literacies in classrooms.

*Dr. Patriann Smith interacting with RISE Caribbean Mentees at the 2023 RISE Caribbean Research Conference*

The courses focused on literacy assessment were: RED 4943: Reading Practicum (2023); RED 6846: Practicum in Reading (Masters/Online) (2020 | 2021 | 2022); CI 576: Assessment-Based Reading Instruction (Graduate/Online) (2014 | 2015); CI 575: Assessment in Reading (Graduate/Online and Blended) (2013 | 2014); CI 577: Clinical Practicum in Reading (Graduate/Blended) (2014); and EDLL 5342: Classroom-Based Literacy Assessment for Differentiated Instruction (Doctoral/Masters/Online) (2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019). Through the field-based experiences embedded in these courses, I highlighted inquiry as a critical avenue for developing situated knowing around literacy teaching and research that involves students from diverse backgrounds.

*USF Caribbean Student Dancers at the 2023 RISE Caribbean Conference*

The courses focused on diversity were LAE 7718: Linguistics in Literacy (2020 | 2023); LAE 3414: Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2023); EDBL 5337: Teaching Strategies for ESL and Content-Area Teachers of Limited-English Proficient Students (2019); LDLS 6343: Global Literacy (Doctoral/Online) (2018); EDCI 6333: Diversity Ideologies (Doctoral/Online) (2017 | 2018 | 2019); EDLL 6341 | EDCI 6345: Trends and Issues in New Literacies: New Literacies for the 21st Century (Doctoral/Masters/Online) (2016 | 2017 | 2018); CI 446: Culture in the Classroom (Graduate and Undergraduate/Online) (2014); LDLS 6350: Research Methods in Language, Diversity, and Literacy (Doctoral/Online) (2019). Through the structures built for developing relational dialogue surrounding diverse perspectives regarding literacy practice, I placed a high premium on providing students with an avenue to confront the self while working with the Other as a means for advocating for a variety of literacies.

Teaching Initiatives

Key Teaching Initiatives

Organization for Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission Curriculum and Assessment Training Program (C&ATP), University of South Florida 2022. Critical Global Literacies Certificate, University of South Florida 2022.

East Lubbock Promise Neighborhood Literacy Champions, Partnership between TTU & LISD, Texas Tech University (2015–2017). UIUC Summer Reading Clinic, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2015.

Teaching Modalities

Cross-Modal Teaching Excellence

The courses above reflect my ability to teach a wide range of topics (e.g., literacy instruction, diversity, ESL, literature assessment, literacy history) across various levels (e.g., graduate, undergraduate) via different modalities (e.g., online, face-to-face, asynchronous, synchronous) as a linguistically-diverse international scholar of color at USF as well as at two other research-intensive, Predominantly White Institutions.

Webinars

Selected Webinars

(Dis)Entanglements of racialized Englishes and peoples across “Black” and “white” worlds. TESOL BELPAF-Global Education Summer Symposium, Virtual August 2022.

Racial Justice in Literacy Research, August 2021. A Transraciolinguistic Approach for Literacy Classrooms, April 2021.

Get in Touch

Connect With Professor Smith

Professor Smith enjoys teaching students, training teachers to work in K-12 classrooms, and co-designing solutions for literacy and language instruction that advance teaching for a just world. Her spearheading of the Literacy Champion initiative as part of the research-practice partnership launched between Texas Tech University College of Education and the Lubbock Independent School District attests to her capacity for mobilizing colleagues and diverse publics in pursuit of just approaches to literacies. Her coordination of the University of Illinois Reading Clinic in service to neighboring communities further cements her role as a catalyst for driving reading interventions in ways that address English reading skills typically characterized as “foundational” to schooling even while ensuring that students’ linguistic, cultural, and affective assets remained central to their pursuits of literacies. Feel free to reach out to Professor Smith with innovative ideas designed to address the just teaching of literacies.