Amanda Gardner, phd

Educational Philosophy

My educational philosophy has not changed now that my role has: I still believe in the power of aesthetic education - in art fueling the soul and providing spaces for teachers and students to experience the power of creativity; I still believe that, as teachers, our main purpose is to help our students become who they wish to be by leading them towards wide-awakeness, that place where students see Other in their Ordinary, open to Possibility.

When I began teaching in 1995, I did not know there was a philosophy for my particular approach to teaching — the one where I pulled my students forward until they, at some point, passed me and I was the one being pulled left behind while they ran ahead.

In 2001, speaking to a group of teachers, educational philosopher Maxine Greene asserted that,“For us, education signifies an initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, moving. It signifies the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness, a reaching out for meaning, a learning to learn.” I agree. Education, formal education, has little to do with what grade a student earns or how correctly he may use the semicolon; education has much to do with, as Greene states, helping students learn to learn. This process of education does not alter when a teacher leaves the classroom for the library.

The library is simply a larger classroom, encompassing more students, facilitating that “learning to learn” via all disciplines, not just the one I trained for.  My responsibility as a teacher has expanded to include championing teacher needs, acquiring resources they need to succeed in helping their students learn. Instead of requiring an alteration of my educational philosophy, these new responsibilities reinforce the truth of it, allowing me more ways to live in that philosophy.

More, in my current position, as a librarian charged with reimagining the space as a center for the school, I am privileged to try and create a space for learning that will be both beautiful and usable - that will create a context for learning that will encourage learning, that will help students make sense of their subjects - more, of themselves.

This is was my philosophy when I first started teaching in 1995, it remained my philosophy throughout my 20 years in the classroom and my 7 years of doctoral studies, and it is still my philosophy as a librarian. What has altered is the definition of the learners I serve—it has expanded, enveloping students from every subject, in every grade, and their teachers, too.

As a teacher-librarian, my responsibility to provide learning opportunities for my community means more than teaching reading; it means ensuring that all students who wish to learn in the library, are able to learn; that the collection meets their academic needs and that the facility meets their physical needs.  Greene (1978) observed, “Consciousness always refers to background, the original context of a life. Consciousness always refers to context; consciousness, in some respects, is experienced context. And that context, that lived world, becomes the ground of all cognition—the scientist’s as well as the poet’s. The lived world is the structuring context for knowing, for sense-making of any sort” (p. 61-62).  I am excited to learn how the context that is to be created will help students relate to their lived world, to their consciousness, to their sense-making in that world.

And before returning to Las Vegas? I travelled a little, taught high school English some, and I learned a lot from every student who I had the privilege of working with (Yes, I know, dangling preposition and it should be whom not who, but rules are meant to be broken if for a rhetorical reason - read it with grammatical correctness and see what you think). My Army brat ways (my father Special Forces in Vietnam, the last member of Mike Force) taught me early on that people are people and I tried to convey that to my students. Dad also taught me that it is up to us to foster our own talents just as my mother taught me to pursue my passion by pursuing hers (writing) though 86 rejection slips before it was time to move stateside and other things took precedence; both of their lessons I tried to share with my students.  

Interests

• Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR)/360 film and how to use it to bring a little more peace, love, & understanding to the English curriculum

• Graphic Novels - a new interest that has me conspiring to teach one

• Media Literacy - new term for me though I was teaching it in my film unit decades before hearing it was thing - just didn't seem right to let students sit and watch a film without knowing how they were being manipulate.

• Teacher Lore - who knew this was a thing? but I do love me a good story.

• Emily Dickinson - fascinating for decades - brimming possibilities

• Photography - amateur shutter bug since mid-80s

• Writing Dining Reviews - a five year hobby slowly restarting

• Travel - seeking new places and peoples since birth

Degrees/Credentials 

• Ph.D. Curriculum & Teaching (2022) Baylor University

• Single Subject Clear Credential, Nevada (2003-present)

• M.A. English (2001) California State University, Sacramento

• Single Subject Clear Credential, English (1995-present) California State University, California

• B.A. English, Latin Minor (1994) California State University, Sacramento

Select Publications

• “Graphic Possibilities in an Era of Fake News.” Single authorship in The English Journal. May 5 2019.

• "Aesthetic Approaches for Teaching Writing to Upper-Elementary Students." Co-authored with Evan Ditmore in Teaching Literacy in Urban Schools: Lessons from the Field by Barbara Purdum-Cassidy and Lakia M.Scott (Eds.)

Curriculum Vitae

• For a copy of my c.v., please click here.