Christian takes a personalized approach to teaching English at the community college level. He always focuses on the imparting the basics behind writing and understanding text, showing students how every article his students read — no matter what its topic may be — is structured in a “beginning-middle-end” format. However, in addition to this, Christian strives to make his students’ learning experiences more relatable. He contextualizes his lesson plans to the students’ current lives.

The results of this method are twofold: students are more interested in English, and they gain a more comprehensive understanding of the lessons being taught. This is particularly important in community colleges, where student populations can be quite diverse and one “cookie-cutter” approach to teaching simply will not benefit everyone as much. Driven by his own genuine passion for English, Christian works to ignite that same passion for his students however he can.

Another important component of community college level education is cooperative learning. Christian formulates many lesson plans in which “group work” is implemented and students have to work together on various projects. Studies have shown that cooperative learning can lead to greater achievement than individual learning. As students work together toward a collective goal, they tend to feel more motivated to “do their part” and produce their best work — all while they are learning new perspectives from their other group members. Similar to contextualized lesson plans, this method aims to widen students’ perspectives of the vital role that English holds in all of our lives.

Christian Tedrow earned his Master’s Degree in English from the University of Central Florida in 2008. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Elon University in 2004. In addition to his work in  education, he is passionate about fitness. He formerly served as a certified personal trainer and is still very active in fitness to this day. He is also interested in animal conservation. He supports nonprofits which are dedicated to raising awareness and running volunteer projects to conserve wild species and the ecosystems within which they live.

Keep up with this blog to read Christian Tedrow’s insights into academia, particularly with regard to teaching English at the community college level.