Teaching Experience
&
Pedagogy

I am a CAT. 1 certified teacher of Diploma Programme 'Standard and Higher Level History' for the International Baccaluarate, with slightly under two years experience teaching a range of age groups to success in bilingual settings in Brazil. I have taught History (High School), Social Studies (Middle School), Creativity, Activity and Service (CAS, Middle and High School), and English (Elemmentary and Middle School).

At the graduate level, I have also held four active Teaching Assistantship roles while at the University of Calgary:

As of September 2023, I was also appointed to the position of Research Coach by Dr. Meaghan Edwards, an appointment funded by the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary. My role requires me to guide 400-level students in the Community Health Sciences Bachelor of Community Rehabilitation programme, through research design and execution, with a particular emphasis on critical disability scholarship. One of my main tasks is to aid students in conducting projects that demonstrate clear critical engagement with community health and community-based methods.

Pedagogical Leanings

While this is an ever evolving aspect of my professional profile, I know that I come to any educational role with varying degrees of lived-experience traversing marginalised categories. This undoubtedly informs the way I approach classrooms, seminar rooms, and lecture theatres. I know too, that I see teaching as an active endeavour, one which requires you to engage the group while also ensuring you give enough space for students to develop their own sense of responsibility for their education. In so doing, I make active efforts to acknowledge - and attempt to mitigate against - the systemic barriers faced by neurodivergent, mad, disabled, queer, trans, Indigenous and other racialised folx in my learning spaces.

To that same end, I always aim to foster safe and inclusive spaces that are open to transparent, critical, conversations. I welcome lived-experience insights and actively seek engagement with challenging conversations and varied perspectives. I try to ensure that these inclusive principles extend beyond teaching and into assessment praxis and deadline expectations. 

I am a big proponent for fostering a system that works for those that need it to work for them, without a propensity for preventing exploitation by those for whom it already does and always will.  

Post-secondary Portfolio

Cavanagh - F22 graduate-assistant-performance-review.pdf
Jay-Cavanagh-graduate-assistant-performance-review.pdf
Performance Review by Prof. McLean (W24).pdf

Private Student Reviews