Donna Werderich, Ed.D.

Presidential Teaching Professor
Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Teaching Expertise and Approach

Donna teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in language arts education. She describes her approach to teaching as follows:

"I believe that education should be student-centered, where students are active participants who thrive in a supportive classroom environment that is responsive to their diverse backgrounds and learning needs. My approach to effective teaching and learning is grounded in 4 CORE beliefs: Caring, Organizing, Role Modeling, and Engaging.

1. Caring Classroom Environment: Creating a caring and supportive classroom environment is paramount. I strive to be responsive to students’ needs (e.g., intellectual, physical, social, emotional, linguistic) and backgrounds (e.g., race, ethnicity, culture, economic, age, sexual orientation). Continual communication with students individually and collectively, providing opportunities for input and feedback, and incorporating student choice helps to build a classroom community where students can succeed personally, academically, and professionally.

2. Organizing: Organization is essential to students’ active engagement, motivation, and overall academic success. Proper planning and design of instruction, layout of furniture and equipment, access to resources, books, and supplies should facilitate a positive and productive classroom.

3. Role Modeling: The most important role I have is to teach by example. I make a conscious effort to articulate what I am modeling and why to make the implicit explicit. I model innovative ways to teach with technology and provide explicit multimodality instruction through demonstration mini-lessons and tutorials. Role modeling is the most powerful teaching tool I use to pass on the knowledge, skills, methods, and dispositions my students need to become future exemplary teachers.

4. Engaging and Active Learning: I view learning as an interactive, social, and collaborative process that occurs when students are actively engaging in their learning. Accordingly, I incorporate key theoretical perspectives of social learning (Vygotsky) and constructivism (Piaget) in my teaching. I incorporate hands-on activities, collaborative projects, grouping techniques, and real-world application tasks to make learning engaging and relevant."

Types of Courses Taught

• Online
• Hybrid
• Community-Engaged
• Seminar
• Independent Study
• Undergraduate
• Graduate

Courses Taught