Statement of Teaching

Fiadhnait Moser-Hardy, MFA

As an educator, I highly value students’ ability to connect their current learning with their individual life experiences and interests. I believe that this is how students learn best. Throughout my courses, students engage in focused discussions exploring new ideas and concepts, interest-based projects, reflective written responses, and hands-on activities. Students actively reflect on discussions, readings, and visual materials and learn to make connections to their own lives, other texts, and the broader world. I believe in taking on the role of facilitator in classroom activities, bringing an inquiry-based approach and allowing students to take agency in discussions. For advanced students, I offer opportunities for flexibility and choice in their studies, while also guiding them to new ideas and interests. As much of my own education included one-on-one conferencing, I utilize that approach in my work with students as I feel that working with students on individualized projects allows for deeper conversations and understanding of craft and subject matter.

During workshops, I ensure that all students have a voice. I celebrate the variety of diverse backgrounds from which all of my students come, and this is reflected in the way I conduct workshops. As a professor of disability studies, I ensure that my workshops are accessible to and inclusive of all neurotypes. I ensure that my students hold awareness of various backgrounds and the ways in which these backgrounds may be expressed and celebrated in the work of their peers.

To foster an inclusive and safe learning environment, I model critique in the form of questions. Through clear and precise instruction, students learn what makes for an interesting and helpful discussion. In my individual work advising students, I encourage students to reflect deeply on their processes as they develop a routine and voice that is uniquely theirs. This guides their study not only in what they choose to work on, but how they work best. Overall, students learn core, big-picture questions that guide their studies, while also learning ways to reflect these questions at the line-level within their writing through the use of elements of literary craft.

I take an interdisciplinary approach to my teaching. While my focus is in creative writing, I also enjoy teaching a multitude of subjects, connecting my work in writing fiction to these various subjects. These subjects currently include folklore, world cultures, children’s literature, human and moral development, reader-response theory, oral storytelling, social justice art history, dance history and cultural dance, integrating arts into elementary education, disability rights and the social and medical models of disability, information literacy, professional writing and publishing, the creative process, interdisciplinary fine arts and ekphrasis, and more. I have found that when students connect their writing to topics that are important to them and their society, their writing grows in strength and power.

When advising students, I encourage them to explore subjects and questions that feel most important to them at the core of their being—whether it may be a traditional academic subject or not. At a personal level, when I began to take pride in my niche talent of writing children’s books, while not a traditional category, my writing began to flourish; I came to own my voice as a writer. I encourage students to explore their own unique interests that excite them to grow as learners and writers, no matter the subject. I believe there is depth to be found in all fields of knowledge and in all genres of writing, whether it be literary fiction or graphic novels, memoir in verse or children’s picture books. Where there is truth of emotion, there exists potential for connection, and where there is connection, there are topics worth studying, discussing, and cultivating into career. I also believe that students’ writing deepens when they explore other subjects that interest them—sociology, philosophy, film, history, astronomy, and more. When students are ready to choose their career, I allow them to take the lead in discussing their interests, and I guide them to the best of my ability in discovering new careers and networks. In relation to creative writing, I am especially familiar with the traditional publishing process in finding a literary agent and signing with a publishing company. In relation to professional writing, I am familiar with helping students discover careers they may not have known even existed.

Most importantly, I view my students not only as academics, but as humans. Writing is deeply personal—and often, deeply vulnerable. I take this responsibility of respecting my students’ voices seriously, and I encourage not only technical proficiency in their craft, but the development of joy through the art of written expression.