Eliza Daniels, MA, LMHC,

My aim as a counselor educator is to create an atmosphere that encourages risk-taking, courage, curiosity, humor, rigorous intellectual exploration and space for authentic emotional and affective expressions. As a teacher, I emphatically believe in the value of working from an engaged, active, trauma-informed and social justice pedagogy to best meet the needs of learners. Working from these perspectives I embrace intersections of transfeminism, relational, critical and multicultural approaches in an effort to encourage students in their questioning of learned conditioning and systemic structures which reinforce limiting and unjust narratives. For optimal learning to occur, I must acknowledge the relevance and importance of all students’ subjective and contextual experiences in relationship to course content (Teaching to Transgress, hooks, 1994). In this way, education can be a transformative and liberatory journey, a labor of love-one in which we never fully arrive. I attempt to be conscious of my power, privilege and intersections of my own marginalized identities within the classroom. Finally, I aim to provide context and specific methodology for engaged multicultural, critical and transfeminist perspectives to students and colleagues based on research and experience, using didactic, experiential activities to bolster critical self reflexivity in the classroom.