Benjamin Johnson Email & Phone Number

I am a student-first educator, dedicated to helping people of all ages connect deeply with their environments and gaining intimate awareness of their own individual and collective agency. Upon completion of my dissertation, I will seek employment as a philosophy instructor for any age group.As a PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow at University of North Texas, I have honed my skills as both a critical thinker and caring educator, by combining university and department learning outcomes with the needs and interests of students. In Intro to Philosophy students engaged in caring in-class dialogue, and peripatetic (walking) outdoor philosophy, and wrote philosophical dialogues.As a volunteer facilitator at the Koan School, a non-profit private school, I lead dialogue sessions which give students ages 4 through 18 a platform to voice their philosophical concerns, while helping students develop critical senses of their own agency. For example, we questioned whether there are really "boy" and "girl" colors, and critically examined the possibility of fairness in our own discussions. Likewise, I taught at Biocitizen School, a summer camp program devoted to helping children “think outside”. At Biocitizen, I used my graduate coursework background in environmental sciences to help students learn to read river flows, identify aquatic insects and birds, and think about their own places within geological time, while walking, wading, and swimming through the wild places of central Massachusetts. I also co-organized a summer camp project with other philosophy and art graduate students in order to practice philosophy with children in situ. At this interdisciplinary camp, we rethought our relationships with our environments through critical dialogue, expanded our understanding of the rural/urban/suburban landscape of North Texas through thoughtful wandering, and engaged in creative mapmaking, in order to consider place and displacement.

Listed skills include Teaching, Critical Thinking, Writing, Research, and 5 others.