Myles W. Mason, PhD.

Teaching Persona

Course Materials

Jokingly, I call my teaching persona “not like regular [professors], I’m a cool [professor],” as I tend to be more relaxed and center popular culture. I will exploit the fact that I am closer in age to my students than most of their other professors, using memes/references that are common parlance for Zennials and younger. I’ve also always been witty/funny (fun fact: I was runner-up for Funniest senior superlative in high school), and I will use that to my advantage.

In a recent semester, a moment exemplified this dynamic when a student asked about the history of digital media in the 2000s. The student phrased their question as, “Because you’re a little bit older than us…” I laughed and said, “Drag me.” To which we all laughed since “dragging” someone is a common term (in digital publics). Pointedly, I used it incongruously on purpose, as the student said they meant the comment as a reference to my being younger than most profs, which they said in their question. But that small moment both built a stronger sense of community as well as effectively reoriented all attention to the comment/conversation.

More in the small day-to-day practices, I try to smile, wave, and/or say hi to each student individually or greet them in some kind of obvious way. I forget where I first heard/saw this from Toni Morrison, maybe the Oprah interview this author references. Morrison says your face should “light up” whenever a child walks in the room. Like the linked article, I have applied this to my teaching so students feel 1) seen, 2) welcomed, and 3) valued. Being at a downtown campus, I’m learning I’m not ~great~ with this practice as I’m walking around and not in “teacher mode,” but that’s why it’s a practice.

Since joining Georgia State University, I have refined my pedagogy to best serve our students as a minority-serving, predominantly Black institution. Students engage course concepts not only through scholarship but also by bringing their own perspectives into discussions of rhetoric, digital media, and public engagement. This approach disrupts the historic exclusions of Communication education and allows students from underrepresented groups to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, fostering deeper investment in course material. As a working-class, first-generation, queer faculty member, I understand the transformative impact of such representation and intentionally design courses to reflect such possibilities.

My courses center participatory assignments that highlight communication’s capacity to shape our worlds while fostering classroom engagement and hands-on learning. Offering options of public-facing, experiential final projects that prompt students to apply theory to their everyday lives, media environments, and campus communities to deploy the course concepts to “the real world” in ways traditional essays don’t always ensure. In my later-degree courses, I extend this same hands-on approach through a participant-observation project that scaffolds the steps of qualitative inquiry. Over the semester, students conduct interviews, operate as participant-observers, and produce detailed descriptions that they then analyze within a culminating final essay that integrates course concepts. This process not only grounds abstract concepts in lived experience but also fosters new forms of campus belonging—many students ultimately choose on-campus groups to observe and join the groups as a result.