Teaching

Introduction
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Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy

In the years since I’ve begun teaching at the college level, I find that how I fashion and teach my classes is informed more and more by that student I wish to see at the other end of the semester. I take as my starting place the specific ways I hope my students will be different than when they first stepped foot into the classroom. In particular, there are three changes I aspire to see in each student.  

First and foremost, I would like to see the confidence that comes with greater skill as a writer and as a member of a community of shared literacy practices. My time working with students has illuminated the tremendous difficulty of the task set before them, of navigating the many writing conventions that they encounter in life. Lack of confidence holds a paralyzing influence over many students, I’ve observed. One way I infuse confidence into students is by nurturing a classroom atmosphere that sees writing errors as a necessary element of developing as a writer. My non-traditional grading format helps students to focus on developing as a writer rather than becoming distracted by their grades. Another way I help to build greater confidence in my students is through the weekly reader response papers. Students regularly report that having to write a paper every week—and seeing my feedback on the papers—helps them produce writing much more easily and with significantly more confidence by the time the semester has ended. Lastly, I’ve found that when the classroom dynamic is marked by lively interpersonal and group discussions, students develop greater confidence in themselves as individuals, which often results in added confidence as a writer.

Another change I hope to witness in my students is the construction of a solid learning framework that enables them to shuttle back and forth between larger, abstract principles about the nature of language, and specific, concrete examples of those principles. I believe developing this “big picture” perspective lays the groundwork for understanding the deep structures and underlying principles about language, which in turn facilitates the accumulation of the discrete knowledge and skills needed to develop into effective writers and thinkers. Every aspect of my teaching is centered on this goal. I frame each writing workshop with a discussion of the broader principles at play, and I make as many connections as possible between the broad principles and actual writing. I find that these abstract concepts are more readily grasped and reinforced when the connections are relevant and numerous—so, among other strategies, I try to assign readings and writing tasks that engage students meaningfully, and I frequently refer to previous class readings when examining new writing concepts. Looking at students’ writing together as a class during workshops also helps to reinforce the relevance of the material. The various reflection letters students write to me throughout the semester also serve, in part, to help them construct abstract learning frameworks that facilitate the acquisition of both procedural and declarative forms of knowledge regarding language.  

Finally, the third quality I hope to see in my students by the time they’ve moved on from my class is an awareness of the power of language to shape their futures. In a world characterized by rapid, tectonic social changes—where life’s ambiguities everywhere seem to conspire against self-actualization—I hope my students integrate into their conscious working selves the insights about language that have been handed down by rhetoricians and writers for millennia. Better still is when my students make their own discoveries about language. Like many of those who teach writing and/or literature, I find endlessly rewarding the work of lifting the curtain on the subtleties of language and the ways it influences the world. Equally rewarding are the moments when students show that they have curtains of their own to pull back. This is one of the true privileges of teaching.   

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