Week Four, Teaching Philosophy

This is very much a rough draft. I'm going to be refining it over the week--especially as I work on finishing my philosophy of writing for the extended analysis.

Teaching Philosophy—Agency & Action

While my teaching philosophy changes as I am introduced to other theories and practices, at its core there has always been a central theme: language is a product of environment, and understanding how we engage and react to our environments is a critical part of finding opportunities for agency. I believe in higher education being an avenue of empowerment, and that a liberal arts curriculum should not only foster future members of the working force, but also create informed, reflective citizens. The core principles of my teaching philosophy include transparent teaching practices, external applications of course material, and the inherent role of critical thinking in the composition process.

My pedagogy is a combination of practices, all of which relate to the use of language as a way to establish identity, the connection we create between ourselves and our society, and the fluidity and power of the word in a variety of contexts and genres. I believe that the first step in using writing as a tool of agency is to understand that language does not exist in a vacuum. Our environment at large, and the student’s writing environment in particular, is a collection of unchallenged truths, and in order for a student to take control and have a personal investment in their own education they must first realize the frameworks that they operate within on a day to day basis. The first step to viewing writing as more than product is to first examine how we form ideas, how we communicate those ideas, and how we assume meanings based on those communicated ideas. Simply put, the first step to writing is awareness. 

In my teaching practices, awareness begins in the act of questioning. In my teaching practices, I have relied heavily upon Classical rhetoric as a starting point to engage with reflective processes, particularly Neo-Sophistic teaching practices of deconstruction and argumentation, as established by Susan Jarratt and Kenneth Lindbloom. The fundamentals of rhetoric, such as the appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos, are footholds to establish the birth of critical thinking and self-reflection within my students. To produce writing, it is first necessary to understand how it is produced by others. With this philosophy in place, I put a heavy emphasis on exploring the creation of texts: auditory, digital, visual, and print. 

Developing awareness, both of their own biases and rhetorical constructs such as context, exigency, audience, and purpose goes hand in hand with the development of their identity as students, writers, and citizens. In order to create personal investment, power over their own education, and an understanding of communication beyond what’s expected of them as undergraduate students, students should be allowed the freedom to explore different styles, approaches, and most importantly, varying conversations in the process of receiving a higher education. Effective writing is subjective, its definition dependent upon audience. Because of this subjectivity, I believe it is important to have students create texts for audiences outside of the classroom. 

Students must have elements of external application to their course materials. When the majority of our students are adults, knowing how to connect the information we discuss in class to everyday practices, whether they be mundane or vocational, is essential to student investment. Students should have the opportunity of civic engagement through their writing, of being able to witness how their communication connects and effects their respective professional and social environments. Public writing should be included in composition courses as a method of both external motivation and for promoting the transparency of the material we cover in class. When students are able to see direct, applicable use for course objectives is when students begin to become active learners.

I teach not to have students understand the ultimate correct method of composition, but for them to understand their own method of composition. Students who feel as if they have something to contribute, who have agency in their writing and ownership of their intellectual work, are often active in their learning. And active learners achieve something that is not often associated with writing when it is conceptualized as product: pride. I want my students to feel that their education is more than a diploma, it is also an avenue for personal fulfillment and a way to give themselves a voice to the environment outside of the classroom. Awareness and critical thinking are skills that exist outside of academic writing, and by giving students agency over learning, research, thinking, and writing, they can ensure that their education exists outside of the classroom as well.