🍎Teaching Philosophy
🍎Teaching Philosophy
Below is an overview of my teaching philosophy. If you'd like to see some of assignment sheets and other course materials, please refer to this link. You can see what students have to say about my teaching at this link.
In every course I teach—first-year and intermediate composition, business writing, technical/scientific writing, copyediting, writing with style, advanced composition for teachers—my approach emphasizes transferrable skills that students can utilize across contexts in the university and beyond. Because I believe that understanding and applying one’s learning to new contexts is the goal of education, transfer of learning is at the heart of what I do. Principles that inform my pedagogy include the following:
I ask students to draft, incorporate feedback, and revise. This scaffolding sequence is important because it centralizes student work, encourages progress, evidences learning, and helps students build confidence in themselves as writers. Students leave my classroom knowing that their writing can always benefit from incremental drafting and revising, and that successful writing takes time. Writing is not necessarily a natural gift one has (although it certainly can be), but a skill that takes focused time and practice. One student in their end of term evaluation put it nicely: “I learned that writing does not have to be perfect [initially]. It doesn't have to be good or beautiful or life changing, sometimes it’s just word vomit on the page at first, but at least it’s something!” Exactly.
Feedback is integral to the writing process; however, knowing how to offer feedback is a learned skill. For this reason, I provide scaffolded lessons and regular writing workshops and peer review sessions that teach students how to provide critical feedback. I first teach students how to provide written feedback, where they are paired up and have time in class to independently read their partner’s work. When students are done reading, I broadcast a slideshow on the projector that walks through the steps of peer review—spend 5 minutes examining your partner’s introduction. What is 1 recommendation you have for improvement? What questions do you have about the thesis or the stance your partner has taken?—and so on. Once students are comfortable with written feedback, I transition to face-to-face, verbal feedback. In these situations, students go outside of the classroom, read their draft aloud to their peers, and communicate what they need help with. Students then work together to better the draft by pitching ideas for improvement. These peer review models help students realize the different ways they can give and receive feedback, while also developing their critical skills by reviewing and responding to the work of others.
In line with the above statement, I am aware that writing, sharing writing, and learning new material can feel scary, challenging, and, at times, impossible. I am well-versed in these feelings because writing has not always been easy for me. In fact, during my first year of college it took me eight hours to write one paragraph for an essay—I couldn't get words on the page because I was so nervous to fail. My approach to acknowledging complicated feelings towards writing is to enlist a pedagogy of hope. I accomplish this by assigning completion-based low-stakes writing each week in my courses, wherein students are encouraged to try new styles in their writing or to freely talk through an idea they have. I also emphasize writing as an act of discovery; students test new ideas or write about the topics that matter to them to invite learning. In doing so, my goal is for students to feel like writing is a manageable process at which they can excel (perhaps even enjoy!) in any context expected of them, regardless of their background or prior writing experiences.
In all courses, I ask students to submit a reflective cover letter alongside their major assignments that address questions like: What are you most proud of in this paper? What did you struggle with, and why? What have you learned about writing and being a writer? If you had to revise this paper one more time, what would you do and why? The point of these reflections is for students to look back on their progress and to consider how they can apply what they have learned about writing or themselves in other contexts. Students reveal in these letters that their confidence as writers has changed over the semester and that, importantly, writing is something they can do well in my class and beyond. I encourage students to continue practicing reflection because it will help them grow, adapt, or apply their learning to new contexts and situations over time.
Overall, my pedagogy highlights writing and learning as a journey of growth. My classroom is one stop on that journey, and I value the role I play in that. To paraphrase Peter Elbow: life is long and school is short.