Teaching Philosophy

I entered the classroom that day more nervous than usual. This was my first semester teaching first year composition, my first semester at Texas Christian University, my first semester as a doctoral student. It was a semester chock-full of firsts, actually. I spent the semester in a perpetual nervous sweat, but this class period more so than normal because I was being observed for practicum. Somehow I had escaped the performance of this helpful evaluative exercise at either of the two universities where I previously taught. My lesson plan for the day included discussion of the research needed for the upcoming mini-ethnography essay the students would be writing, and an in-class activity I was borrowing from Dr. Hogg. In the activity, I asked the students to place on their desks three items they had with them which they felt were representative of who they were as individuals. They were then to walk around the circle of desks and choose one grouping of items and write a paragraph on the person represented by those items. They were to come to some conclusions about that person based on the items and on that person’s statements and behavior in class. The point of the exercise was that, first and foremost, we cannot make definitive judgments about others based on minimal information. I also wanted to familiarize the students with the concepts of observation and note taking while “in the field.”

As expected, many students placed on their desks things like phones, day planners, and various textbooks. The exercise resulted in an interesting, exciting, and fun discussion between the students as they discussed their guesses (some correct, some wildly wrong) about each other based on the artifacts displayed. I, too, had written a paragraph or two about one of the students, and used it to highlight some of the points I hoped the exercise would bring out. By doing this, I was able to model the positive behavior I hoped my students would engage in: note taking and careful composition. I was also able to model some of the behavior I wanted them to avoid: I jumped to wild conclusions, engaged in massive hyperbole, and made sweeping generalizations. Apparently the exercise was helpful to them, because the papers I received were fairly free from that type of writing.

This was a fun exercise for us to do, partly because it wasn’t fifty minutes of me lecturing to them while they waited patiently for me to run out of steam or for the ending of the class period to mercifully silence me. I still got the point across that I wished to make without lecturing, and did so in a way that helped the concepts stay with them. My own participation in the activity, aside from allowing me to insert the specific points I wished to get across, helped them to also see me as something other than just a voice of authority and person of power in the classroom, but also as someone actively working alongside with them in their production of knowledge. It is this role that I embrace in my teaching, and one that I struggle to embody with each teaching opportunity.

I believe that a good, successful teacher makes herself obsolete, and it has always been my desire that students would leave my class no longer needing me because they now have the tools they need. I intend that students in my classes learn to think critically, which is less an exercise in thinking and more an exercise in questioning. I want to foster in my students a willingness to question, an ability to engage in habitual doubt versus blind willingness to believe anything they are told. While the above exercise is one which does more to highlight the dangers intrinsic in failing to think critically, I also strive to introduce activities and assignments in class that encourage the students to stretch their questioning abilities. We frequently play Peter Elbow’s “Believing and Doubting Game,” and during our class discussions as well as in their writing I try to coax explanations from them that require serious, reflective thought on their part.

In light of the constantly changing diversity within classrooms, I am a firm believer in the need for instructors to make their classrooms as safe a space as possible. Especially during their first year, students are learning to “try on” new ideas (new for them, anyway), and I strive to create a classroom in which they are comfortable thinking, writing, and talking about new concepts. In order to do this well, of course, the students (and I) must do some reflection on our readings, on our writings, on our conversations. This reflection is important for developing the ability to question and think critically, as well as for the development of better writing. If students do not learn how to reconsider things that they have written, they will have great difficulties in learning how to reconsider faulty ideas they have previously held as well. As I continue to develop my own syllabi throughout the coming semesters, I will include authors who are new to the students and who challenge the students to re-see and re-think their own closely held beliefs.

I want my students to see me as their helper and guide rather than the final authority figure in the classroom who doles out grades by some arbitrary system over which they have no control. It’s a very careful tightrope act that we teachers perform as we both try to share power with our students in an attempt to empower them, while also enforcing necessary rules and, yes, doling out grades. As I work with students on their papers, or their research for their papers, or on the revising and editing of their papers, I provide options for them to try out – various methods of invention, or ways to re-see their papers to make revision less painful – and I make clear to them that not all of these are going to be successful or helpful, but that as they become aware of what works for them, they can become more mindful of these strategies and work to strengthen them.

Just as I see my vita as something I must continually update, I also see my teaching philosophy as something constantly in a state of revision – both the physical document itself as well as the more amorphous concept itself. Each day that I enter the classroom, I anticipate, hope, and welcome challenges from students that will cause me to pause and reflect on the way I do things as a teacher. I tell my students that there are no finished papers, but only papers that are due, and I apply this same concept to my teaching philosophy. I see my philosophy as something I carry with me and revise constantly, both after great reflective thought as well as immediately and on the fly. My philosophy changes from day to day, and from class to class, but the basics remain the same – I want my students to learn not only good writing skills, but that writing is not just a process which results in a nicely formatted MLA paper. It’s also a process by which we come to a clearer understanding of our own beliefs, or a messy and protracted process which helps us to move past previously held beliefs, or a process by which we come to a decision. Writing is much more than just the papers we turn out – it’s an exploratory act, an act of discovery and wonder.

Advertisement