Teaching Philosophy

My approach to teaching writing is grounded in a collaborative pedagogy that calls for students to work together in a social manner as they form critical dialogues and become engaged learners. I draw from numerous pedagogical theories—expressivist, feminist, and process pedagogies—on a daily basis to help my students improve not only their ability to communicate effectively but also their critical thinking skills.

The atmosphere of my classroom is fundamental to constructing a critical dialogue that facilitates a student’s understanding of collegiate-level writing, reading, and thinking. Keeping with expressivist pedagogy, I use group work to maintain a classroom that is as student-centered as possible. As Kenneth A. Bruffee explains, “to marshal the powerful educational resource of peer group influence requires us to create and maintain a demanding academic environment that makes collaboration—social engagement in intellectual pursuits—a genuine part of students’ educational development” (434). This is my goal for the group work in which my students participate. However, I temper this “demanding academic environment” with a nurturing touch, a role I see as aligned with feminist pedagogy. I circulate amongst my students, giving feedback, answering questions, and supplying additional information, thereby de-centering my own authority to empower their voices.

Even as I monitor students, the goal is to have them grow as writers, readers, and critical thinkers with each other. I also foster this growth through activities that promote writing as a process. For instance, I use online activities to reinforce the skills necessary to complete the larger goal of a unit or course. This coincides with cognitive process pedagogy, as described by Linda Flower and John R. Hayes, where my students encounter “the act of writing … [through] the task environment” (277). In one assignment, students found and posted advertisements to a blog, discussing the arguments and supporting evidence presented in them. To support skill development, I design shorter in-class and online assignments that help students work through the writing process as they learn to convey their thoughts clearly. Introducing students to writing and learning as a process, occurring over time, is a central part of my pedagogy; having students discover and refine their own process makes the class more rewarding for everyone.

To promote critical thinking and keep the class atmosphere engaging, I often bring multimedia and multimodal compositions into my lessons. Strategically using these texts entices students to create a dialogue with each other and with the material, stimulating them into action and enhancing their understanding. I have found that these activities remain in students' memories longer than a standard lecture and encourage active discussion. Analyzing advertisements, popular culture, and canonical texts alongside one another demonstrates that the skills of critical analysis—identifying argument, evidence, and rhetorical strategy—are transferable, encouraging students to interact with the world around them as a text rich in meaning.

My approach works to actively engage students in the learning and writing process. In his article “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product,” Donald M. Murray asks, “What is the process we should teach? It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world?” (4).

Through this collaborative pedagogy, I teach this very process of exploration through language in a supportive setting. I provide the rhetorical and theoretical tools necessary for academic writing, but it is the student-centered classroom I create that allows students to discover their thoughts and ideas are important. When they can clearly convey those ideas—through writing or discussion—others are able to share in their discovery.

References

Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind.'" College English,

vol. 46, no. 7, 1984, pp. 635–52. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/376924.

Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing." College Composition and

Communication, vol. 32, no. 4, 1981, pp. 365–87. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/356600.

Murray, Donald M. "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product." The Leaflet, vol. 71, no. 3, 1972, pp.

11–14. (Note: This influential essay has been widely republished. The original citation is provided, but it is also easily found in later anthologies).