Teaching Philosophy

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

The core focus of my teaching is to develop a keener understanding of the underlying rhetorical thinking required for analytical and critical writing, as well as the fostering of the technical skill required to put such complex thoughts into words. My ultimate goal is to help my students gain a more complex understanding of the world around them, to make them savvier consumers in a consumer-driven world, and to give them the tools necessary to be eloquent, measured, and considerate in how they choose to communicate in the world.

I want my students to understand that their words have power, and that the choices made in every expression of public writing or speech– from advertisement to the political sphere— are designed to manipulate how they think and how they react to the world around them. I want to help them be excited by this new knowledge, and eager to learn more.

Despite the ongoing academic debates over the use of technology in the classroom, I think that technology is important in order to facilitate principals of universal design in the way the class and subsequent assignments are conducted. This involves incorporating audio and visual mediums into the classroom along with the ability for students to conduct group work- allowing for all ranges of learners to become engaged with the materials presented to them.

Class structures should be active and engaging, with a primarily discussion-based format. Lecturing, to me, is best left to the book- spending time ensuring that read material is understood is an acceptable use of classroom time, but that can be accomplished in class-wide discussions, small free-write exercises, and small group assignments and discussions. It is important that the students are able to learn from each other’s insights into the material—this helps them gain an ownership of the material, and also aids in teaching them that they can become authorities on what they’re discussing. I want students to end the class with some level of understanding that they are learning, in some respect, to be experts in some field over their time in university—and that they can speak from a place of education in their work.

Students should leave with an idea of what it means to engage in academic discourse. They should understand the benefit of being argumentative and clear in their thesis statements, as well as being thorough in their analysis. I want my students to not fear the idea of someone disagreeing with them, but rather, to embrace it: engaging their audience and benefiting from the shared discussion while still maintaining an appropriate respectful tone.

To this end, for me, the essay is one of many tools available. I want to assess students through multiple mediums in order to cater to different learning types- via video, presentation, and creative enterprises in order to teach them to apply the structural and rhetorical knowledge they will gain over the duration of a course. Certainly our goal in a composition class is to further the students’ ability to write effectively, but I believe the core concepts of rhetoric are of equal import. Having the students address the material from different angles is useful in a more comprehensive understanding, and helps them think more critically and intuitively about the material they are beginning to process. The goal is the “ah-ha!” moment, where a student’s engagement with a concept or technique becomes clear and firm—where they can experience excitement and joy in coming to know and understand something, thereby unlocking another level of academic exploration of the topic for them.

Though we are preparing our students for their academic careers of choice, I think it crucial, in the end, for us to remember that we are here to give them the skills to be more effective and knowledgeable communicators for the rest of their lives, able to understand the nuance of what is going on around them, and how they speak to others. As long as we always teach to this goal, we are doing our students a service as instructors