EVERYDAYscholar

teaching philosophy

 

My ideas about teaching are evolving, becoming more complex and sophisticated. I hope this to always be the case.

 

Part of my job is to help students engage and experiment with their own developing theories and ideas. That is, I am more interested in and motivated by notions of real learning, creativity, academic risk, error, genuine involvement and investment than I am in helping students achieve high grades. [I am concerned that grades, which should be a reflection of what students have learned (i.e., a measurement) have become, instead, achievements in themselves, a corruption of their usefulness. The consequence of this is that learning, academic achievement, and improvement are subordinated to whatever tasks must be completed to obtain an A. My identity as a teacher revolves around development and growth, both for the student and for myself.]

 

As education changes (its goals, purposes, spaces, and products), it is no longer enough to be a knower of things. Instead, students need to know how to do things and then apply that knowledge to new environments and paradigms. Another aspect of my job, then, is to facilitate students’ transition from potentially passive learning environments to more active moments of content application and knowledge creation. To borrow an old metaphor, I do not think it is my job to fill my student-vessels with knowledge. Rather, my job is more like an interested observer, suggesting to students that there is a “well of knowledge” to draw from and tools to use, and keeping vigil as they find the tools, examine them, search for the well, and finally help themselves to its provision. My role is to alternatively point the way and muddle the path. Perhaps because I am a writing teacher with strong inclinations for pedagogy, but it seems to me that learning (a goal of education) happens on the way to the well, not necessarily at the well. There is something particularly powerful and meaningful in the processes of learning.

 

I also believe in and am fully committed to the idea of the teacher-scholar. I have been a high school teacher, an educating consultant, and a college instructor. There is (perhaps unfairly so) a feeling that k-12 educators are master teachers and post-secondary educators are master scholars. This, to me, devalues both positions. I am completely invested in the craft and technique and science of teaching. I both recognize and am passionate about my role as an instructor, facilitator, mentor, listener, evaluator, challenger, defender: teacher. Because of that, I am engaged in my own personal growth as a teacher. That means practicing, reading and studying about pedagogy, self-reflection, seeking out opportunities for evaluation, participating in moments that both affirm and challenge my notions of what it means to teach and be a teacher. But I also think it is both dangerous and disingenuous for teachers not to participate in the learning process. As a scholar I work hard to keep up with and contribute to the growing sphere of my fields of expertise and interest (one of those interests being interdisciplinaryness, which involves learning about a wide swath of things). That is, if I’m going to teach writing (or whatever my assignment may be), I must necessarily be studying writing and adding to the rich conversations about writing. To be a teacher-scholar means to be an expert and an expert teacher.

 

It is important to me that my philosophy of teaching is as dynamic as I hope my teaching and scholarship is. I used to include as part of my philosophy a representative bibliography of my pedagogical influences, but even a representative bibliography has become somewhat unwieldy—a fact that I am a bit proud of. Instead, in closing, I will mention only my most recent areas of personal and professional inquiry: the intersection of service learning and basic writing; the history of American education; models of narration (particularly central intelligence); the spaces and moments of learning; the (de/re)professionalization of the teaching class; competition versus cooperation.