Teaching Philosophy

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Through literature and writing courses, students are placed in an environment that presents them with ideas that have developed from history that will continue to be reflected within society. The field of English involves more than reading, for students are challenged to understand, articulate, and assimilate these ideas into their comprehension of their lives. As a teacher, I am a mediator of the information presented, and I am a proponent for creating some ‘discomfort’ as students are taught to challenge and consider their perceptions that shape their worldview—education should create opportunities to think beyond the self. In relation to the students, I am fundamentally responsible for creating an active learning environment that encourages participation and engagement with these issues while working to acknowledge them as individuals. I believe that these aspects are integral to a productive classroom experience.
In the encouragement of active learning, I advocate utilizing multiple methods and daily activities that stimulate student interaction and discussion. Understanding that lecturing is sometimes essential to the course, it remains necessary to integrate reflective questions that concern the presented material to be discussed and shared among classmates at the end of the class. This allows for cognitive reiteration and information assimilation. The majority of my classroom time will be focused on individual and group activities. I advocate metacognitive, reflective writings that encourage the student to freely think about the subject and make internal, subjective connections with the material. By allowing students to individually consider the information before joining in groups and sharing their ideas, students are encouraged to be personally invested with the information before collaboration. Moreover, this allows the teacher to frequently assess the development and cognition of the students. Group discussions need to be facilitated by the instructor, and they are used to create a discourse over the material that engages the students with it and with each other. This interaction draws on some ideas of Social-Construction Theory, for I believe that verbal articulation and peer interaction engender thinking at a critical and thorough level.
I uphold that it is essential for a teacher to present information that goes beyond the normative and dominant worldview. My texts and curriculum will include material that is not formally canonical so that it considers information that is not conventionally encountered in classroom settings. In providing access to ethnic literature, marginalized stories, or simply ignored perspectives, I hope for students to move beyond their assumptions about other people and history. Not only will this cultivate diversity, but it encourages a broader mindset that values information multiple perspectives that have been historically estranged from academia.
Cultural diversity and group culture need to be considered beyond the curriculum and within the classroom. Employing some characteristics of ethnology on a classroom level allows for an understanding of the learning style of the students that can therefore shape teaching strategies and designs for effective instruction. This can be done by developing relationships with students and daily interaction, but I also believe in taking the first day for students to introduce themselves and their interests to the teacher and their peers. Knowing the student at an individual level develops a framework for the classroom activities, and it enables the teacher to establish a respect and understanding of the student’s perspectives and preferences.
As my own work within the discipline is maturing, I will daily encounter new struggles and new opportunities to present information effectively to students. However, ultimately, my desire it to generate a curiosity about their life experience and a desire to consider the materials they work with critically.

Multiculturalism Video Presentation

-This video discusses the importance of including multicultural literature within the classroom, and it illustrates why I believe ethnic literature and the stories of marginalized peoples should be more integral to classroom curriculum. As a teacher, it is difficult and intimidating to include information that is foreign to your own experience and domain of knowledge. However, the purpose of education is to teach students about the world, and not simply the predominate, normative understanding of it.

TECHNIQUES CENTER, STUDENT DISABILITY SERVICES, TUTORING EXPERIENCE

As a tutor for students with disabilities for two years, I gained experience working with the same students daily for a semester. I worked one-on-one with these students, and I was challenged daily to work with their various, individual learning styles and disabilities that varied for each class. This experience greatly effected my teaching philosophy, and I now feel like it is imperative to understand the personal needs and attitudes of students within the classroom in order to fully engage them and encourage learning. This link includes a variety of information taken from the Techniques Center that illustrates how these ideas were integral to the system, and how I employed them. The first Student Interview document is given to the students the first day of tutoring so that I have a greater understanding of their needs from their own perspective. I used this frequently in the following sessions to understand how I could tailor our activities towards their preferences and difficulties. The next document discusses the meaning of the SOAP [notes] that are a primary function of the tutoring system. Tutors are required to fill out SOAP notes after every tutoring session, and this enables the tutor to keep track of the student's progress. It challenges the tutor to acknowledge the methods that work best, or that fail, when interacting with the student. It emphasizes the importance of continually assessing the environment and productivity of the sessions. The next two documents are samples of my SOAP notes that I filled out on two of my previous students. The following documents are assessments of me as a tutor, filled out by both students and counselors. As can be seen, my weaknesses in particular are vital to my teaching philosophy. Through my struggles with learning strategies and engaging students, I have realized how important it is to move beyond lecturing into student interaction and classroom exercises that are responsive to the student's questions, reflections, and weaknesses.
http://portal.texastech.edu

SAMPLE CLASSROOM PRESENTATION

My preference for classroom design and style is illustrated within this document. I composed the class structure around my preference for previous, individual reflection before classroom discussion. I drew from outside sources to broaden the focus beyond the book and included some background information, but the focus of this class was on the student interaction and the move from written discourse through the blogged reflections to verbal discourse and class interaction.

http://1301group.blogspot.com/2008/11/chicana-literature-classroom.html

Oh the Teaching Philosophy...

I think it makes sense that a teaching philosophy would always have to be in flux, would always have to be reflexive to the changing environment, would always have to be progressing. It seems like a teaching philosophy grows and changes as you as a person, as a teacher, grows and changes. My personal teaching philosophy has never really been stable. It tends to shift with my various passions at the time. I remember last year I was really in to enabling students to fully express themselves. Now, my teaching philosophy is being effected by my experiences on Raider Writer and with 1301. I think that students need instruction, and that they need to be treated like adults who can articulate their ideas and who should be expected to put in their best effort. My ideas are slightly effected by psychology, and the research in the field that shows that teacher expectations are a good predictor of the student's output. If we expect our students to do shallow analysis and shoddy work, perhaps the students think that is ok. If we expect higher standards, and if we relay and enforce those expectations within the classroom setting and within our grading, perhaps the students would recognize the different expectations and therefore respond differently. Also, my teaching philosophy is being influenced by my own classes. I have always been involved with ethnic literature, and the ideas that are focused on in these classes influence how I want to teach. I do not want to teach to the canon, to the traditional. I want to challenge students to challenge their pre-conceptions, and the ideas of unified opinions. I want students to see the different ideas that comprise our society and make it so variegated. Especially in Texas, I want students to recognize that they, too, live on borders. In my teaching method and my materials, I hope to challenge students to move outside of their comfort zone, and to do it well.

Lowered-Standards Program

I'm not sure if I'm kidding or not with this title. In some ways... yes. I am actually a pretty firm believer in not lowering standards for students so that we can have a higher pass-rate out of 1301. I figure that if we lower the standards much more, the kids are just wasting their money coming to college. Also, I would feel like I was pretty ineffective at my job. When I tell people that I'm an English professor one day, I want to be able to tell them that students leave my class able to write a pretty good short essay, and that they enjoy at least a little bit of reading. I think that in lower-ing standards, I will be letting the students down, and my own expectations for myself.

However, after grading for a bit this semester, I do have lowered-standards as to what I expect the students to submit. I had to realize that my expectations are not the same as the students, and every time I start grading a new kind of assignment, I feel like I have to "feel" around a few drafts before I re-adjust to what kind of work I should be expecting. But back to the original question... I had to lower my ideals for what I want the students to come in knowing. I never really hoped for an interest in reading and writing, but I was definitely expecting students to be able to identify and write a five paragraph essay. I now realize that Plan B will have to be teaching multiple levels of thinking within the same classroom. They are going to have to be taught how to structure their sentences and their essays while I'm trying to get them to form more critical thinking skills/responses. Plan B entails having the students perhaps 'intake' and 'think' about things that are at a different, higher level than what they can necessarily 'output' in their own words. However, I think that this is one of the best ways to learn, probably because this is how I learn best, myself.

For me as a teacher, I am going to have to go on the higher-standards program. I personally am not so hot at grammar, and now I realize I'm going to have to brush up on those skills. Not only that, but I am going to have to get better at articulating and explaining the smaller things that I would probably have rushed right past. I now know that I am going to have to be a much more effective communicator, and more responsive to the class, than what I was expecting. It is one thing to read the handbooks and the lesson plans, but it is a different thing to realize how to parse the information, how to form it and relay it, so that the students can really take it in and synthesize it. I guess I didn't realize that I would have to be doing this much 'shaping' of information at the level of grammar and essay structure. Somehow I figured I would get to talk about all the abstract concepts floating around in books. Plan B for me is going to be learning how to really see the students in my classroom, and really take into consideration where they are, and how my behavior will most effectively reach them.

I was a bad English major...

I have to say, I spent the majority of my time in Undergraduate in the Psychology building. I spent over 2 years undecided because I tried so so so hard to avoid becoming an English major, and especially an English teacher. For some reason, I felt it would be one of the greatest failures of my life if I didn't surprise myself with what I became. Due to my own apathy towards English, I never really thought about teaching philosophies until I spend most of my life tutoring for two years, and until I was asked to for a specific grad class... so, I'm starting from scratch here.

So... Teaching philosophy. Yes, there are different ones because we're all different people and we all have different values. It's what shapes what you stress in class, and how you construct your classroom environment, your interaction, and how the information is presented. Now... on to the more exciting stuff.

Whatever shred of teaching philosophy I have is shaped by a book I recently read. It gave the example of looking at a leaf. Instead of thinking "hey, it's green", and putting it down, or even "hey, this is a green that kinda matches my favorite sweater, much more of a yellow green than a blue green" think... "I wonder if this leaf was ever turquoise". Why not? Why do we constantly view the world through these eyes of normality? We expect the world to fit into a place, and we go into the world and the knowledge of it with expectations of what we will find. I think that's one of the greatest downfalls of education today. Even in English classes in graduate school, I pretty much have a good idea about what I will learn. Why are we all stuck in our expectations of the regular? That is what I would want to pass on to any kids I teach. I want them to question, not to only 'think outside of the box', but to really not have a box at all.

Also, teach less, not more. Inspire with questions, not answers. When I tutored, this was the only way that my students would ever be involved. I had to suck them in. I had to make it personal, the information and the environment. In order for them to actually care about the class, in some ways I had to make them care about the interaction more than the information. They did the work they hated because they wanted to do it for themselves, so that our time together was beneficial, and so that they wouldn't disappoint me. I understand that this may not always work in a large classroom, but it made our tutoring sessions so much better. My students knew my random quirks of teaching style, that I have a passion for using mnemonics and odd stories to make them remember, and that I love highlighters that smell like watermelon. In turn, they were able to feel comfortable conversing about a subject they may not really know the answers to or be interested in. I knew what they hated and I knew their different styles of expression. So... in my teaching style, I'm going to try to focus on the rapport. I don't want to be just a talking head to them so that they sit stoically in class. I'm hoping to encourage class participation is to find ways to get them to care about the class, if not the boring grammar rules. This may be slightly idealistic and not fitting for the numerous big classes I will eventually teach, but my experiences in tutoring one-on-one have shaped my expectations and my self-presentation, and I think it will be hard to get away from that.

Current Struggles

Sadly... I've spent a lot of time on the phone with my mom and talking to my roommates this semester... When grading, I am frequently overcome with self-doubt and exasperation as I struggle to gain confidence in my ability to fairly grade and to give good comments, and to strive to do better. It is hard for me to grade, to feel like I am qualified to tell someone how they did. There is still so much that I am learning as a writer myself, so how can I claim to know what is wrong with someone's paper? So I call people who I know will be objective, and they can tell me if my comments seem fair and helpful. I guess I still am pretty dependent upon feedback. After reading this last article on error, my mental block only grew. I am definitely not a natural at grammar. I can write it pretty well, but no one should ever ask me to diagram a sentence or to take a comma test. (I got nervous when I had to take the one at orientation). This is probably why I spend so much time focusing on content in my comments- it's what I'm actually slightly confident in. Today's discussion was really helpful to me because it addressed many of the issues that I struggle with regarding grammar (besides me low esteem in dishing out the grades). How much grammar should I myself know? How much should I emphasize it to the students, in the comments and in the classroom? These are questions that I cannot presently answer... I do not know if it's ok that I put all my grammar comments at the bottom because I figure that it's the least important part. I hope it's ok that I usually only tag 3-4 grammar errors per page. Is it ok that I do not emphasize these grammar elements in my comments, but I do expect the students to turn in drafts that have minimal errors? I think that I do not emphasize the grammar elements because I think that students should be able to edit their papers by the time they get to college, and it's not my job to be an editor... Maybe it's more of my job than I am realizing. However, the one thing that I do think that I have realized is that I will have to study up on the grammar hand book before I teach. I need to be able to fully explicate dangling modifiers and all those other terms to students one day... I would like to be able to learn the lessons fully to be able to use mnemonics or something clever in helping them in daily lessons in the classroom. Maybe that's a summer project.

I have no idea about ideology...

It doesn't seem like theory can be a discrete element of literature that can be contained in a solitary class. It involves the negotiation of ideas, the construction of knowledge, its shaping and formation. Theories are related to history, and so they are inextricably related to the growth of man, to social identity, and to the present being of society. Theories give definition to where we are in life and what we believe, and so I think it would be difficult to be able 'learn' separate from them. Personally, I love theories. Honestly, I love literary theory more than educational theory... but I see both of them as pertinent. Not only do I see them applied daily within the class, but I see them within the political system, people's belief systems, and people's perception of the world. I personally want to think about whether 'love' is a social construction, a fiction that is elaborated through language. Luckily, there are tons of books about it that I can go and explore. Theories allow us to not just blandly accept a piece of knowledge as universally accepted and absolute. They help us see that, as people, as scholars, everything is a postulation. Everything is growing and evolving in the literary field and in the educational system. It is much greater to be able to try to understand how things have become and the paths they have taken than to take facts at face-value, as isolated events that do not have a history. It takes self-reflection and discernment to apply theories to the self and to the personal construction and formation of knowledge. It gives meaning to everything we do. I can simply believe that it is better for people to try to learn through key words and by presenting associations, or I can understand the educational past of these ideas and its relation to mnemonics. I can simply read an educational theory, or I can delve into the cognitive psychology of mnemonics so I can understand better how my students are going to be sorting through the information and I can help them form pathways for better memory. Theories just seem to give more meaning to the things that we do, in school, and in life. I would like to know why I think as I do and try to understand how I got there.
At the same time, I'm taking a literary theory class this semester and it just took me a good 2 hours to read 40 pages. So I'm a little frustrated with theory because it seemed to take a simply issue and complicate it. On Friday afternoons, complication is the last thing I want. So maybe it's a love-hate relationship...

I eat a lot...

The process of writing always seems a little sticky. With me, generally literally sticky because I really do eat a lot when I write. It is essential. And I have a thing for jelly. But that is besides the point...Sometimes I wonder at the egoism that goes into proscribing a 'process' for people to follow. It makes sense. As people, we learn by repetition and example. We need things to be delineated into steps to follow and copy. That is how we learn sentence structure. That is how we learn style and voice. That is how we learn to speak and to lift up our fork to eat. However, it is once that the general process is learned that it becomes filled with the small idiosyncrasies that make it your own. I tend to think that once a semblance of a process is learned, it is beneficial to allow anyone to make it their own. To encourage those aberrations from the settled concept and structure. Processes become individualized over time because this is how the product becomes individualized.

For myself, my own process as changed over time. As I have been in different contexts and situations, surrounded by different peers and different models, I have shaped and modeled and molded my own writing process. Sometimes, whatever process I had just fell apart because I didn't want to put in the mental energy to follow a process at all. And that lack of outside construction and effort helped me learn to move beyond the process into a mental free-play. When all is structured, where is the creativity?

I personally have slight ADD. This is probably an exaggeration, but that is what I feel like. I don't like writing for more than 5 minutes at a time. I can sit at a computer desk for 8 hours on a Saturday trying to bust out a paper, but I enjoy distractions. I love mental breaks. I like dim-lit rooms and music. Sometimes lyrics, sometimes not. As long as it gets my brain moving. I don't really pre-write. I like using tons of quotes that I have written down from sources, and I stare at them and sort through them until I know a general plan of how I want to use them. Then I story-board. Every essay is like a story. It has to be cohesive, it has to flow, and it has to make a logical step. I don't like unbalanced essays. And I can sit for hours pondering at a blank page and a blank screen because I don't know how I can make everything I want to say fit together. If there's some quote I really want to use, some concept I really like, I need to make it fit into a grand picture. And so I will create a flow chart generally on a napkin that is left-over from my grapes that I munched on as I first stared at the screen. And I will invariably walk around the house mumbling to myself to try to make sure that these ideas really do flow perfectly together. I will invariably call my mom, asking her if I could make those claims, or how that they sound. She never understands what I am saying, but it is nice to have someone to listen to my ramblings. Always good bonding, too. And so it is a long, slow, painful process. Because I will sit and stare at every sentence. I usually never get to re-writing because I will re-read every paragraph multiple times. By the time I move from the sentence, and then from the paragraph, I am pretty sure I will like how it flows together. I get stumped because I tend to work backwards, from the ending to the beginning. Probably not productive.

I think it is helpful for students to learn to processes of writing outlines, of taking down quotes, of writing precis to make sure they know how to analyze the articles they are going to be using. I think it is helpful for students to write rough-drafts and practice thesis statements and then have to revise their essays. These are all processes that they need to learn to do so that they can find out what suits their own individual style. I think one of the problems with students is that most do not actually try to find their own style of writing, or they do not have to gain experience with any processes at all. In the classroom, perhaps it would be helpful to create more minor-projects, even in-class, that would get students more accustomed to writing anything at all. More essays so that students get used to having to sit down and get one out. It is odd how easily people adjust to things, and perhaps it would be better if the educational system started pressuring students more rather than working down to their level. Why give in to the new mediums? Sure, blogs are handy to get out thoughts. Have the student hand-writing cohesive paragraphs in class and turn them in, and see what you get. I personally think that in order for students to learn to manipulate the many processes that are out there, they have to get to a point where they are comfortable traversing across different processes and combining them in different forms of mediums. I do, however, advocate that everyone have a snack while writing. Might as well make it a little bit enjoyable.