Teaching Philosophy Draft

Catrina Mitchum

Teaching with Technology

Teaching Philosophy-Teaching Writing

November 24, 2011

Audience: Distance Students

As a Teacher:

            As a student, I always preferred classes that were hands on and very light on the lecture, and I preferred professors who had high expectations but were human at the same time. I preferred them because I learned more in them. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the hands on style seems to be the most conducive to learning based on neurobiological research (Brain Rules). I therefore, as a teacher, try to make my own classes as hands-on as a writing course can be. My courses are student-centered, meaning that the needs of individual students are addressed and the course content and execution does not center on my own ideas about writing. We work on synthesizing (through course readings and activities) a definition of what it means to be a writer in the world today.

Views on Knowledge and Application in the Classroom:

            I believe that what is acceptable as a communicative practice is socially constructed; however, verbal communication is something that can also be very individual (style, tone, etc). It involves taking and working through external information in order to make sense of the world from an individual perspective. So, overall, I try to find a balance between the social and the individual in the classroom in the work that both my students and I do.

            I do this by giving students the opportunity to work individually and together; I give students ample opportunity to give me feedback on the direction of the course while I keep a teaching journal in order to reflect on what I think worked and didn’t work. For my students, I require peer review and personal reflection on those reviews in order to help keep this balance between social construction and the individual. The peer reviews give students feedback on their work, but by requiring a reflection on the reviews they received (by their classmates and myself) students are able to think about why the suggestions were made and whether or not they agree with them. Peer review and collaboration take place throughout the course, not just on major essay assignments.

            In order to facilitate this continuous feedback, my classroom focuses on group workshops that allow students to help each other compose in ways that are effective rhetorically. I use discussions to make the class focused more on the students and their ideas as opposed to the teacher as the “holder of all knowledge.” Requiring reading responses that focus on what students think about what they read and why also reinforces the social constructivist and student-centered approach that I try to take in the classroom. I try to make the course cater to individual students, and this translates into one-on-one conferences to attend to individual student needs.

Student Assessment and Expectations:

I expect my students to give 100% effort to their course work. This effort translates into reading assignments carefully and closely, asking questions when they arise, and putting thought into every aspect of the coursework. In discussions and workshops, students are assessed based on: their ability to think critically about assigned topics and their ability to respond to classmates in a meaningful way. In drafts, I’m looking for a real effort to move toward communicating rhetorically. In the journals I expect to see honest thought and reflection on writings and on feedback received. Overall, these expectations and assessment criteria are geared toward a learning experience that emphasizes transferability to other writing situations and a creation of a definition of writing that is a balance between the individual and the larger group.