Draft of Teaching Philosophy

*Being really transparent, I’m not super happy with this teaching philosophy and am still working on it. It seems a little bare bones to me, and I am trying to flesh it out. 

While I have taught and worked with students at two-year colleges; four-year, research institutions; students who were first-year all the way to graduate level, I typically work with upper-division students in multiple disciplines, so my teaching philosophy tends to cater toward their needs.  In teaching technical writing or composition, my ultimate goal is to provide students with a foundation, so they can feel confident in abilities and where to go if they need help; and to provide collaboration opportunities with peers and outside community members to create writing that is truly applicable in the community setting. To do so, I use community engagement projects, a mentoring approach, and cross-cultural communication in the classroom.

 

Community-Engagement in the Classroom

In both of my technical writing and composition classrooms, I try to incorporate community engagement projects. Echoing work from Cushman, Friere, Dobrin, and Owens, I believe working to bridge academia and the community is an important mission. In addition to their ideas, I also believe that these projects should be fruitful for the students and the community partners, which is why I try to create sustainable partnerships with community members. One of the most important distinctions to make when we work with community members is that we are working with and not for them (Deans, 2000).

 

For my technical writing course, my students have to create an internal proposal where they pitch an idea to investigate some “issue” they have noticed in organizations they are in, places where they volunteer, or their current workplace. I also provide some possible clients/partners they can work with based on my connections to the community and partnerships I’ve made from previous semesters with community members. After the internal proposal, students will actual conduct the research and meet with the client/partner several times during the semester to receive feedback on their work and direction on how to continue their project. At the end of the semester, students present their work to the client/partner. For both the composition and technical writing classrooms, working on a micro-level and with the community, helps ……. To help students build up their writing abilities and confidence, I use a mentoring-teaching style in my classroom.

 

Mentoring Approach

When students come into my classroom, I want to build a rapport to illustrate my knowledge in the field and my commitment to their success. I found that using this type of approach allows students to feel more comfortable working one-on-one during conferences. Conferences are one strategy I use to create a mentoring approach, so I hold student conferences for each major project. While only two are required, students can schedule a conference for all the projects to get one-on-one coaching or work through their project. This mentoring and one-on-one work applies not only to me, but I try to use it in my classroom as well. Many times, I have my students work in small groups to complete model activities together to get ready for a project. Students then take on this mentoring role and not only share knowledge with classmates but also learn from their peers as well.

 

Cross-Cultural Communication

It is no surprise that classrooms are becoming more diverse, and as a teacher I believe students should be able to restfully and effectively communicate with their peers and possible communities they may encounter either later on in college or in the workplace. While many textbooks provide a general guideline for how to communicate with other cultures, I believe that students learn more by working directly with people, which is where the community-based projects come into play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Deans, T. (2000). Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition. National Council of Teachers of English.