Teaching Philosophy

In endeavoring to define my role as an educator, I find this difficult task simplified, and yet, paradoxically expanded in the words of Paulo Freire:

“The teacher, then, is not an end-point of development for students to reach. The students are not a flotilla of boats trying to reach the teacher who is finished and waiting on the shore. The teacher is also one of the boats.”

My task as an educator is to position myself as one among the many, and at the same time, be the one who is able to navigate the teeming waters while also initiating others in the art of navigation. And it is precisely an art that I perceive gaining an education to be, for it requires one to learn advanced skills and abilities all the while utilizing and honing the intermediate skills and abilities that one already has.

Thus, a well-rounded education is one that is deeply personal and unavoidably public. As such, a student needs to know both themselves more intimately and the public sphere more acutely. Good discussion and debate with material and with each other helps achieve this, for debate unavoidably initiates students to the conversations with self, society, and a complex combination of the two; and as a result of these conversations, a deeper understanding of the functions and failings of language occurs.

Furthermore, debate challenging the traditional definition of classroom dynamics and relationships by encouraging expression, engagement, and potentialities. Consequently, it is understanding, generated by debate, that inevitably develops opportunity, both mental and material, and it is for the sake of those opportunities that I consider the forum paramount in approaching language and its instruction; for I am “not an end-point,” nor have I achieved my end-point. I elect and employ an ethos that seeks reciprocated opportunity for both the students and the teacher in order that both can more adequately navigate each other and the waters of the academy.