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Teaching is not talking or telling, it is listening and observing so that you can know what to do.
Teaching is not talking or telling, it is listening and observing so that you can know what to do.
Teaching Philosophy:
Below is a brief statement of my core teaching philosophy distilled from a over a decade of hard-won experience. These beliefs are the foundation for every instructional choice I make and represents my process for the cycle of preparing to teach, teaching, and reflection.
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
Fundamentally, I believe a teacher is simultaneously enlivened and limited by two intrinsic aspects of the organic nature of teaching: you teach what you are and you teach students, not robots.
You teach what you are means that on a very fundamental level a teacher cannot teach something that in the core of their being they do not believe to be good, right, and true. Beyond that, if asked to engage in instructional strategies that do not align with what they understand to be best practices, a teacher will experience cognitive dissonance to the disruption of any actual teaching. This does not mean a teacher can only teach curriculum they develop themselves; it does mean a wise teacher will internalize an externally-produced curriculum and make it their own in a similar manner to a musician, who through study and practice, reproduces someone else’s composition. A teacher brings their knowledge and skill to the curriculum; they study and practice it and, if they understand it to be in line with their expert knowledge and values, reproduce it for their students as their own.
Students are not robots; they are agents in their own learning processes for better or for worse. A teacher’s best approach is to acknowledge the necessary mutual vulnerability involved for effective teacher-student collaboration in the learning process. They must find ways to meaningfully build relational capacity, to communicate their honest high regard and authentic best intentions clearly and often, and ultimately be willing to prioritize the needs of the students. Teaching is not talking or telling, it is listening and observing so that you can know what to do. Students will let you know what they need and that is what you need to do.
Teaching Sample:
This video was taken of a real-life class discussion activity on November 11, 2024. This class is English 1301: Rhetoric & Composition I, and it is the first of two required freshman English courses. Part of the requirement for the course includes readings on social justice issues; these readings become models for rhetoric. In my first semester teaching at the university level, I've tried to surprise my students with innovative discussion activities. This activity, Sticky-Note Question Selection, was so successful the first time, I brought it back for a second round.
Before I started the recording, I was met with the setback of the projector in the room not coming on. I had a brief PowerPoint with a slide reviewing the procedures for the activity. As I believe it is important to offer as many modalities as possible to students, providing both visual and aural instruction would have been preferred. With that not available, it was actually my students who suggested that we could adapt and go straight to the activity.
While there was at least 10 minutes of unrecorded group discussion in the middle of the video, the recording is complete for the whole-class discussion aspects of the activity. This is a long video, but I feel that it exemplifies real teaching in an imperfect situation, with imperfect students, and an imperfect instructor. Several enlightening moments are listed with time stamps and descriptions below the video.
00:00 - 00:39 -- Initial instruction for the activity
00:40 - 2:20 -- Reading out the questions and starting the activity
2:21 - 2:42 -- Clarification stemmed from a student question
2:43 -- Whole-class discussion begins; making expectations clear. Notice that throughout the discussion, I model the behavior I want to see in the students.
3:50 -- Student has a question which makes other students laugh. I regret not addressing the laughter and comments.
4:40 - 5:40 -- Students engaging in side-conversation while another student is sharing out. I redirect them like a boss.
10:59 - 11:33 -- Summation of the first article discussed. I'm chuffed that I tied it back to the title of the course.
11:34 - 14:00 -- I interact with a student just enough to encourage him to take on the first three questions for the second reading. He killed it!
14:01 - 16:44 -- Another student gives a really insightful answer to a real question I had. Her answer prompts me to share more about my connection to the article.
16:45 - 21:20 -- Very interactive discussion of the last question which includes the author's use of an out-of-date offensive term for persons with intellectual disability
21:21 - My reflection on the activity and why it works so well
Composition Unit Project Analysis:
Below is a written justification and brief outline for an initial unit of study for a college Freshman English class. This unit was developed by me as the cumulative project for my Composition Studies course at Arizona State University, as such it reflects current scholarship on both composition pedagogy and the emerging scholarship around generative AI. The purpose of the unit is two-fold: to help students quickly navigate the gap between high school writing expectations and university writing expectations and to introduce them to the larger questions and conversation around generative AI. The outline for the unit and the cumulative project for the unit are respectively Appendices A and B. The body of the text discusses the research and rationale that justifies the unit, it's purposes and techniques.
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