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"It has always been my goal to help students become independent thinkers..."
It has always been my goal to help students become independent thinkers; to question, to inquire, to argue, and to be themselves through their social and/or cultural identities and experiences. In my few years of teaching I have come across dozens of students who only produce work to “satisfy” the teacher; they want to tell me what they think I want to hear. I began to ask them, “What do you think?”. I began to observe students having a difficult time seeing things through their own experiences and others could not have waited for the moment to come when they can freely express themselves. Thinking for themselves as individuals is not about staying “alone” in this process, but rather through an interchange in collaboration (Bruffee,1984), a learner-centered (Wiemer, 2002, 2013) atmosphere of autonomy and agency, usage of multimodalities (Gonzalez, 2015) to open their minds to creative ways of expression, and engaging in process (Murray, 2011) to experience growth, not just as students, but as thinkers. Implementing these theories into class caused massive communal engagement and they learned to see concepts through their own contexts and understood what they needed to change or remained consistent in their way of seeing the world. Throughout this process I have developed the philosophy that all learning experience is, undoubtedly, a never-ending interchange.
Currently teaching in a K-12 classroom, I have an incredible multicultural student demographic in which it is impossible not to create a learner-centered (Wiemer, 2013) space. During my early teaching career in high school English Literature courses, students demonstrated exceptional grasp of rhetorical, analytical, and comprehension concepts orally, in writing, through debates. I took the traditional book reports in essay format and turned into a news media outlet productions or an editorial format using video and moving images. In exchange for creativity and student-autonomy of book selections, families joined the projects, bilingualism was injected based on student choice, and the learning outcome of character analysis was achieved. Today, I have learned the word “Noiche” (Night) in Brazilian Portuguese through my curiosity of connecting the common aurality of the Spanish alphabet phoneme. I am taught about soccer players in argumentative writing from my Central and South American students using rhetorical devices and the ethos of primary source to secondary sources to appeal to the logos. I was taught about the Italian quality of life in comparison to the United States from my frequent travelers using expository writing; all from 8th graders. Hence, learning is a communal interchange (Bruffee,1984.).
I am a Latina woman born in the Dominican Republic. I grew up correcting my “English” and my accent because of the discourse demands of this nation, thus doing the same for my students during my first two years of teaching Through this experience, I have come to value the use of multimodality (Gonzalez, 2015) in the classroom in combination with, “Writing is a social act” (Ede & Lunsford, 1990). Through the interchange of community and multimodal ways of writing, analyzing, synthesizing, and producing in a learner-centered space, writing takes a more practical experience for students beyond the classroom. They will engage in mediums they use day-to-day and those of other cultures (YouTube videos, music videos, documentaries, movies, films, etc.). It is my goal for students to develop their “self” along the journey of writing; being able to ultimately understand that no learning is isolated nor independent from the need of the social experiences and cultures; varied perspectives can be respected and/or disagreed upon. Focusing on the audience and the needs of how best to communicate will help students develop their agency of genre rhetoric and analysis. All outcomes of learning require the “self” and the teamwork, and its publication should be the choice of the student in order to reflect who they are to their audience as authentically as possible.
"... shift of focus from “of me” towards “in me” as an educator, is the ultimate interchange."
In order for this interchange to transfer kinetically, Wiemer’s (2013) shift of focus from “of me” towards “in me” as an educator, is the ultimate interchange. Through my own decentralization I aim to implement strategies that show the way for students without having to walk it for them; I believe in engaging it with them. Small groups, peer-feedback, campus research, office time/student conferences, and after class student-to-teacher questions, and tiered projects will guide, push, and help them reach the learning outcomes. During the hybrid model in my early years after the pandemic subsided, I received a senior with a 3rd grade reading-level eight weeks before graduation. The issue was not her lack of skills, but the rhetoric she used against herself. This discourse came from a familial place with a high hindrance, which became her persona. She became her “self” and I became her community. Upon unlearning this and changing her words, I learned a key lesson: It is important for the room atmosphere to be conducive for interchange. Today, she is on her way to an Associates degree in Sociology. I am a tough self-judge, but learning from my students has taught me that they can be trusted and that together we are creating a learning experience that transcends and intersects with genre, learning spaces, and common discourses.
Overall, learning is never a singular-direction process. It is an interchangeable experiential process of student-to-student but also student-to-teacher. In the writing classroom, it is my goal for students to be communal, independent learners; using the power of process to develop and not to stagnate. While “community” requires interdependence, I want to them to understand that together, learning becomes fluid. Their “independence” is the willingness to search, assess, and accept themselves and the perspective of others in order to create agency in new creative genres. May this interchange be transcending beyond the classroom and never-ending, not just for them, but for me, alongside with them.
"It is an interchangeable experiential process of student-to-student but also student-to-teacher."
References:
Ede, L. S., & Lunsford, A. A. (1990). Singular Texts/plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Southern Illinois University Press.
Bruffee. (1984). Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind.” College English, 46(7), 635–652. https://doi.org/10.2307/376924
Gonzales, Laura. (2015). Multimodality, Translingualism, and Rhetorical Genre Studies. Composition Forum, (31).
https://www.compositionforum.com/issue/31/multimodality.php
Murray. (2011). Teach Writing as a Process Not Product. In Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader (p. 3–). National Council of Teachers of English.
Weimer. (2013). Learner-centered teaching five key changes to practice (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
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