Teaching Philosophy

My approach to teaching writing is grounded in feminist and critical pedagogies. Feminist pedagogy moves “against hegemonic educational practices that tacitly accept or more forcefully reproduce an oppressively gendered, classed, racialized, and androcentric social order” (Crabtree et al., 2009, pg. 1). As a white instructor, I benefit from the systems of power that structure the classroom; therefore, my goal in the classroom is to actively challenge the status quo by making space for students’ multiple identities through our practices of inquiry and empathy. Drawing from Paulo Friere’s critical reading, I orient my classroom towards exploration, inquiry, and empathy because recognizing that our identities inform our literacies is essential to learning and being in the classroom. 

Introducing our multiple identities into the writing classroom is important to developing our identities as writers. Introducing my own background as a waitress and first-generation college student has helped to connect me with my students as well as help them consider how their multiple identities impact and bolster their writerly identities. It also situates discussions about how we have “histories with words, objects, places, people, and ideas. Words have relations to us. They affect us, our thinking, and our views of the world and those in it” (Inoue, 2021 pg. 33). Within my general-education writing courses and technical and professional communication courses, my students practice reflecting upon their writing processes, authorly ethos, and rhetorical decision-making. Specifically, I ask students to imagine audiences of different genres and modalities to practice audience awareness in their writing. Audience awareness helps students address genre conventions and audience expectations, allowing them to reflect on and interrogate how they might choose to adapt their writing (or not). It also opens discussions regarding their biases as authors and raises questions regarding affordances they take for granted in their writing but may not be understood by other audiences, and it also encourages students to consider how they will create meaningful arguments based on their audiences. To do this work, I incorporate different activities in class, including time for reading, reflective writing and small and large-group discussions. I value group work, one-on-one conferencing, and peer review as important tasks to make sure that we are engaging many positions and reflecting on our own. 

By orienting student writing practices in ways that are meaningful to them, I support their exploration in skill-building and research. In my first-year writing course, students have practiced rhetorical analysis through small group rhetorical mapping of rhetorical situations of popular Internet memes, considering the original cultural situation of the visual text as well as how that situation changes when they utilize the text in their own communication. Students then transfer these analytical skills to their research projects and reflect on their writing throughout the course. In technical and professional writing courses, students engage project-based learning in a research report where they interrogate problems and solutions for community partnerships. These projects are based in student-centered research where students develop innovative and inclusive solutions stemming based in their disciplinary knowledge. In developing this work, I scaffold assignments that build on the skills and tools we need to practice each week in order to showcase our development in the major projects. This work requires that students practice meaningful and considerate reading and writing practices, or as Christina V. Cedillo terms this, reading with respect. Students engage new situations and texts by considering learning opportunities present in considering dissenting views and “understanding that one’s perspectives are only understood fully in conversation with those of others” (Cedillo, “Teaching Philosophy”). By reading with respect, students can interrogate their sources to practice responding to arguments and build evidence within their own arguments. This practice of reading with respect not only requires engaging new experiences and practicing empathy, but also investigating our own positionalities and developing ethical writing practices. 

References:

Christina V. Cedillo, “Statement of Teaching Philosophy,” Christina V. Cedillo, 

http://christinavcedillo.com/teaching-philosophy

Crabtree, Robbin D., David Alan Sapp, and Adela C. Licona, editors. “Introduction.” Feminist 

Pedagogy: Looking Back to More Forward. Baltimore: The John Hopkins UP, 2009. pp. 

1-20. 

Elbow, Peter. “Bringing the Rhetoric of Assent and the Believing Game Together---and into the 

Classroom.” College English, vol. 67, no. 4, Mar. 2005. 

Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman. New York: Continuum, 2000. 

hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003. 

Inoue, Asao B. Labor-Based Grading Contracts. WAC Clearinghouse, 2019.

Jung, Julie. Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts. Carbondale, IL: 

Southern Illinois UP, 1999.

Ore, Ursula. “Pushback: A Pedagogy of Care.” Pedagogy, vol. 17, no. 1, 2016, pp. 9-33.

Kirsch, Gesa E. et al., ediors. Feminism and Composition: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston/New York: Bedford Books,

2003. 

Shor, Ira. Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change. University of Chicago 

Press, 1992.

---. When Students Have Power. University of Chicago Press. 1997.

Stenberg, Shari. Repurposing Composition. Logan: Utah State UP, 2015.