Teaching Philosophy
Having taught for over a decade in the college classroom has forced me to acknowledge how little I truly know about teaching. I enter each semester with a plan, but there hasn’t been a single instance I can recall when that plan hasn’t changed radically once I began teaching. I think my students are complex and complicated individuals, and I wholeheartedly mean this as a compliment. No two students are alike, save for their shared goals to learn and be challenged. I am versed in theories of composition studies and tend to favor the expressivist and social constructivism approach of student-centered teaching with an emphasis on how we co-create knowledge through open-pedagogical practices. Those terms sound professional and thoughtful, but what do they mean in our time of pandemic lockdowns and the rapid shift to remote learning? More pointedly, how do you teach a student who can’t make it to Zoom because they’re an essential worker, taking care of an ill relative, or must drive and sit in the parking lot of a local fast-food restaurant just to use the free Wifi to submit an assignment?
No matter the philosophy, I think empathy, flexibility, and compassion inform my teaching. Policies and infrastructure fail, but I believe if you are engaged with your students and committed to them, they can succeed through any hardship. My passion for teaching first-year students is informed by my own college experience. I entered college as a nontraditional student in 2001. I was 18 and had dropped out of high school two years earlier. After passing the GED, I enrolled in a single course in my local community college. At the time I was working at a used-car dealership, washing cars, and I desperately wanted to better my life. The class was a literature course, and I still remember the way the pages felt as I opened my textbook and began reading a story. Although I didn’t know it then, I had begun a process of learning that would lead me from the parking lot of that car dealership to a college degree, a fellowship to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing, a Pushcart Prize, a full-time Instructor position at the University of Mississippi, and a 2018 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Teaching & Learning. I tell my freshmen students the story of how I became a college instructor on the first day of the semester as an example of how a college education can open doors into new worlds they may have thought could never be opened.
When teaching a writing class, I start by asking each student what he or she most ardently wants to accomplish as a writer, so that I can devise an individual strategy to help him or her see that goal to fruition. It’s my aim as a teacher to foster an environment in which no one abandons an idea just because its execution seems too difficult, and I often refer back to my story in order to give students encouragement. With this in mind, I designed an open syllabus with welcoming language and open policies to help engage students with their learning. I carry over this philosophy when I design assignments, focusing on the principles of open design and keeping equity and inclusion in mind.
I tell my students not to look at their education in terms of grades, but rather look at how much the college experience has exposed them to a world of new ideas. My experience in college and as a professor has shown me how little I actually know about the world, and I try to impart this point onto my students; learning never ceases, and it is a lot like writing. We constantly revise our ideas about our world, and this is what a college education can offer a student.