Teaching Philosophy

As an English and composition teacher, I want to help students become confident and critical readers and writers.  I want them to be educated, rather than “schooled” as educator John Taylor Gatto outlines in his essay The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher.  I believe that to be truly educated one has to take an active role in learning, which involves collaboration.  This goal can be best achieved using a writing process supplemented by Aristotle’s rhetorical principles of ethos, pathos, and logos.

In the past, students revealed to me that a heavy emphasis on grammar rules stifled their learning ad their interest of the English language and writing.  Gatto observes that this restriction made students indifferent; they became concern with solely getting the high grade rather than comprehension, clear communication, and expression thus failing to recognize the connection between the grammar and content in their writing.

In order for students to understand this connection and achieve balance, a true literacy learning environment needs to be nurtured where both “learning” and “acquisition” can take place.  Stephen D. Krashen summarizes the definition of “Learning” and “Acquisition” in the article “Acquisition and Learning in a Literacy Learning Environment.”  Learning is the formal breakdown of knowledge into parts, while acquisition is the informal way of learning through exposure.  Learning grammar, for example, can provide students a template to express their abstract thoughts, and in writing, their abstract thoughts can be further clarified.  Instead of being indifferent, students will then be equipped with a strategy to express themselves and thus be empowered.

One such strategy to teach to students is the importance of having a writing process.  This strategy will engage them and make any writing tasks manageable.  A writing process will take the strict focus away from grammar (which most students believe is the most essential in writing), and it will help them to explore topics they want to write about.  As a result, engaged students will start recognizing the malleable nature of writing and thus start taking responsibility for their writing. 

With ownership of their writing, collaboration with others becomes easier for students.  I agree with Kenneth A. Bruffee’s writing pedagogy.  I can help students learn to write better by helping them become “members of an active, constructive community of writers and readers” (A Short Course I Writing 1985, 1).  For me, writing can be both personal and social, but when writing is in the classroom or any social event, writing becomes “an aspect of social adaptation … writing let us adapt our thoughts so somebody else can grasp them” (2).  

Keeping this in mind, it is important to include collaboration in the writing process.  In an article entitled “Collaboration: Developing Literacy through Group Interaction”, Lynn Langer Meeks, and Carol Jewkes Austin define collaboration in a general sense: “Any time students get together to interact about their reading, writing, or thinking” (46).  According to them, group discussion helps students develop understanding, and encourage them to express and monitor their views risk-free and thus they learn that “truths are the product of evidence, argument, and construction rather than of authority, textual, or pedagogical” (46).

Students will not only collaborate with their peers through group projects, presentations, and peer review, they will work with me as well.  As a fellow collaborator, I will offer advice that will further develop their ideas.  My comments will continue to remind them about audience and help them become questioning readers.  My assistance will also motivate them to revise.  Once they are comfortable working with their peers and teacher, they are more prepared to collaborate with outside sources, such as professionals, specialists, and experts.

Students will recognize that the subject of English and writing is more than grammar rules.  This subject is more than passively reading literature or writing sentimental poetry.  English and writing can transform ones into critical thinkers, who are aware of ones’ ethos or character; who can sympathize with readers using pathos or emotions; who are logical about the logos or the message being communicated.  If students develop a positive “can-do” attitude towards English and writing, and find the connection in their education through personal responsibility and teamwork in a community then I consider my teaching successful.