TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
My philosophy of teaching is largely grounded in the idea of transformative pedagogy—an approach based on the ideas of Paulo Freire that blends constructivist and critical pedagogies in order to combat the “banking method” of education. Transformative pedagogy seeks to instill in students a sense of agency and critical consciousness based in the application of critical engagement with their unexamined values and beliefs. It is an approach that prioritizes both contextual awareness and consideration of—and reflection upon—multiple perspectives in order to build a reflective knowledge base.
My approach to teaching is also grounded in my personal commitment to social equity. As a teacher of writing, it is easy to see how trying to establish equality in the classroom is less beneficial than striving for an atmosphere of equity. In terms of writing ability and interest, students arrive at the university in wildly disparate states. Inspired by bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, I try to meet each student where they are in their unique journey and avoid the “rote, assembly-line approach” to learning (13). I am also interested in the benefits inherent in queering the writing classroom; the work of Jonathan Alexander and Michelle Gibson, Jacqueline Rhodes, Stacey Waite, and Hillery Glasby deeply informs my approach to writing instruction; queering composing processes allows space for students to actively engage with the messy process of writing as well as empowers students to find value in their own experience and knowledge.
My course curriculum is designed around accumulation and application of a critical praxis as a means of helping students develop as persuasive writers. I use popular culture texts extensively in the classroom in order to help students develop critical skills by using texts with which they have some familiarity and comfort. I supplement course textbooks with a variety of multimodal texts such as podcasts, videos, visual texts, graphic non-fiction, and films; these texts invite students to identify and question dominant cultural paradigms and narratives of disenfranchisement and iniquity. Assignments ask students to interact with and evaluate these texts in ways that support the learning outcomes for the course while simultaneously trying to build a reflective knowledge base. I believe strongly in giving students agency when choosing their own topics for research, and I encourage them to tie these research projects into cultural issues or objects they have a personal investment in; this not only gives students the opportunity to deeply engage with a topic, but also builds up their own funds of cultural knowledge about an issue that matters to them.
My commitment to student-centered learning manifests as in-class activities designed to generate thoughtful classroom discussion, self-reflection about positionality and approaches, and democratic classroom practices. I also tie this material to an ongoing discussion of metacognition throughout the semester in order to foreground not merely what students are learning but to connect it to their awareness of how they are learning. By emphasizing student agency—and its attendant personal responsibility—I hope to give my students the opportunity to engage critically with cultural inequalities, as well as to gain the skills and self-confidence to use their developing powers of persuasion to positively influence not only their own lives but also the community at large.
