Teaching Philosophy
The classroom is my community, one grounded in reading and writing and conversation. Beneath the pedagogy, the degrees, the publications, the course content—deep in the well of my soul—lies an abiding love and lifelong pursuit of those things my mother held dear: reading and writing and conversation.
We read as a family growing up, and I don’t mean when I was too young to read for myself. We read until I left home, with my mother choosing the book and us taking turns reading aloud and discussing it together. The last book I remember reading before I left for college was Silas Marner (George Eliot). Mom was a wanna-be English teacher who had read every book in the K-12 library of her small rural school growing up. She quoted Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton with the same ease as peeling potatoes for dinner. Mom didn’t become an English teacher, and I didn’t know I wanted to become one until I had enough education and experience to recognize her quotes were Shakespearean and her lessons eternal.
While we read, Mother taught me the Socratic method, this dialogue between individuals, her asking questions, answering, teaching us not only to read, but to think critically and discuss content to get to the heart of a story. My teaching philosophy is grounded in these early lessons. I believe dialogue is a key to learning, as is building a community of learners and seekers.
As we teach remotely, one of the biggest challenges is maintaining that sense of community in the virtual classroom. We often depend on the interactions of live classrooms and the chemistry of the people in the room to help build the classroom community. Lacking that face-to-face model, my goal is to build community within each class. To do that, I build connections to the students, between the students in the same class, between the students and the course content, and between the students and the instructor.
But community doesn’t stop at the classroom door. Students need connections to the class, the college, and the larger community. Writing students learn to read their work aloud for class workshop before they make that mad leap to public venues during our campus readings. Here they meet the larger writing community on campus, but their growth continues as we bring in a visiting writer. Now writing students learn that the community goes beyond the campus gates, and they bring their same skills of reading, writing, and conversation with this visiting writer that expands the students’ horizons. Finally, students are challenged to engage with the larger writing community outside campus. They venture on their own or in small groups to writing groups, public readings, spoken word events, or writing workshops with the goal of building a writing community that lasts longer than a four year college program.
As a writer and a professor, I seek the same as I want for my students. To build a community in the classroom, the campus, the local community, and the larger writing community beyond my doors. I continue to seek knowledge and truth. I quote pop culture and literature with the same ease as my mother quoted Shakespeare. I’ve even been known to quote Sir Isaac Newton. I continue to read, to write, and to engage in conversation, because learning is a lifelong pursuit.
We read as a family growing up, and I don’t mean when I was too young to read for myself. We read until I left home, with my mother choosing the book and us taking turns reading aloud and discussing it together. The last book I remember reading before I left for college was Silas Marner (George Eliot). Mom was a wanna-be English teacher who had read every book in the K-12 library of her small rural school growing up. She quoted Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton with the same ease as peeling potatoes for dinner. Mom didn’t become an English teacher, and I didn’t know I wanted to become one until I had enough education and experience to recognize her quotes were Shakespearean and her lessons eternal.
While we read, Mother taught me the Socratic method, this dialogue between individuals, her asking questions, answering, teaching us not only to read, but to think critically and discuss content to get to the heart of a story. My teaching philosophy is grounded in these early lessons. I believe dialogue is a key to learning, as is building a community of learners and seekers.
As we teach remotely, one of the biggest challenges is maintaining that sense of community in the virtual classroom. We often depend on the interactions of live classrooms and the chemistry of the people in the room to help build the classroom community. Lacking that face-to-face model, my goal is to build community within each class. To do that, I build connections to the students, between the students in the same class, between the students and the course content, and between the students and the instructor.
But community doesn’t stop at the classroom door. Students need connections to the class, the college, and the larger community. Writing students learn to read their work aloud for class workshop before they make that mad leap to public venues during our campus readings. Here they meet the larger writing community on campus, but their growth continues as we bring in a visiting writer. Now writing students learn that the community goes beyond the campus gates, and they bring their same skills of reading, writing, and conversation with this visiting writer that expands the students’ horizons. Finally, students are challenged to engage with the larger writing community outside campus. They venture on their own or in small groups to writing groups, public readings, spoken word events, or writing workshops with the goal of building a writing community that lasts longer than a four year college program.
As a writer and a professor, I seek the same as I want for my students. To build a community in the classroom, the campus, the local community, and the larger writing community beyond my doors. I continue to seek knowledge and truth. I quote pop culture and literature with the same ease as my mother quoted Shakespeare. I’ve even been known to quote Sir Isaac Newton. I continue to read, to write, and to engage in conversation, because learning is a lifelong pursuit.
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