Teaching Philosophy

Over the history of education, English has evolved into the language of academia. However, it seems our understanding of the language has become muddled by mere semantics in that one must speak and write properly, meaning abide by prescriptive grammatical constructs, in order to appear educated to the larger society. One focus of my teaching philosophy is grounded in the idea that we as academics must be open to learning from each other’s experiences. In my time as a high school instructor, I fell in love with teaching English in a non-traditional school setting where I was able to apply my knowledge of the discipline to different career pathways. It helped educate me on the vastness of the language and how it cannot be restrained only to academic contexts. Rather than be centered around the dated grammar fixation our society has with English education, my philosophy is that we should instead learn how the language can be applied to various contexts, whether within or outside of academic settings. 

A major issue in education that is often associated with English courses is knowledge transfer between disciplines. Quite often students enter a first-year composition course as recent high school graduates or non-traditional students who may have not been in an academic setting for an extended period of time. Based on my knowledge of composition studies, I structure my classes around a Teaching for Transfer (TFT) model. Especially during the vital transition from high school to college, many students seem to have a difficult time channeling knowledge from one context to another, leading to the hackneyed question heard by many students—when am I ever going to use this? In my teaching, I use a TFT curriculum as the foundation for helping students carry skills from one context to the next throughout their academic careers. The end goal with such a structure is that students will be able to carry skills from their first-year composition course into their own respective disciplines and beyond. 

One of the primary assessments I have my students complete is compiling an electronic portfolio that demonstrates not only the work completed in their FYC class but also writing from outside contexts as well. Additional writings included could be (but are not limited to) discipline-specific work, journaling, and composition projects. My hope by introducing the portfolio assessment in the first-year composition course is that my students will be able to use it as an artifact to demonstrate their learning throughout their academic careers. Through this teaching structure, my ultimate goal is to not only help support a community of learners in my own classroom but also educate the future sponsors of literacy so that they may later share their knowledge with others in their lives.