MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

 

    My non-traditional academic path has a significant influence on my philosophy. I did not take a traditional approach to academia. I never imagined teaching could be a practical profession. I worked sixty hours a week as a restaurant manager. Unhappy and frustrated, I took a freshman composition class because I wanted to learn how to organize my thoughts in a rational way and put them on a blank page. I enjoyed the class and signed up for another, then another, then a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. A passion for teaching others about organization, sentence structure, concision followed. Teaching fosters learning for both student and professor. I enjoy most when written words come alive in a student essay as much as in a novel or short story.

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    I feel that teaching writing in an online classroom needs an added layer of critical thinking in the design. Accessibility is a primary concern when engaging with online technologies. I actively communicate with the necessary office to ensure each student can easily access the class material. My online course design incorporates a wide variety of technologies which students can access and use to complete assigned course work. I allow students to decided how they want to interact with the assignments and choose the technology best suited to their needs

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    My online classroom encourages students to think critically about every assignment, conversation, and engagement supplying tools to critically think when they leave the classroom. For example, my first-semester Composition students are tasked with creating an Infographic from earlier research. I ask the student to critically consider the graphic representation of their work and challenge them to consider creative ways to reinterpret their data. The infographic assignment in an online classroom helps students to consider how their work interacts with the digital world.

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    The online classroom comes with different challenges than a physical classroom. Technology creates a bridge from teacher to student. Students in my online writing class deploy a variety of technologies to engage in writing. The creative process and writing process should not rely solely on a mundane discussion. Students can create infographics, blog post, and multimodal work in addition to traditional research work. A favorite assignment of students is the gaming module. In the module, the class uses varying technologies to create a text-based quest game. The game engages students by having them create a narrative for their research, incorporating digital elements, and storytelling.

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    Well-crafted writing assignments allow students to explore both their writing process and creative process. For the Quest game, students are encouraged to work together by adding their strengths to those of classmates to create a better game for the entire class. One student’s talent for storytelling mixes well with another’s gifts for incorporating graphics.  I encourage students to examine their world and choose topics to learn and write about which can affect them in positive ways. Situating the classroom in a collaborative manner allows active teaching, listening, and learning for both student and instructor. Teaching, for me, happens when I and the student strives to create an equal partnership with the learning process.