Teaching Philosophy
"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity
of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."
Anatole France
I still remember an experiment I read about in my freshman psychology textbook: to encourage children to use more of the playground, a school removed the fence. The opposite occurred. Instead of exploring the far reaches, the children drew back to the center. The boundary of the fence gave the children the confidence to explore. Without it, they recoiled. This story shapes my teaching - I try both to create a boundary and encourage exploration. I set up a structure, give my students the tools to interact with texts and each other, and then I gradually step out of the way.
What is this structure? Rather than trudging through literary history, I carefully select and pair texts that are in conversation with each other. For example, in "Modern and Contemporary Literature," I partnered each major text with a film: Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 with Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Don DeLillo's The Body Artist with Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich, and Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body with Chris Nolan's Memento. In addition to creating an interesting syllabus, this juxtaposition broadens my students' definition of "text" while giving them a fresh lens with which to inspect literature. Beyond the syllabus, I set up meetings with each student in my office within the first two weeks of class. This requirement establishes a comfort zone for both me and the students: I learn their names and something about them, and my class is not made up of strangers; they learn where my office is, they ask me questions they can't ask in class, they receive immediate personal feedback on their writing, and they're more likely to come to my office again for help.
Within this structure, I prepare my students for exploration by teaching them the necessary survival skills. In composition courses, I require reading of model writers, stairstep writing assignments to emphasize the process of writing, and utilize a portfolio grading system which rewards their success throughout that semester. In my graduate pedagogy courses, I join theory with practice as each class session covers one article on teaching, guest speakers, and the students' own microteaching. In my literature courses, I stress writing and composition, assigning a variety of writing forms from response papers and formal essays to in-class dialectical journals and close readings. I have developed a thirty-page writing packet as a reference which I use to walk them through the writing process.
Good teachers ask good questions. For each text, I provide "The Dirty Dozen," a list of questions my students can use to guide their reading. Often, we then vote as a class on which questions intrigue them most and which they'd like to pursue in class discussion, small groups and class presentations. Each day, I list on the board themes and passages pertinent to the next day's reading, preparing students for discussion rather than asking them for spontaneous brilliance. As the semester proceeds, I steadily decrease my creation of these lists and instead ask the students to develop their own, teaching them to interrogate a text without my guidance or specific direction of theme and creating in them independent, curious learners.
Once the exploration is underway, my goal is to engage students in the text or activity by talking to each other rather than solely to me. I typically start class with a brief lecture, followed by small group discussion or in-class writing assignment, and conclude with class discussion of findings and further questions. During small group discussions I often try to find a reason to leave the room. I find that after I have walked down the hall and back discussions have suddenly developed without my professorial presence. After circling the room answering questions and making suggestions, I like to take a seat in a corner to eavesdrop.
This is when I learn the most, gaining important insight into individual learning styles and discovering amazing qualities in my students. For example, one student was so nervous to talk to her small group that her hands were shaking. I knew then that this was a student I could never question in front of the class. Instead, I would email and check in with her individually and provide personal guidance before her class presentation. I once had a football player who never talked in a "Shakespeare for Non-Majors" class, but during a small group break-out session I watched as he fed answers to the group "leader," including the page numbers of specific influential passages. I learned then that not only was he participating, he was engaged, despite his inactivity in large (and even small) group discussions.
As my students gain confidence, I offer them more responsibility for their own learning. Halfway through each semester, I give each class a course evaluation as a means for them to respond to our class structure and to begin a dialogue about their participation grade. Every class has been divided regarding their preference for small group work vs. class discussion. After I explain the results to the class, students are almost always more willing to participate in both methods of pedagogy knowing that each technique helps some of their fellow students.
I came to graduate school so that I could teach. I know that I want to teach because I have taught for twelve years, from middle school to graduate school, and I still love it. Seven years of teaching at the secondary level honed my classroom identity as well as my multi-tasking and classroom management. Five years of teaching at the university level have both deepened and broadened these skills as I have learned to create more rigorous and challenging syllabi, questions, and assignments. In all, I have developed and taught both literature and composition courses as well as a Pedagogy Workshop for incoming graduate students in the English Department at the University of Colorado. I have created a vast array of curricula, and sharpened my techniques for presenting, discussing, assigning and grading. I can now call on a large repertoire of experience and strategies for interacting with different kinds of students and classes.
I am excited to continue this great exploration as a faculty member. I fantasize about teaching such courses as "Tea and Crumpets; British India from Kipling to Roy," "The Word Made Film: Literature at the Movies," and "Writing the Election: Political Rhetoric." I hope to teach inter and intra-departmental courses such as "The Word on the Word: Theology and Literature" and "Going Over the Top: The Great War and British Modernism." Ultimately, I want to "awaken the natural curiosity" of my students because doing so also awakens my own.