Teaching Philosophy Statement
Teaching is a exercise of selflessness; it is an act altruism, of humility and patience. A teacher provides the gift of learning to students.
My students are improving better than they themselves may be aware. I tell my students that writing is a lifelong process, not a one-time performance, and they seem to understand the importance of revision and thorough practice at writing, which is a craft, not performance. Writing, to paraphrase Paul Valery, is never finished, only abandoned.
Teaching has opened to my eyes to the variety of experiences an my pupils bring to the classroom. I have become more sensitive and aware of my own privilege as a straight white male in the continuum of experience my students bring to campus. Teaching freshman composition is not as simple as having students bubble in answers on a test. The process and challenge of being a freshman in today’s universities largely relates to their own awareness of, and their effectiveness of using rhetoric in various situations.
Students, in thinking critically about rhetoric, also think more critically about ethics, as various forms of written, oral, visual and electronic media and advertisements have many aims, oftentimes manipulating the audience towards buying a product, or the rhetoric in speeches believing in political platitudes which may sound appealing on a superficial level, and yet lack morality and coherence. To understand not only what is being stated, but how it is being stated, allows students to think more deeply about the communication they encounter in everyday life, and in discerning good rhetoric from bad rhetoric, allows them to be more responsible citizens of Iowa, the United States and the world. Rhetoric, as the Roman educator Quintilian wrote, is “a just man speaking well.” It is not enough to make an argument logical; it must appeal to the audience. It is also not enough to make an argument pretty; it must be a good argument.
One challenge to students today is the overwhelming influence of consumerism. Writing can also be effected by this capitalist mode of being. However, writing must be more than a product, it must a continual metamorphosis through revision and reiteration. Therefore, in commenting on student papers, an instructor must pave the pathway to revision and encourage the student in their growth as a writer and critical thinker. Erika Lindemann, a lifelong educator who did saw composition courses to be of wider importance than simply literature or grammar courses, wrote on product-based pedagogy “Because students are regarded as novices, deficient experts, or worse, unruly and incorrigible people, many traditional teachers mark students’ papers as copy-editors would, rarely commenting on content but copiously “correcting” the text, generally at the level of the word or sentence” (Lindeman 292). Teaching is not simply a job, or a career. The success of teachers mirrors the success of students. Pupils of great teachers have influenced the world, and therefore it is important for a teacher to respect the potential of even a disinterested student.
I hope to be one day as proud of my teaching as I am of my writing, being that writing is what I am best at. My ultimate goal in teaching is not only to help my students be better writers, but better citizens and human beings by more critically and carefully examining the world whose information they receive in print and media. Teaching does not benefit the teacher as much as it benefits his or her pupils. Teachers ultimately become better instructors when they learn from their students.
Works Cited
Lindemann, Erika. “Three Views of English 101.” College English, vol. 57, no. 3, 1995, pp. 287–302. www.jstor.org/stable/378679.