Teaching Philosophy and Approach to Teaching Writing

Critical inquiry, reflective practice, and collaboration are key features of the learning community I cultivate in my classroom. To develop this sense of community and shared responsibility, I design writing assignments with collaborative and individual activities to help students understand writing as a social activity. I imagine myself as a guide, working with students to construct classroom experiences that are meaningful in their lives. Students are not empty vessels or blank slates; rather, they come to the classroom with writing experiences and habits developed over a lifetime, and they learn best when they see themselves reflected in the curriculum. My goal as an instructor is to develop students’ rhetorical dexterity so that they are able to assess and respond effectively in different academic and public writing situations. To achieve these goals, I use a variety of pedagogical methods grounded in my beliefs about teaching and learning.  

As an instructor, I aim to affirm what students already know about writing and about themselves as writers while building from this foundation. At the beginning of the semester, I prompt students to write informally about their previous experiences as writers before crafting an initial writer’s statement that outlines their beliefs about writing and their goals for the course. We put the initial writer’s statements to the side for the duration of the course. During and after each major writing project, students reflect on the processes, skills, and strategies they used for the assignment, explaining how their processes might be similar to or different from previous experiences. We revisit the initial writer’s statement and reflective writing at the end of the semester in a culminating writer’s statement and portfolio. The portfolio gives students a structured opportunity to study themselves as writers and to reflect on how their beliefs about writing have evolved over the semester. 

Helping students understand writing as a recursive, iterative process is central to my teaching. I often use a process-based creative exercise in which I provide students with raw materials (such as modeling clay) and simple directions: make something. Throughout the activity, I give more instructions: add something, take something away, change something. Students then complete a gallery tour of the sculptures and provide feedback to each other. The discussion following the activity allows students to reflect on the creative process, to learn how to give and receive feedback, and to understand the complexity of writing processes in an accessible way. Jennifer Roswell explains embodied literacy activities, like this one, privilege the thinking that comes through doing. In my classroom, it serves as an analogy for the way I structure writing throughout the semester, with multiple drafts, peer reviews, and reflections. 

I find that reflective writing activities, from short writing journal entries to more complex reflections for major projects, help students develop strategies over time and increase their confidence in approaching new writing situations. At the conclusion of every major writing project, I provide ample class time for students to reflect on their work through reflective writing and artmaking. Such artful reflection encourages a deeper level of expression that might not be available from written words alone and provide students an opportunity to make sense of their learning in a different way. In their reflective writing, students note the sense of tranquility they feel in the artful, reflective process translates to a more general sense of calm as they approach their writing. Most students include quotes and images from their artful reflections in their final course portfolios. 

My courses are designed to center, build from, and refine the knowledge students bring. At the beginning of a public writing unit, for example, I lead a discussion on what “public writing” means, how it may differ from “academic writing” tasks with which students are familiar, and the writing skills it may require. The discussion uncovers students’ beliefs about engaged citizens, audiences, and writing purposes. Throughout the project, I ask students to bring examples of the public writing they value into the classroom, and they work in small groups to map the writing to the rhetorical situation before presenting their analyses to the class. Activities like this enable me to adapt curriculum materials based upon students’ needs while simultaneously introducing them to a variety of audiences, purposes, and writing genres. Students learn to read texts critically and to assess conventions of different genres. 

In order to empower students in their academic journeys as scholars, writers, and citizens, I invite them to negotiate some aspects of the course syllabus, assignments, and assessment. For example, in a technical writing course, I require students to write a set of instructions for completing a task. Before the assignment is due, students review multiple examples of instructions, determine (as a class) what works or does not work in each example, and generate assessment criteria based on the class discussion. Such an exercise not only gives students a sense of ownership of course content, but it demands critical reflection and collaboration. I follow a similar process for negotiating elements of the course syllabus so that, from the first week of class, students view themselves as stakeholders in the classroom, which I believe is key for continued academic success and participation. 

Lesson Plan Samples