I've been preoccupied with revising my teaching philosophy statement. I had one that I wrote during my
master's program, but I've lost the file, and I'm sure I'd cringe if I could see it now, anyway. I've
attended these kinds of workshops
on how to write a teaching philosophy statement, but I remain unsatisfied with the statements they advise
us to write, and indeed with how a lot of people not associated with these workshops advise graduate
students with regard to teaching statements. Often the teaching statements I'm talking about are more like
leadership statements, consisting of not much beyond
href="http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/Teaching_Concerns/Spring_1998/TC_Spring_1998_Chylack.htm">first-order principles
; they're mostly "what I do in the classroom to accommodate diverse learning styles"
and not very philosophical at all with regard to rationale. I'm interested in creating a
discipline-specific teaching philosophy statement (and maybe that's one of the problems with the teaching
philosophy statement workshops I've attended: They're trying to teach people in many different disciplines
how to write a teaching philosophy). One key variable here is the fact that in my department, there's an
emphasis on a high level of consistency across sections of first-year composition. In fact, at each of the
three schools where I've taught, there have been certain books, topics, and genres I was required to
assign, and I guess it'll be that way wherever I go in the future too. My point is, I don't know how much
of my teaching philosophy is going to be a retroactive justification of what I already do, and how much
will be a vision of what I'd do were I given free reign (and what would I do? I don't exactly know.).
Before I haul off and write a teaching philosophy, I have to think through the have-to/would-do issue and a
few others. Here I'm trying to survey writing pedagogy from a distance and figure out what I'm aligning
myself with, what I think is worthwhile and effective. I'm only raising questions and problematizing terms;
no answers here, sorry. First, there's the murky idea of "good writing." What's that? What definition do I
agree with? I only bring it up because it's an obvious goal of rhetoric courses, which reminds me: If
possible, I want to have a coherent teaching philosophy I can implement in first-year composition, public
speaking, and technical communication classes. What is "academic discourse," and is it an acceptable term
to use? Sometimes I get the sense that it's verboten. "Academic discourse" has been criticized for being
disconnected from experience and the personal and being positioned outside of students' grasp, both in
terms of accessibility and potential for authority and ownership. It has been characterized as language
that is hegemonic and elitist, marginalizing women, students of color, and working-class students. Some
have questioned its value in the "real world" for students who don't plan on going to graduate school.
Okay, so we have the tricky terms good writing and academic discourse. I'm going to hit pause
on those for the time being and turn now to what I consider the most important question my teaching
philosophy statement should answer: Why? What do I think is the architectonic principle guiding
college-level writing? Is it to prepare students to get a job and enter a corporate setting? Is it to
prepare students to be informed, ethical, articulate citizens of the polis? Are these two mutually
exclusive? (No, not at all, a point made quite well by
href="http://www.slimcoincidence.com/blog/archives/000481.html">one of Krista's mentors
.)
If the goal is to help students become informed, ethical, articulate citizens of the polis, this goal can
be embodied in any number of assignments and curriculum designs, such as: letters to the editor, service
learning projects, visual rhetoric assignments such as posters, flyers, etc., research papers on current issues, new media work like
href="http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~edbauer/blogs/jenny/archives/001063.html">documentaries
about the
city, raps in the style of
href="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Why-lyrics-Jadakiss/D51CB439F9F5669748256EAA0005A88C">Jadakiss
' "Why"
or
href="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Can-lyrics-Nas/27BA8A58E4406BED48256C93000A5718">Nas' "I
Can,"
and the work on sentimental discourse that some of my friends in literature are doing (which is
great stuff, and I have an aside on it). I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. Even the
much-maligned "critical pedagogy" works in the service of the citizen goal, as does the personal essay,
which I'll readily admit despite
href="http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/archives/2004/11/15/assignment-sequences/">my reservations
about
it, and I know I'm being a real crabcake in that thread. :) Which curriculum designs and assignments do I think are the best suited to meet the larger goal?
These are the questions I'm thinking about so far. I know I'll need to speak to the implementation
of the philosophy with descriptions of exercises I do in class, and I need to discuss other issues too, such as authorship, collaboration, audience, and my use
of weblogs, which I intend to foreground. Any thoughts to help me? I'd appreciate them.