:::Teaching Philosophy:::
:::Teaching Philosophy:::
As an instructor, I work to provide students with a positive platform where they can express their natural creativity, criticisms, and curiosity. At the same time, I strive to provide students with honest feedback and guidance that allows them to grow as writers, students, and individuals. Honest and sincere feedback is a significant part of my classroom that fosters respect, expression, and calculated risk taking. That sincerity allows my students to view me as an individual, and more importantly, it allows them to express themselves as individuals in the classroom and in their research. My ultimate goal is for my students to feel as though they are given every opportunity to succeed, and through clear instruction, sincere feedback, and recursive writing, my hope is that my students think more about their work than their grade.
Classrooms lacking clear instruction create anxiety driven atmospheres, and these anxious atmospheres create anxious students who produce anxiety laden work. One method I employ is clear, repetitive instruction, and I employ this method in two ways. First, I create a repeating weekly course schedule, and though schedules can change, this repetition can create a form of classroom comfort. Second, I give my students clear and concise instructions while making myself available. This allows my students the opportunity to ask me questions in class, email me, or most likely, ask one of their peers for clarification. It is of the utmost importance that students never feel tricked or that they can be put in a difficult position by a gotcha moment. Once students can remove the anxieties of basic class structure, they can focus on learning, writing, and critically thinking.
Sincere feedback leads to meaningful recursive writing for students, which, generally, leads to actual learning. Feedback should never be cruel or malicious. Cruel feedback does not help students. Instead, it can do one of two things: it can shut the student off completely, or it will force the student to write what they believe the professor wants. In other words, the class will become a puzzle for the student, where learning the professor is the solution. The professor is the instructor for the class; the professor is not the class. Therefore, feedback should promote critical thinking and reflection. If, for example, a student is writing a paper that requires them to make an argument—and the argument is flawed—I will point out flaws in the argument by asking alternative questions. Through this questioning, rather than dismissing their argument outright, the student will have time to critically reflect on their argument.
If our goal is to teach students rather than be grade-cashiers, then students must be allowed time to write recursively. To provide students with thoughtful feedback, we must understand how students write. Every time our student sits down to write, David Bartholomae writes, they must “invent the university for the occasion.” Our students are attempting to take part in a discourse that they have little to no training in. Therefore, our students typically attempt to write like we write. This, according to Bartholomae, is when our students are attempting to “carry off the bluff.” We, as teachers—especially of composition studies—must teach our students not to write what they believe we want to read (or how they believe we write). Instead, our students should be focused on effective communication. Moreover, it changes what “good writing” means to us and to our students. Good writing is not a competent essay, it is an impactful, effective, and communicative essay made from critical and curious thinking.
Classrooms are constantly evolving, and things do not always go as planned. However, I try to create a positive environment through clear instruction and sincere feedback so that my students can express their natural creativity and curiosity. Moreover, with the help of constant, quick, and sincere feedback, I want to foster an environment of critical thought and reflection for my students.
I have always taught my students that writing does not end with the final period of a paper. In fact, often, we are forced to submit a paper not when it is finished but when we must. This is not simply an undergraduate dilemma, and everyone—whether it is professional or academic—has deadlines. However, assisting with a paper or essay once it is finished is only one part of a tutoring. Sometimes, we as tutors begin at the first step of the writing process. Still, we all can sometimes use some help, even the best writers amongst us. Therefore, because our tutees can be anyone writing anything, our tutoring must be flexible, and we must approach each tutoring session with an open mind.
The first step of writing is to understand why we are writing. For many tutees, their first step is understanding their academic writing prompt, whether it is for a history, English, or even STEM class. Though many of us have learned to read in between the lines of prompts—and we have all had to—this may be the first time a student had been forced to decipher academic instruction. Many professors—me included—will create an academic prompt using academic vernacular or academic references and then expect students to follow along. When a student does not understand, professors expect students to raise their hand or email them. However, professors rarely understand the anxiety laden struggle of raising your hand in class, staying after class, or emailing someone. Therefore, when it comes to students, the struggle often begins at the interpretation of instructions, and, if we cannot interpret the instructions, then we can always assist in the composition of an email to the instructor. Sometimes, students just need a helpful tutor push. In the case of instruction interpretation, students will often insist that is all they need. However, we are much more than interpreters, and we should encourage students to see us again when they have begun the writing process.
Tutees who see us multiple times throughout their writing process can be rewarding for both the tutor and the tutee. I have, for example, worked with a particular tutee for nearly eight months, and they are getting close to sending their work out for publishing. On the surface, one may assume that this tutee and I share an academic interest or specialization, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this tutee’s work is not even in the same field as me. The English language, however, especially when used academically, is often the same between disciplines. Admittedly, there are changes like formatting or citations—which we must have some understanding of—but language remains the same. Moreover, we are writing tutors; we are not accuracy editors, and we cannot be expected to know everything (though we try).
Though seeing a tutee over several sessions can be a rewarding experience, seeing a tutor for one session can be enriching to the tutee and the tutor as well. However, we will not have the benefit of getting to know a tutee’s thought process, and we do not want to make the mistake of assuming a tutee’s process of understanding. We all view the world through a unique—and no less accurate—hermeneutical lens, and it is important that the focus of single sessions are on the work and not the tutee. It has been most helpful to break down writing to its most fundamental building blocks: words to sentences to paragraphs to pages to essays. In order for a sentence to make sense, the words must make sense, and in order for a paragraph to make sense, the sentences must make sense.
Though we can and should view writing through the metaphor of building blocks (or structure and design), writing is first and foremost communication. If a tutee can tell us what they were trying to say, then we should ask them to write it down. Once students realize that they are communicating through writing—much how they do in their day-to-day life through text messages—papers, for the most part, can start to flow. Of course, once they have the words on the page, we must return to the fundamentals of writing. Because our tutees can be anyone writing about anything, we must create universal lenses to view the written word through.