My teaching philosophy is that learning should be student centered. Students should be active learners and equal partners in the learning process, which strongly influences students’ learning outcomes. My role involves using my expertise to put the necessary resources in the hands of the students. My teaching practices should empower students to take ownership of their education and help them realize that they are responsible for their learning outcomes. When students take this step, they can make striking progress and achieve academic success. I believe in project based, collaborative, and guided discovery learning fostered by culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies. With these pedagogies teachers adapt teaching practices and curriculum around students’ interests and lives by incorporating students’ community and family life and acting as a bridge to academic knowledge while simultaneously cultivating students’ competence in the mainstream culture and their community’s culture.
Knowledge gained through active participation is knowledge that will stay with a student beyond the classroom and throughout life. Students should leave their courses with skills useful in their everyday lives. Beyond striving to ensure that students learn the fundamental content of the courses I teach, my objectives as an instructor are to:
- Foster problem solving and critical thinking skills about ideas and concepts that connect with everyday examples
- Facilitate the acquisition of lifelong learning skills
- Help students develop research and writing proficiency
- Prepare students to be effective communicators and engage with multiple, diverse perspectives
My purpose as an instructor is to expand students’ views of their own lives as well as the world around them. A productive experience in the classroom and with on-campus activities and programs can jumpstart a student’s motivation and engagement in all aspects of their academic career, which increases student success. I believe that to be most effective as an instructor, one must create a safe environment that is interactive and collaborative. It’s important to nurture a hospitable, welcoming learning environment by increasing instructor/student rapport and conveying to students that I care that they do their best work and that I exhibit fairness, enthusiasm, and an eagerness to help them. There is no single perfect method for teaching; an important aspect of teaching is identifying the approach that works best for a given individual.
My Role as a Teacher Educator and English Instructor
I love working with future generations in an instructional capacity. Teaching is the most important service I can provide to the surrounding communities because I am helping to educate a generation to function knowledgeably in a society where rapid technological advances constantly pose new questions and ethical challenges. I view teaching as central to all my scholarly activities and inextricably linked with research scholarship. Educational theory is futile if educators cannot translate theory to practice that is effective and beneficial to students and their growth as future workers, leaders, and democratic citizens.
As a teacher educator it is important to convey to preservice teachers that students learn in different ways and their various identities are interrelated with their experiences and meaning-making processes. The delineation between the “haves” and “have nots” occurs on a socioeconomic level that includes race and class. Additionally, America’s demographics have dramatically changed from White to multicultural, which means the student population has also changed. Even though America’s public schools are increasingly diverse, over 80% of teachers are White. The change in demographics has caused a teacher-student cultural gap, which affects students’ identity development, motivation, and success in school as well as students’ future endeavors as adults.
As an English instructor teaching composition and rhetoric, creative writing, and literature is exciting for me because I absolutely LOVE EVERYTHING ENGLISH RELATED! English is my first love as a writer, reader, and editor and I relish conveying my passion to students 😊
Meaning-Making and Positive Identity Development
Student’s identity development is developed by their experiences at home, school, and the community. Engagement and motivation are essential to student success in all subjects, however, even moreso for English/Language Arts (ELA) because communication and literacy skills are the gatekeepers to access of knowledge. A positive cultural and academic identity is needed for self-esteem, self-awareness, and motivation to want to succeed in life. A curriculum that lacks cultural responsiveness contributes to lack of student motivation and achievement in ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse students. Teachers, parents, and the community can foster and cultivate students’ self-efficacy beliefs so that the students’ motivation will increase, which affects their ability to successfully achieve their goals.
It is vital that teachers connect academic content to students’ lives. People learn by finding a connection point or entrance way into the material whether it is new or not; something relatable and culturally relevant. We are a result of our lived experiences and interactions with other individuals, our communities, and our environment. People learn by doing. They learn by experiences and interactions with people, places, things, and events, as well as reflecting on their actions (doing) and experiences. The teacher facilitates a student’s mental processes to be open to new ideas and cultures. We don’t exist in a vacuum. Our personalities do not exist in a vacuum. We are our experiences. Positive experiences create a positive mindset; negative experiences create a negative mindset. I believe that everything that we do in our lives has meaning. I believe our knowledge is constantly changing based on our experiences and interactions with each other and our environments. Our best learning experiences come from interacting with the environment and our peers and not passively receiving instruction. Peers include teachers, parents, and community members. Students are full of knowledge and prior experiences; we as educators need to develop curriculum and strategies that interact with the knowledge, experiences, attitudes, and beliefs that students bring to the table in learning situations.
It is important for teachers to be a part of the community to build a rapport that will lead to trust. Learning occurs best when the learner’s habitus (being and doing in the home) and community are incorporated with their meaning-making processes. Habitus and out of school time learning are paramount to the learning process and teachers and schools should cultivate collaborative learning and instructional partnerships with parents and the community. The construction of knowledge involves a back and forth, give and take relationship between a student and the student’s family, school, and community. I believe that teachers’ pedagogies should include ways to incorporate students’ home and community life with the school’s curriculum.
Online Instruction
In an online forum, I let students know that my role in the online classroom is to be a facilitator, not a provider of information. I create multiple, inquiry-based discussion questions to keep the online discussion exciting and stimulating and to address the multiple backgrounds and interests of my students. I am right there to support students as they seek their answers and to encourage them to work together to get the most out of their learning. I always provide detailed descriptions of writing assignments and respond to students’ inquiries relatively quickly thanks to the convenience of email and learning management systems’ notifications.