In the eighth grade, my language arts teacher, a woman whose presence commanded my attention but whose kind, blue eyes reminded me of my grandmother, asked us students to include a particular heading on each of our assignments. On the line beneath my name, I was to write “IALAC”; this stood for “I am lovable and capable.” This burgeoning awareness of my own capacity as an individual became transformative in my life as I developed my belief in the potential of each person. As a teacher, this belief is incredibly meaningful as I strive to engage each student with his or her own self-worth and capacity for learning and growth. I have chosen teaching as my profession because I believe in the abilities and potential of an individual, and I value the opportunity to work with students as they strive toward fulfilling that potential. Acknowledging the diversity of ages, races, and backgrounds of students, I focus on each student as a person and a learner by meeting each on his or her own terms and encouragingly inviting him or her into new discourses, both academic and personal.

I believe that in order to develop the transformative potential within an individual, we must each find our own intrinsic motivation. This translates into the English classroom as I enable my students to discover their own reasons to work on writing. On the first day of class, my students and I have a conversation about the importance and value of writing in all fields and in countless professional and personal endeavors. With each new assignment, I connect the skills with their broader learning. In a Composition I course, for example, the ramble essay assignment calls for students to take a ‘rambling walk’ in order to explore and observe the world around them and their thoughts and experiences while doing so. The goal is to develop a cohesive essay from the ramble and write about a deeper sense of the purpose of the place, the experience, our society, or possibly even themselves, which in turn requires critical thinking, a skill applicable far beyond our single course. When students find their learning and assignments personally valuable as well as academically relevant, they often become more engaged with their learning and writing experiences.

As a teacher, I must become a learner myself in order to more readily be a part of the classroom community. I learn about my students and their learning styles in addition to learning with and from my students. Thus, I seek to engage students in a variety of modes for class activities as well as course assignments. Drawing on a diverse range of learning styles is essential in my classroom as I incorporate oral, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic literacies in addition to word-based ones. My learning style is largely language-based, so my students become the teacher as I am inspired and encouraged by their multiple intelligences. For instance, one approach for understanding writing as a process is to have students draw their writing process, which for some leads to creating a visual metaphor of their process. In my Peer Tutoring course, one student drew her writing process as that of a seed being planted, watered, and then growing into something greater. Through my students’ depictions in this activity, I have gained a broader idea of what writing means. In addition, walking around the classroom to explore an essay’s organization or structuring peer review as an interview, question-based oral activity are other ways my students and I draw on multiple intelligences. I am readily aware of the importance of writing to success in college and in many industries, and I believe in a broader conception of writing to include talking and making. To that end, I believe it is part of my vocation as a teacher to share writing knowledge and skills while also engaging with students and learning from them as they create their own approaches.

Our ability in the classroom to reach greater depths depends, I contend, on our ability to foster a classroom community where learners feel engaged, valued, and supported. We learn best when we learn together. To this end, I make a commitment to my students to be accountable to them just as I expect them to be accountable for their learning and work in our course. On the first day of class, I ask my students, “What do you hope or expect to learn in this course?” While I develop course content based on stated objectives, I believe my students’ academic interests and learning needs are valuable. One past response to this question was poetry, which had not been a scheduled part for that Fundamentals of College Writing course. As this course emphasizes students’ abilities to summarize and respond to texts, I decided to include some poetry as texts to facilitate practice in response writing. Incorporating students’ interests is one way to acknowledge that they are important and valued within our classroom, which is helpful in supporting a community of people as they discover greater capacities within their education and lives.

I truly care about people, and as a teacher, I am invested in the well-being and academic development of each of my students. I am dedicated to supporting my students as they discover new skills and new ways to empower themselves. Through a mutual willingness to participate and an openness to learning, growth, and the possibility of change, my students and I come to see how each of us, and even ourselves, is lovable and capable. This experience is palpable and powerful, thereby continuing to motivate my desire to teach and collaborate with learners.