The following is directed at the individuals enrolled in the courses that I instruct. It is a disclaimer of sorts to let the students know how I view the classroom and its components. I created it in this way in hopes of establishing what makes a classroom a learning environment. I hope potential employers understand the value of establishing foundations in classrooms – this method is to that end. I believe that these definitions and relations offer a window into my teaching philosophy.

Learning – An individual journey toward understanding.

Student – One who seeks understanding. The adventurer of the metaphorical journey.

Teacher – One who facilitates learning processes. The guide of the metaphorical journey.

Teaching – Facilitating the learning process.

Learning is an individual journey. Each of us learns in unique ways. It is a teacher’s role to facilitate progression on that journey. These roles are interchangeable – we are always on a path to learning and we all have things to teach. I am here in the role of your teacher, but I expect to learn from you all along the way.

Knowledge – An abstract concept that roughly refers to a true belief that is justified. (Aristotelian)

Aristotle suggested that three things were sufficient for knowledge: justification, truth, and belief. There has been much debate since. My understanding of knowledge may be very different from your understanding of knowledge, so instead of knowledge, I would like to focus on understanding.

Understanding – Comprehending something on an intimate level.

Application – The practical implementation of understanding.

I am here in the role of your teacher, but I expect to learn from you all as well. Instead of promising you knowledge, I offer guidance for understanding. The ultimate test for our understanding is practical application. To this end, we will share our understanding of standards, methods, and values so as to apply these things successfully.

Composition – The transmission of subjective material toward an audience.

Writing – A traditional mode of language use that takes many forms depending on the context.

Language – A method of expression and a tool for persuasion.

The uses of language are plentiful. We use it to communicate, to express, to persuade, even to form understanding and attribute meaning. Exploring the possibilities, limitations, and uses of language is one of the major themes present in English studies.

Following is a more direct philosophical statement to those viewers that are not students.

One of the major uses of language is persuasion. As such, language is a tool to affect change. This aspect of language creates a responsibility in those that educate in the fields of language to not only facilitate the student’s ability to persuade, but also to make the student aware of the need to persuade. Sincerity and necessity are powerful persuasive forces. When there is a sincere need for change, language is the method by which that need is expressed.

The goals of facilitating cultural expression and tolerance through language and the encouragement of those goals to new writers and composers in other modalities by guiding them toward effective composition is the moral obligation of the educator. To this end, self-actualization is a goal of education: by understanding our personal bias we can not only realize how we come to understand things, but also discover parts of our identity.

Reflection and analysis to the end of coming to a better understanding of ourselves and our society is facilitated by language. To promote this understanding I rely heavily on two methods: dialectic and role-taking. My classroom demeanor and discussion is modeled after the Socratic method but focuses on prompting interactive classroom discussion and promoting subjective diversity in learning spaces as much as the critical awareness of personal beliefs as championed by the Greek sage. When employing this form of dialectic discourse, I make every attempt to avoid leading students as Socrates arguably practiced, and therefore typically take the stance of skepticism in hopes of inspiring further explanation from the student.

The practice of role-taking is effective in my opinion because it requires participants to actively don a lens different from their own: it allows those playing roles the opportunity to contemplate the world as someone with a different outlook, history, and values. Not only does this promote awareness about societal issues and cultural awareness, it gives the participant a point of comparison by which they can judge themselves. By thinking of why someone would act a certain way we can move toward understanding why we act certain ways, or how we would react to certain difficult situations by promoting analytic thought to that situation: we must rationalize that character’s actions through analysis, and therefore may analyze our own rationalization and understandings. In other words, role-taking leads to a deeper understanding of personal identity and appreciation of the differences in others.

Teaching Developmental English

The composition classroom is an area for coming to a closer understanding of the expectations of a specific discourse community, that of academic writing. As such, identifying and analyzing discourse communities are fundamental elements of my instruction in developmental writing. To approach these concepts with students, much focus is given to the discourse communities to which they are already involved. Users of language employ concepts such as rhetorical appeals, elements of argumentation, and other tenets of composition in daily life. One of the goals of the developmental writing class is to scaffold the techniques that students already use and hone awareness of rhetorical situations so they may apply these concepts to their compositions in academic writing.

The scaffolding of process and technique into different rhetorical situations including that of academic writing relies on cognizance. As such, reflection and metacognition are tools for scaffolding the management of interpersonal conversations in specific discourse communities to composing in the academic context. Furthermore, the often-diverse nature of the developmental classroom, while offering a challenge to assist learners in specific areas, is an asset in understanding the ways that conventions work in multiple discourse communities and genres.

Genre acts as a good starting topic for developmental readers, who are typically familiar with classifications in general, be it from popular culture or from the general usage of the universal quantifier in logic. As we analyze and identify which conventions dictate what genre a composition is classified as, we can begin to scaffold into what conventions are expected of the specific genre in academic writing including the forms of discourse that are valued in that setting.

It is of utmost importance in the developmental classroom for the student to feel confident in their writing. This is achieved via the scaffolding method. As an instructor of developmental writing, my goal is not to “fix” writing. This is because the writers in developmental English class use the English language to effect in their daily lives. By acknowledging this fact and approaching the developmental classroom as adapting the skills they already employ in other discourses, students can acknowledge and build on their own strengths. This approach to the developmental classroom is also an effort to preserve the identity of the student, thereby preserving their confidence.

Identity is closely related to language, as we can find aspects of identity within the communities with which we involve ourselves. This relationship between language and identity can offer a challenge for the developmental writer, as it may appear that the requirements of academic discourse are asking them to adapt their voice for the discourse. This can lead to resistance. In effort to avoid this resistance, much attention is given to the rhetorical situation: purpose, context, audience. Indeed, there may be a time where the conventions of constricting voice and subjectivity should be challenged. Students that feel the need to take up this banner against/for the discourse should be aware of the concepts driving these conventions so that they may use them to their advantage in expressing their concerns to audiences that are accustomed to being appealed to in certain ways.

While micro-level concerns such as grammar and sentence cohesion are important, especially in the developmental English classroom, an understanding of why these concerns are important is paramount to rote memorization of rules. It is for this reason that writing prompts in my developmental English class have the focus of metacognition and awareness of the rhetorical situation. For example, my introductory assignment asks students to describe a time where they judged someone else based on their ability to communicate. The prompt asks students to consider the situation/context, what they expected to experience from the interaction, and how their expectations compare with their experiences. The result gives me information not only on the writing level of students entering the course, but also their awareness of the conventions of discourse and what types of discourse communities in which they find themselves situated.

The understanding of purpose in the developmental writing classroom as adapting and improving the effectiveness of composition abilities as the situation dictates – as opposed to correcting or fixing them to appease the audience, is of the utmost importance to the developmental student. Taking this philosophy on language may alleviate some of the hurdles they have encountered in the past with writing instruction such as struggles with identity, confidence, disenfranchisement, and other obstacles they may have encountered in other classroom settings.