Courses & Teaching Philosophy

The classroom is a community space, and as such, it should be a space where students bring their questions and come up with responses and solutions collaboratively. In my writing instruction, I recognize writing as a social process and place an emphasis on guided discussion and feedback among students in order to center them in the classroom. As a teacher and a moderator in the communal writing space, I approach classroom conversations with both my specific writing expertise and an open mind, conducting the symphony of ideas through active listening, asking pertinent questions, and offering advice and guidance. 

 

Writing classrooms of the past have focused on a final product as a means for defining student success; by contrast, engaging in a process of communal inquiry in the writing classroom not only aids in students’ integration into society through learning how to participate in navigating social systems and arguing for change as necessary. As Felicia Rose Chavez says about the anti-racist workshop, “we need to reorient from centering ourselves as authority and centering whiteness as neutral, objective, and universal... reorienting from speaking to listening to our students, from product – what they create – to a process – how they create” (“Product”). In order to focus on process over product, I center students and their work during our class time in several key ways: exploring student’s lines of inquiry as Paulo Freire discusses in his problem-posing teaching method, encouraging peer discussion and review of work, and providing a validating writing environment.

 

Students come into the writing classroom with an established capacity to make meaning of the world; my role as teacher is to guide them depending on the areas of “meaning-making” they need to develop further (Berthoff 648). In my research writing class structure, the primary writing project of the course starts within the areas of “meaning-making” in which students have prior knowledge and vested interest. Students are tasked with thinking through topics they have a personal connection to or are important issues in their field. From there, students identify a wide array of sources that can enhance their understanding, from YouTube documentaries to an in-person or email interview to academic articles. In order to focus on the process of composition over the final product, I dedicate class time to actively practicing critical thinking and writing skills through discussions and writing exercises. 

 

In order to create a community-based writing classroom, feedback doesn’t just come from me, but from each of the students on one another's work. We discuss each student’s work with several goals in mind: addressing style in ways that support the student’s right to their own language; addressing the diverse, flexible ways of constructing a composition and how the construction supports the content; and addressing the core argument and its support (Committee). We approach these goals from a place of inquiry where the students seek clarity for one student’s piece as a collective, helping not only that student improve their skills, but all of those who are inquiring as well. I primarily rely on Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process to guide the feedback process, which facilitates a dialogue between students while I facilitate, adding my own feedback to close the discussion.

 

In order to create a classroom environment where students feel safe to provide critique and support for one another, I provide both consistent validation and careful consideration of topics covered in discussions. Providing validation as an instructor includes demonstrating concern, being personable and approachable, treating students with respect, and providing scaffolded learning experiences and one-on-one support. Validation, as theorized and studied by Laura I. Rendón Linares, helps students “believe in their inherent capacity to learn, become excited about learning, feel a part of the learning community, and feel cared about as a person, not just a student” (15). It also plays a key part in liberating students by affirming their own identities and ways of knowing, which in turn helps them feel capable of tackling difficult material and challenging ideas in class. To provide a safe, validating space, I ask the students to share with one another their previous writing experiences regarding drafting and revising, affirming the variety of approaches that come up as options for each of them to try out in their own processes. It’s important to note that this validation does not banish critique from the classroom whatsoever, but instead makes it easier for students to trust peer critique and be more detailed in their responses because they recognize the foundation which they build upon.

 

As for how my approach to writing instruction translates to a poetry-centered setting, I make a point to select contemporary poems that speak to the lived experiences of those who attend my workshops and utilize methods which often simultaneously engage with visual art in some capacity. I’ve led both ekphrastic workshops and poetry collage workshops with an emphasis on approachability. By demonstrating that everyone has emotions and personal associations that arise from something as simple as a color or shape, I establish connections between workshop attendees’ capacity to make meaning and their ability to write poetry. As poet Victoria Chang says, “the act of seeing the visual art of another has allowed my mind and imagination to be free.” 

 

While facilitating discussion of example poems, students are prompted to engage in the conversation without the fear of being fundamentally “incorrect” in their responses to lines of inquiry. I simultaneously take time to demystify the emotional pull of poetry by highlighting the craft-based building blocks of a poem throughout our discussion. To engage at an intellectual level with a poem, I provide attendees the language and tools necessary to understand craft at a deeper level. The ultimate goal of my workshops has been to show attendees that creativity is drawn from many sources of inspiration, whether through works of art or the process of erasure of another written work, and they are capable of experimenting further with their sources of inspiration in future writing endeavors. I close each workshop with time to share what was made and to offer specific praise about one-anothers’ work.

 

While I hope any writing classroom or workshop I step foot in can function as a community of its own, I recognize that it is a simulated version of the real communities in which my students reside. My hope as an instructor is to provide a place where students feel safe to pursue their questions and develop their writing for those communities through guided opportunities to practice writing and a model audience to read their work. Out of this process of writing, students can develop the skills to create meaningful, polished final products to share with the world throughout their lifetimes.

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Sources

 

Berthoff, Ann E. “Learning the Uses of Chaos.” The Making of Meaning: Metaphors, Models and Maxims. Heinemann, 1981.

 

Chang, Victoria. “Back to School for Everyone: Ekphrastic Poetry with Victoria Chang.” LitHub. Sept. 6, 2022. https://lithub.com/back-to-school-for-everyone-ekphrastic-poetry-with-victoria-chang/ 

 

Committee on CCCC Language Statement. “Students' Right to Their Own Language.” College English, Vol. 36, No. 6, (Feb., 1975), pp. 709-726. National Council of Teachers of English.

 

"Product to Process: The Anti-Racist Workshop.” Nothing Never Happens, March 29, 2021, Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin with Felicia Rose Chavez. https://nothingneverhappens.org/uncategorized/product-to-process-the-anti-racist-writing-workshop/ 

 

Lerman, Liz. “Critical Response Process.” https://lizlerman.com/critical-response-process/ 

Rendón Linares, Laura I., and Susana M. Muñoz. “Revisiting Validation Theory: Theoretical Foundations, Applications, and Extensions.” Enrollment Management Journal, Vol. 5, Issue 2, Summer 2011, pp. 12-33.