Though I think about composition pedagogy in my work as a writing program administrator and write about it in my scholarship, it is when I come face-to-face with students in the classroom and confront their unique ideas, opinions, and learning needs, that I feel most tested in the assumptions I’ve made about teaching composition. I’ve come to embrace, rather than avoid, the questions I have about the best methods to teach, develop, and assess student writers, however, because I believe that questioning is at the core of discovery, invention, writing, and teaching. Each day in the classroom forces me to rethink my teaching philosophy, but the following principles make up the foundation of my teaching practice.
Rhetorical Situations and Inquiry
Constant inquiry not only informs and revises my conceptions of composition pedagogy, but it also frames the way I teach composition. In the years since I first started teaching writing, I have adopted an approach that requires students to ask questions that decipher the unique rhetorical situation of each writing context they encounter. Students begin each writing project by completing a rigorous set of heuristic devices that encourage inquiry—they ask questions about what matters to them and why, who else has a stake in those issues, who might be members of their audience, what genre might be appropriate to reach those readers, and what arguments would successfully persuade that audience. These questions frame writing as a continuing recursive project of critical thinking, questioning, writing, and revising. More often than not, students complain during the process of inquiry (something like, “It’s so much writing!”), but by the end of the semester, students confess that they learned more about writing in a variety of contexts and genres by allowing inquiry to be the foundation on which their texts are built.
Critical Engagement
Rhetorical analysis and inquiry are effective tools in academic writing and research, but they also play a crucial role in helping students to critically engage with the world, which is another primary goal of my instruction. I believe that knowledge is made in community, and this knowledge-making requires students’ full participation, not just in the classroom, but also in the world outside of the university. I teach students to critique, and I teach students that critique is powerless without action. When students engage critically with ideas, institutions, or issues in my class, they also engage with the society that supports these issues, and they realize they have a social responsibility to become active participants in the discourse communities that surround them.
Collaboration and Community
I am fully committed to the collaborative writing classroom because such an environment privileges inquiry and critical engagement. I incorporate large-class and small-group discussions to build this community, which affords students the opportunity to critically engage with the course readings, their writing, and their classmates, and I also assign peer review for each writing project, holding students accountable for their participation in the evaluation of their classmates’ work. It is important to offer other means of community building, especially for more reticent students, so the online discussions through class blogs and e-mail listserves that I assign also work to engage students. The emphasis I place on writing with others is designed to build a community of writers within my classroom, underscoring my belief that all writing—regardless of purpose—is an act of civic engagement.
Academic Responsibility
First-year composition is often seen by the larger university community as a service course, one that not only teaches students how to write for the academy, but also instructs students how to be active, responsible members of that community. Because of this expectation, but also because of my desire to support each of my students, I make it a priority to teach students a strong sense of academic responsibility. This means that I make deadlines and hold students accountable to them. I explain the importance of academic integrity in citing sources and using reliable outside research responsibly in their papers. Even discussions about how to e-mail instructors or find a balance between their work, study, and social lives are fair game in my classroom. Experiences in first-year composition classes teach students how to write in college, but more importantly, these lessons teach students, especially the first-generation students with whom I often work, how to be in college, and I see this as an opportunity to not only teach, but also mentor the students in my classroom.
While these are the principles that guide my teaching, it is important for me to explain how teaching guides me. While my classroom experiences force me to reconsider my philosophy of teaching writing, what has remained unchanged, is the pleasure I get from participating in an energetic discussion with my class, discussing a paper with a student who is working hard to improve her writing, and responding to a project that demonstrates a writer’s development throughout the semester. Teaching composition is a privilege, for it offers me an opportunity to work with students about ideas, encouraging them to find value in those ideas, and helping them find ways to engage in dialogue with others in their community.