My teaching philosophy encompasses a seminar approach, where I encourage students to engage in discussion and dialogue over the activities, assignments and topics we address in class. I prefer this particular approach because it creates a friendly atmosphere in the classroom, as well as allowing the opportunity for students to learn how to offer one another constructive feedback. I like to build a connection with my students as early as possible. Having predominantly taught freshmen and second language writers at the university level, I have developed my own perspective of language and discourse. I view language as fluid and malleable.
I view “writing as a (inter)connective act,” where individuals use and create language(s), discourse(s) and rhetoric(s) to connect with one another and form communities where they share information, create knowledge(s) and make meaning. Communities connect individuals linguistically, physically and emotionally through their construction, dispersion, production and consumption of knowledge(s).Writing as a connective act does not only involve digitally connecting to the Internet through a service provider or logging into a social-networking website. Connectivity is defined as a linking and articulating of the relationships between individuals in multiple communities and locations.
I like to include students’ own communities into my writing courses. Service-learning has proven to be a powerful educational model for students to learn about issues within the community and to connect and interact with individuals and learn about their lives. I use a portfolio approach in assessing student writing. Teaching students how to create a portfolio provides them with the opportunity to see how they have grown as writers over the course of a semester and to see view the various kinds of writing they have done. My definition of a portfolio involves students doing a sequence of assignments and then collecting them in one place.
The main textbook I have been using is Writing Today by Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Charles Paine. Additional textbooks I have been using are The Brief McGraw-Hill Guide by Duane Roen, Gregory R. Glau and Barry M. Maid, Praxis: A Brief Rhetoric by Carol Lea Clark and The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings by Richard Bullock and Maureen Daly Goggin. I have been using online resources such as The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), the APA Style website and various other Internet websites from universities to help my students understand writing formats and conventions.