If you were to walk by my class one day, the main thing you would notice is activity. Every day in my classroom, my students are doing: doing writing, doing inventing, doing research, doing critique or peer feedback. I feel this is logical, as the primary objective of a writing class should be writing. Therefore, every day I ask students to engage in the topic through writing, reading, talking, critiquing, and collaborating. This illustrates my teaching philosophy as active learning, with an emphasis on application and practice. I know my students are writers in their daily lives, whether they realize it or not. They write emails to their classmates, letters home, texts to their friends, posts on their friends’ walls…the list goes on. While my students may only value writing as that which is done for a grade, in their daily lives they practice the skills needed for academic writing. I recognize their skills they bring to the classroom, and thus ask them to demonstrate their skills during a class period.

I encourage active learning for a few reasons. First, it helps students engage with the material. Rather than thinking in abstract terms about writing skills, applying the skills learned allows students to have a deeper understanding of the topic, enabling them to transfer what they learned in the classroom to their own writing and communication practices. Second, since students are engaged and active during class, they are more likely to keep on task and concentrate on writing for the entire time instead of checking the clock or texting their friend. Every student is participating equally, as my classroom activities require each to be active. This helps in keeping an upbeat, high-energy classroom atmosphere in which students find that class goes quickly and is useful. Finally, I practice active learning because it supports my philosophy that writing is something that must be continually practiced and refined. No one is born knowing how to write well: writing is a skill in which one can always improve. Therefore, I make sure my students improve in their writing by having them actively practice it in the classroom. I hope that through employing this philosophy, students can transfer their knowledge about writing beyond the walls of my classroom to their future school experience, career experience, and life experience.