Teaching Philosophy
Students are not empty vessels
They are people who have assembled considerable knowledge and meaning from their own life experiences, which they bring into the classroom as necessary tools to enable them to produce more knowledge. I am privileged to collaborate with them and contribute my acquired knowledge of the field to the success of their endeavor. As a teacher/scholar, I affirm that students have the right to their own language--the right "to the dialect that expresses their family and community identity; the ideolect that expresses their unique personal identity" (NCTE Reaffirming 2003 ;NCTE Resolution: 1974). At the same time, they have the right to be told that this is so--that their languages are distinct linguistic systems, rather than some "corrupt, inferior, or distorted form of standard English" (Ibid.). I encourage them to make use of their own language in ways that can facilitate their efforts to master the standards of the academy and acquire the language of power. Often this includes writing in their own language as they invent, plan, and arrange their preliminary work.
Students benefit from a deeper understanding of language
Students at all levels writing for all disciplines benefit from an understanding of language as a system of representation in which all of us participate collaboratively, and often unequally, to construct powerful and consequential ideological frameworks. Deepening their awareness of these ideological effects encourages responsible communication choices and gives new meaning to the study of writing. Similarly, when students understand that the disciplines and professions they seek to enter are constituted of spoken and written discourse communities they must also enter, writing instruction often assumes new relevance. Understanding that texts design and support a variety of organizational and individual activity helps them to appreciate the value of clear and effective written communication.
Students are an active part of learning
In designing my courses, my general purpose is to frame student activity rather than direct it. In the classroom, I am a participant and interested mediator in presentations, discussions and activities. I write and share my writing with students, inventing, elaborating, and drafting along with them to provide samples that serve as guides for their own responses. Much of class time is spent in writing workshops; during this time I work individually with students or with small groups of students, encouraging them to converse with each other about their writing as they invent and arrange their ideas. I teach reader response by modeling the questioning strategies I intend them to use with each other--strategies that focus on the higher order concerns of focus, development, and organization as well as on style and conventions. I prompt students to write about situations and issues pertinent to the disciplines in which they major, and to the communities in which they live and work. I suggest that they engage in some form of research while planning any writing project.
Students benefit from understanding their position in the proffesional or scientific field
As a teacher of technical writing, I agree with Jerry Savage and Lee Ellen Brasseur that in order for technical writing students to hone their ability to play multiple roles within changing organizational structures, we need to develop courses and activities that assist them in developing the rhetorical qualities of phronesis, practical wisdom, and metis, cunning or wiliness (ATTW Bulletin, Fall 2001). Providing them with instruction in current organizational theory and principles for managing both people and information can, I believe, help them to cultivate practical wisdom; educating them about the characteristics of innovation and how new ideas and practices diffuse in any setting can assist them in developing wiliness. My teaching focuses on research and writing as integral to problem solving, and emphasizes how to transform an understanding of client needs, audience and purpose into concrete communication strategies. In my classes, students produce both electronic and print forms of communication in team settings and have the opportunity to write for a client with specific needs and values. I work to deepen their understanding of how texts designed to support a variety of organizational activities and social relations are constructed within powerful and consequential ideological frameworks that are produced and reproduced by language. I am particularly interested in the role technical writing/communication plays in the legitimation of scientific knowledge, and lead my students in critically examining the rhetoric of objectivity. I believe it is important for all technical writers to explore the profession's historical and continuing contributions to the construction of power and knowledge in the sciences and business.