Welcome!

Greetings and welcome to the Philosophical Teacher’s blog. I would like to introduce to you my fellow bloggers Erin Kiley and Kerstin Devlin. Me? I am Robin Ormiston, your initial guide into this part of cyberspace paradise. We decided to develop a blog to provide emerging and established composition teachers a space in which to learn about as well as share their own developing teaching philosophies. Some of the blog will be very academic, some of it will not. Our aim is to educate as well as entertain.

The three of us represent a vast cross section of teaching experience within the field of composition. Kerstin has approximately ten years of teaching experience at the junior high school level. Erin has taught for several years as well, most notably in New York City. Me, well, I am brand new to the field of teaching composition, having just about completed my first semester teaching freshman comp.

Erin, Kerstin, and I agree that developing your very own teaching philosophy is an important aspect of your classroom. Your philosophy will inform everything you do, from what assignments to create to where you choose to teach. For example, I discovered Karl Marx back in high school, many, many, and I do mean many moons ago. I am a spread-the-wealth kind of gal, a virtual contemporary Robin Hood if you will. When I began to think about where I wanted to teach, I felt that the community college would be the right place for me. This choice provides me with the opportunity to assist working class individuals in developing the tools that will enable them to confront, and ultimately change their status within society. I could go on forever, but there will be more on my philosophy later.

We differ not only at the experiential level, but at the philosophical level as well. While discussing the blog, Kerstin admitted to being somewhat of an Expressivist. She wants to help her students to find their individual voice. Erin, she admitted to having a little Formalist demon that sits on her shoulder and shapes what she does. I bend more toward the Rhetoricist axiology, although in the beginning of the semester I would have sworn to you that I was an Expressivist.

These labels do not fully define our teaching philosophies, but are just a small portion of our own personal philosophy we are in the process of developing. Despite our axiological differences, we all agree that philosophies, just like our blog, are a work in progress.

I do hope that you will return to see what we have written. Thanks for stopping by! And by the way…

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