Erin's Philosophy

This blog began as an assignment for a class at Old Dominion University. The class was "Teaching College Composition." We were supposed to create a group project allow us to better understand "composition history, theory, scholarship and praxis," and to work together to create more together than we could do alone. Kerstin suggested a pamphlet to help beginning teachers form their philosophies. I suggested a blog, instead, to make it interactive for users and to allow the product to change as we change. Now, at the suggestion of our classmates, our product has changed again, and we've created a new branch at philisophicalteacher.ning.com.

Believe it or not, we've gotten a bit addicted to this project, and we intend to keep going after the class ends. So far, "Teacher's Turn" has been more about reflection than anything. We, the blog's creators, have looked at how we became teachers and how our philosophies formed. We posted a philosophic inventory to help teachers discover what their philosophies might be. In the future, we'll five more specific advice on how to create a formal philosophy statement. I know some of our readers would have preferred such a prescriptive take, but there is value here. Exploration is important. It's easy to create a formal statement of philosophy, but it's not worth the paper it's printed on if it doesn't match your life, your ideals and your teaching.

Here's the jargon-filled version of my philosophy: According to my philosophic inventory, I'm a progressivist (child-centered and active). Existentialism (emphasis on the importance of individuality and living authentically) and reconstructivism (focus on social justice and service learning) round out my top three philosophies. According to the survey created by our colleagues, my axiology is mostly rhetorical, my epistomology is largely transactional, my pedagogy is expressivist, and my process is social. That means I believe good writing meets the reader's needs; knowledge is "generated through language," and agreed on by the discourse community; my methods focus on imagination; and I have my writers work with other writers. At first, the different categories didn't seem to jive, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I think writing is often communication, and a way to share your thoughts and feelings with others. Thus it makes sense that I think readers should create together, thinking about each other's needs.

What I've really learned from creating The Teacher's Turn, though, is that my philosophy makes the most sense in context. I grew up in a family with lots of teachers, caring men and women devoted to helping people learn. I had been applying to the Peace Corps when a friend told me about the Teaching Fellows, a program that places inexperienced teachers in "high needs" (inner city) schools in exchange for highly subsidized master's degrees. My mom warned me not to be a teacher the same way many parents would warn their children not to join a rock band. She didn't want bureaucracy and administration to break my heart.

That's pretty much what happened. The people running my school claimed to be child-centered, but their actions showed that they were truly behaviorist. They wanted quiet classrooms. They wanted me to use test-prep books constantly to raise scores. I wanted to focus on my students' needs. I am so lucky I had great professors at Fordham University who forced me to discover my educational philosophy. Many of us grumbled about it at the time. We only had six weeks of training to prepare us to enter our first classrooms, and we wanted to spend every minute on "practical" training. However, my philosophy was an anchor. It kept me connected to who I wanted to be as a teacher. Without it, I might easily have been swept away by those more focused on No Child Left Behind than on actual children. I only hope this sight can help someone else the same way.