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.

Robin's Philosophy

Teaching philosophies are not something that we just “have” or that we “get”, teaching philosophies are ideas and values that are developed over a period of time. I’ve only started teaching a few months ago, and really had no idea of what I wanted to convey to my students other than the knowledge of how to write well. It did not occur to me that I would need a philosophy of teaching to inform what I was going to do in the classroom. I believe that it might be a little different for me as a graduating graduate student, just embarking on this new career, than it might be for a traditionally aged student who has received their Master’s degree and is off and teaching. I have already had a twenty year career under my belt, and I bring with me the philosophy I have developed in respect to that field, which is human services. As I have reflected this semester, I have noticed that my approach to life in general, my approach to working in particular, is not all that different from the philosophy I see developing as an emerging pedagogue.

My philosophy of how knowledge is created is transactional. I believe that knowledge is created through language. How do we convey what we know? Through language, of course. It is the same for our thoughts, ideas, values, norms, mores, etc. Everything that we experience is done linguistically. Think about it, how do we create new knowledge? With words that others can understand. Recently, a friend of mine had a little girl. These proud parents often wonder what their daughter is thinking. My contention is that she doesn’t think, as she has not mastered language yet. She is merely behavioral, associatively and reactive.

My axiology is definitely Rhetoricist, or as James A. Berlin framed it, Social Epistemic. I believe that writing is a social act, and that as a writer, or as a communicator, we should strive to have our voice understood. It means nothing if you are writing and your message is unclear. I know that I am an audience centered writer, and that is what I convey to my students. How I convey this is through my pedagogical approach. My classroom is structured in such a way that peer workshops are paramount, and discussions of the writing process abound. There are times when a rhetorical pedagogy takes over and I approach the students in a manner that addresses the relationship between the writer and the audience. As my teaching is in its infant stages, I am still trying to find what pedagogical processes work best for me.

I suspect that my approaches may become more defined, or change altogether as I continue my journey in teaching. I will encounter individuals who will challenge, and ultimately change how I feel or how I approach ideas. My philosophy of life is dialectical. We do not experience or live life in a vacuum, we live life with others, engaging, interacting, learning, experiencing, as well as loving.