Teaching Statement

This statement grows out of my experience teaching courses in composition, visual media analysis, editing, world cultures, and instructional technology. It also grows out of my experience as a staff member of the university Writing Center at Michigan Technological univeristy.

Here I outline three practices that have been useful for my teaching. However, I think that part of effective teaching is recognizing the importance of local contexts, and not assuming that what has worked in one place or class will necessarily work in another.

Teaching statements often convey the sense that the writer has mastered the art of teaching. I resist that representation because I think teaching well is an ongoing process, involving consciousness of context, critical self-reflection, and willingness to continually adjust. In what follows I describe these qualities of my approach to teaching.

Considering Students' Perspectives

I experienced an important lesson as a Writing Center coach when a student and I read an assignment sheet and neither of us could determine what the teacher wanted. As a result, I learned to brainstorm with my classes a variety of specificexamples for how they might approach an assignment. I learned to talk withstudents about why I am asking them to do an assignment, and to include such explanations on the assignment sheets. I learned to frame assignments by reviewing what we have covered, revisiting the course goals, and making connections to a current task. Overall, I strive to make the expectations of a course as explicit as possible and clearly contextualize the activities of the class.

I also consider students' perspectives through the ways in which I respond to their work. In short, I try to read students’ work seriously and generously. I require preliminary drafts of assignments and do not grade until the final draft is due. Building on the insights of process-oriented pedagogy, I use written feedback as well as writing conferences to create dialogue with students’ initial ideas and ask questions about what they are trying to achieve. These practices help create a useful context for future assignments by offering me a sense of how students’ ideas and abilities are developing. This is what I mean when I say I "consider students' perspectives."

Responding to Challenges

The computer-intensive courses and instructional technology workshops I have taught create complex environments that can heighten certain tensions because students are being fruitfully challenged. In these environments I have developed practices of critical self-reflection, facility with interpersonal negotiations, and ways to take the pressure off individuals.

While it’s easy for me not to respond to technological challenges personally, some other kinds of challenge have unmistakable personal resonance. Differences in race, sexual orientatation, gender, nationality and class deeply affect students' success in college classes; yet--generally--these differences have been historically difficult for teachers to engage. In my teaching, I strive to practice strategies to develop trust, draw differences to the surface, engage assumptions, and question the connection between the courses I teach and the diverse subjectivities and commitments students bring.

Engaging in Continual Learning, Flexibility, and Change

I tailor a mix of teaching strategies and media to find what works best for a particular class: visual presentation, written analysis, readings from a variety of sources, discussions, lectures, hands-on activities, conferences, group work, relevant use of technologies, and peer review. I talk with other teachers about what has worked well in their practice, bring materials to the Writing Center for feedback, and attend teaching seminars organized by the university’s Center for Teaching, Learning, and Faculty Development.

I stay informed about scholarship in composition studies and devote time to generating pedagogical inspiration and insight through reading—two books that
have been especially meaningful to me this year are Rupert Murdoch’s Returning
to the Teachings and bell hooks’ Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work. Finally, I pay attention to the examples of exceptional teachers in my own career, and strive to offer others what these teachers have shared with me.

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