Teaching Philosophy

“Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, and our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.”

 -Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

As a student, I remember the innate shame that accompanied every wrong answer I gave, and the trepidation I felt at asking a question that would make me seem “stupid.” I’ve talked to many others who have shared this fear even now, outside of an educational environment. When you’re afraid to “fail” at learning, you can never truly learn authentically, and it’s why an integral part of my philosophy is to encourage students to let go of this fear, so they can begin learning uninhibited. 

My goal is to build confidence and a sense of autonomy in my students so that they can escape their comfort zones and explore their curiosity. This involves stressing imperfection as an ideal, and letting students know that if they don’t reveal these gaps in their knowledge, they’ll never be able to fill them. I think it’s important to model this behavior for students, in order to establish this open atmosphere in the class. My students should be comfortable making mistakes in front of me, and they won’t be able to do that if I put on an air of haughty authority and infallibility. I think it’s healthy to encourage a student to disagree with you. It helps them build argumentative skills, and develop their own opinions and methods of inquiry. To help build this confidence, it becomes important to focus on demystification, particularly in course concepts and myths about the subject. Some examples of ways to do this include using simplified language, using a wider variety of materials, or creating more opportunities for students to discuss the confusing elements of complex concepts. 

With this credo to build independent habits comes the necessity to avoid emotionally charged language. Avoiding words or phrases that have been used in the past to reinforce this shame of being wrong, and understanding how to give critical feedback while encouraging the student is paramount in the learning process, since most of the work done in educating a student is in one-on-one teacher-student interactions, or assignment and feedback. Much of collegiate education is unlearning unhelpful habits that have been ingrained in them by the form generalized education in grade school.

While I want to be able to inspire a confidence and a sense of autonomy in my students, another important form of education is collaboration with peers. I want to count myself as one of these peers, to put the students and myself on the same playing field. The eventual goal is for the student to be able to fully work within their chosen discourse with their peers, and to be able to prompt discussion without the worry of tarnishing their reputation. The ability to ask questions and prompt analysis in your peers in any environment helps people adapt more easily to a new discourse or a novice environment. This is because they can openly explore their curiosity and solidify their place in a discipline faster and more efficiently, which helps them thrive even after they’ve left an academic atmosphere.