Teaching Philosophy
Over the years, I have seen teaching from one angle; a teacher who lectures and a group of students
who passively receive lessons. I remember how my voice was not recognized as a valuable individual
in the society. As a student, I was taught to see myself as insignificant and worthless. Being a
marginalized woman who strives to be heard, in my class, I create opportunities for students to
speak and be heard. I value students’ voices and plan my lessons to empower them through writing,
discussion, and presentation. My teaching philosophy guided by empirical research and my
interdisciplinary research on minorities, emphasizes on creating a welcoming learning environment
where students feel they are effective and appreciated. When at class, I aim to improve students’
learning outcomes by engaging them in different reading, researching and writing tasks. My goal
focuses on broadening the students’ learning experience to see themselves as active and beneficial
members of the society. Every time I step in the classroom and read students’ assignments, I see
them as future leaders, governors, teachers, doctors, and engineers. I train them through the reading
and writing assignments to be aware of their strength and use this power to promote peace, equality,
and social justice. As such, I base my teaching on four principles:
First, I create a comfortable classroom setting that encourages students’ participation by involving them in
different group work. For example, when I taught ENGL 101 for multilingual writers, I asked
students to write a book about their lives using different genres such as narrative, persuasive, poetic
and informative genre. To assist them in the writing process, I designed the class around detailed
workshops. In every class, two students present a one-page draft of their book and receive four
responses from each student in the class. The workshop created a warm learning environment where
all students’ stories are shared with everyone on class. Students learn how to respond to different
audience, and they improve their writing by receiving a wide variety of peer-feedback. Their book
inspired me to design my future courses to teach mixed genres through traditional and digital
personal portfolios that could be transferable for their future careers. When my students and I walk
out of the classroom, we leave as group of friends who spend a cheerful time during class.
Second, I have a strong belief that technology plays indispensable role in learning. I do not only see
technology as a course facilitator; it is also a digital sphere that presents broad varieties of genres
such as visual video games, personal website, social media and visual memes. Directing those digital
genres in the classroom create meaningful literacy experience for students. For example, this
semester I implemented Snapchat media as a tool to promote students’ voice and expose their work
for wider audiences beyond their classmates. In this assignment, I created a Snapchat account that
was assigned to a new student every day. This innovative assignment enhanced the students’
willingness to share their stories and view their struggle as strength. The assignment allowed
students to establish confidence as MLW within the English speaking communities and created a
digital media production that affects their social role in the society positively.
Third, I perceive writing as dynamic and active. It is not static or passive. I view the process and product of writing with equal importance. Students are encouraged to be involved in different writing tasks across curriculum. Through implementing the higher order thinking skills (HOTs), I assist them to reflect critically on their major course readings and connect them to their writing assignment in Compositions classes. The students need to read, analyze, contextualize and evaluate their reading materials and respond creatively and critically in their major assignments. For instance, one of my typical composition assignments is creating a personal magazine. While writing the magazine, the students are inspired to bring in the knowledge they learn from their various courses and write short articles to include in their magazines. They need to analyze several texts and conduct their own evaluative criteria to review and analyze their selected topic. The outcome of this project was very motivating. At the end of the semester, students presented thematic magazines that include different topics and experiences such as nursing, arts and sports. I emphasize that writing is a tool to send a message, to raise awareness and to capture memories.
Finally, since my poetic ethnography dissertation focuses on providing voice to minorities, during
class, I incorporate poetry as an essential part of my teaching. Based on research findings, writing poetry helps
students focus on the important moments in their lives and assist them understand their personal
experience. My dissertation reported that reading and writing poetry is an empowering tool in
students’ academic life. Students were always excited about reading and writing poems. They believe
their poems are very personal, emotional and sincere.
RIVCM
RIVCM stand for Rhetorical base, Inclusiveness, Voice, Conferences, Multi-modality. 1) R for Rhetoric: I believe that understand the power of rhetoric help us construct strong persuasive argument. Therefore, my writing class encourage students to use effective rhetorical principles to send correct messages. 2) I for Inclusiveness: all students in my class should feel they belong to this space regardless of their ethnicity, gender, religion, color, or political. As a teacher, I do my best to accommodate everyone so no one feels behind or left out. 3) V for Voice: because everyone’s voice matter, in class, consider myself as a facilitator of the voice. My assignments usually focus on students’ voices as active agents of change. 4) C for Conferences: some of learning occurs with one-to-one discussion. Usually I assign mandatory conferences during the course to hear from the students about any concerns besides discussing their papers. Finally, 5) M for Multimodality: all my writing courses should include multimodal text so that students can use visual, oral or animated components to strength their arguments and clarify their claims.
.