My approach to teaching is grounded in the principle that students learn best in an interactive, supportive environment that values each member’s existing knowledge and experience base. I create this environment by treating students as individuals with unique writing goals and by approaching the classroom as a shared “meeting for learning,” as Parker Palmer calls it. Through active, problem-based learning and critical discourse, my students learn that good writing comes from good thinking, a skill that is honed through inquiry, discipline, and feedback.
Teaching rhetoric in the digital age allows me to address our reading habits, how Google’s algorithms affect our search results, and what we lose when we read articles online: context. Every time we encounter a new text, I ask students, “Where was this originally published? Who is the intended audience? What is the author’s main goal? How do you know?” Students challenge what they’ve been taught about scholarly and popular sources and learn to ask, “what is credible?” and “according to whom?” My goal is to give students the tools they need to navigate our fragmented, information-saturated world. Students learn how to identify quality sources, curate their digital content, and decode cultural assumptions embedded in the sources they analyze. These skills help them become not only better academic writers but also better digital citizens.
I demystify academic writing and scholarly research to make it accessible and to make it something students want to do. When students are engaged, they will do what it takes make their writing engaging. This is evident in an innovation I am particularly proud of: my digital remediation project in English 101. In this project, students remediate their scholarly position paper into a digital argument for the public. The final product is a website that consists of the remediated position paper, several previous assignments, a digital forum, a hyperlinked reference page, interactive polls, their Twitter feeds, and relevant images and videos. To complete this, students revisit every stage of the writing process, from inventing to drafting to revising to editing. They learn how to make key rhetorical choices based on the needs of an online audience. They learn the fundamentals of visual rhetoric, document design, fair use, and copyright laws. More broadly, they learn their work in the academy has a place in the public sphere.
In 101 and 391, students learn why even the best-researched, well-written (or spoken) argument will fail if it does not account for the needs of its audience, and they learn to engage with voices they may otherwise discount. For example, when we apply Toulmin theory to the Friends episode in which Ross tries to convince Phoebe to accept evolution, students easily identify how Ross fails and why a Rogerian strategy would be more effective. Students frequently reference Rogerian argumentation in their final reflections, noting how valuable it is in all areas of their lives.
Just as my 101 and 391 students learn how to tailor their arguments to their audience, so too do my 388V students learn how to meet the needs of their students and supervising instructors. The Undergraduate Teaching Assistant role is a complicated one; UTAs are mentors, leaders, assistants, facilitators, teachers, and students all at once. To navigate these roles, UTAs hold frank discussions on the role of the academy while they analyze composition pedagogy and learn how to create lesson plans. They interrogate their assumptions about education, “good writing,” and student motivation with Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Parker Palmer, Mike Rose, David Foster Wallace, and Vershawn Ashanti Young. UTAs learn as much from each other and their students as they do the scholarship: “Each week I have appreciated being surrounded by dedicated students who are passionate about contributing to education.” So have I.
My students take pride in their work as writers and mentors. They know that what they learn in my classes will help them in the future. I know some instructors don’t love teaching English 101. I am not one of them. I am as inspired in 101 as I am in 388V, or 391, or discussing pedagogy with a colleague. I am dedicated to the success of every one of my students—and of the world that they will soon shape. When my students leave my classes, they are armed with the tools they need to write for a variety of rhetorical situations, analyze the arguments they encounter every day, seek and learn from those with whom they differ, and engage with the world as active, creative citizens.
Image by Boris Smokrovic