My Philosophy for teaching Writing
I have been a student for seventeen years. That is seventeen years in and out of well over thirty classrooms, with over fifty different teachers and whole lot of different subjects. I have been a student so long that I would consider myself a professional student, but now as I am beginning to make that drastic transition from student to teacher, I am facing the classroom from a different side. Instead of being the one sitting in the hard, plastic desk listening to someone talk from the front of the room, I will be the person at the front of the room. Even though this change may have its challenges as I take on the role of authority figure in the classroom, I think that the greatest asset to my career as a teacher is to remember my time as a student.
As a teacher candidate I have placed my student self into the shoes of the teacher, and it has really opened my eyes about what it really means to be a teacher and all of the hard work that goes into that profession. Now, when I am teacher in my own room, it will be my challenge to remember what it is as like to be a high school student. I was a student who struggled with the logistics of writing and this idea still hasn’t gone away completely. But, as I am thinking about myself as a teacher, I am reflecting on what it felt like to be a writer in my high school English class, and furthermore what happened to make me this afraid of writing.
Based on my experiences as a student writer, my teaching philosophy will combine the methods that I have learned from my education classes with what I feel works (or was enjoyable) in the classroom to teach writing. My philosophy is that I want to teach writing through choice, relevance and application.
As teachers is not just our job to lecture students until they have a subject memorized, but instead it is our responsibility to guide students to be active participants in their own education. In my class I will find appropriate times and assignments to give students options. By giving students choices we are showing them they will not just learn by showing up, but that they have to choose to engage in their education. Choices allow student to feel like they have some control and some respect in the classroom. Students will make big and small their entire educational careers; it is my job as a teacher to help them to figure how to make the best decisions for them. I will give students the choice of prompts, mode of writing, writing style, genres, etc. As long as I believe that the student is making an educated decision that will improve their writing skills and knowledge of composition, choices will be an integral part of my writing lessons.
I am firm believer that relevance is key to helping students succeed in the classroom. Students will engage and have more desire to learn if they see the relevance of the subject to their interests. I plan to exemplify relevance in my classroom by teaching different modes of writing (especially digital modes, such as blogging and social networking), creating prompts that will pertain to their lives, and providing examples of writing skills in the real world. Such as, learning to write for 21st century skills like blogging or social networking. There are several great web resources that offer the space to work on these skills that also will help to build a solid writing community in the classroom. I want students to feel the need to improve their writing skills, to help them to be better students and one-day better employees. By attempting to make writing relevant beyond the classroom, students will find writing important and worth learning.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, writing will be applied to all areas of learning in my classroom. Looking back on my own experiences, I think the reason I have struggled with writing concepts was because I was never taught to apply these concepts beyond the writing lesson. I can remember in school, learning a concept, practicing a concept, do a test on a concept and the quickly forget that concept. I was never taught to understand a concept enough to store this information for the long haul, and I believe this can be achieved through application. In my classroom a writing concept will be taught, practiced and then applied through out the rest of the year with whatever other concepts, texts or lessons we are working on. Students will apply the knowledge that they have learned to the new knowledge they are learning and overtime they will build up their skills to be competent writers who are comfortable as well as confident in their abilities.
My philosophy is not original; it has been taken from my observations, lessons and experiences during my many years as a student and teacher candidate. My philosophy is made up of three basic components, choice, relevance and application, which will shape the way that I teach writing to my students. Many teachers are already putting these same ideas into practice in their classrooms and fortunately, I can learn from more from them. So that means that no matter how many years I am teacher, I will never stop learning. I will never stop being a student and that is the greatest asset to my career and my philosophy.