This is hard for me. Remember, I am the girl who went into therapy and said I have no goals. Of course I started teaching without a really good teaching philosophy. About 4 years ago when I did my first year to teaching at the community college I wrote a teaching philosophy. Sure it need to be fixed, but I am surprised at how much it works. You know for someone Facebook says is Sharon Crowley I get alot of mileage out of Mina Shaughnessy.
My teachinging philosophy, like all my syllabi, begin with this quotation. "The experience of studenthood is the experience of being just so far over one's head that it is both necessary and possible to work at survival." - Mina Shaughnessy.
It works for me. Once the students get past the 'weirdness' of student hood we talk about how that sentence gives us both responsibility. They have to work at survival. I have to make sure the bar is not too high or too low. My teaching philosophy throws some jargonistic turns into that mix, but it basicaly says the same thing. Now, I need to look at it again and make sure it is something I want the whole world to see.
Here is a good writing moment for me. I will show you the shitty first draft and you can help me put it all together. Oh, and just so you know, shitty is a technical term. :)
Teaching Philosophy
‘The experience of studenthood is the experience of being just so far over one’s head that it is both realistic and necessary to work at survival.’ –Mina Shaughnessy
My teaching philosophy begins with a statement of studenthood because as a teacher I help to form that experience of studenthood. As a teacher, I am also always a student. As a student my best experiences were always those in which I had to really work to accomplish the goal set for me, but that work was within my abilities. As a teacher, I can control how far over student’s heads I set their goals. It is my responsibility to make that goal realistically attainable. I am responsible for helping to craft the experience of studenthood.
I can craft the experience of studenthood both through the assignments I give and the environment in which I give them. Sometimes ‘being just so far over one’s head’ means that to survive you need the help of others. I strive to make my classroom a learning community, a community in which students work together to learn and help each other reach their goals. In a learning community it is easier for students to ask for and get the help they might need from each other to survive. In a composition class, where many students are new to the university or college setting, it is especially important to establish a sense of community within the classroom so that students do not feel they are struggling alone.
Part of the experience of studenthood is being able to recognize when you have achieved a goal. For that reason, I require students to keep an expanding portfolio of their work. At the end of the semester they will have physical proof of the work they have accomplished. This physical proof can help keep them motivated when they move on to the next semester and the goals seem too far over their heads again.
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