My Teaching Philosophy

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

My philosophy as a teacher and scholar is rooted in the values of the liberal arts.  I have a deep-seated belief in the power and value of ideas.  This leads me to estimate the value of education as going far beyond the oft-quoted statistics showing more per capita income to college graduates.  Rather, my belief is that the value of education lies in its ability to improve the lives of individuals, and in so doing to improve society. This places a huge and exhilarating responsibility on teachers: to shed light on the hidden power of ideas, empower students to make use of those powerful ideas, and help them see the inherent value of careful thought.

Of course, such large-scale philosophies are made manifest to the individual student or classroom in many ways.  As a teacher in the classroom, I encourage an environment that fosters earnest intellectual engagement and genuine risk taking.  I try to avoid authoritarian control of the classroom, encouraging students to set the specific agenda of discussions.  Still, I have also learned to use carefully explained parameters, themes, and introductory lectures to scaffold fruitful discussion.  In writing and reading, the tools of argument’s vocabulary, the framework of basic rhetoric, and an awareness of skills of clear composition help to give students the confidence to take larger intellectual risks.  I have found that modeling, lecturing, and small group-based questions and reading responses help students lay the groundwork for independent critical thinking.

I also seek to encourage students to take personal responsibility for their learning.  I provide support and second chances and try to remain approachable, but I also seek to maintain a fairly strict grading policy, and I am always working to streamline and clarify grades for my students while maintaining a system that does justice to the achievements and work done by the students.  I try to remain focused primarily on outcome—work the students produce and the contributions they make to the class—rather than grading on effort.  This can lead to dissatisfied students, but I think it is the only tenable position to resist grade inflation.

It is important, of course, to provide the students with an incentive to work and succeed.  My larger goal is to help them see that learning can be an incentive unto itself.  To get to that point, I attempt to engage the students by providing the frisson of outrage, or at least some viewpoint that is new to them and which requires a response.  I try to outflank their cynical grade profiteering motives by presenting them with something they can’t help but respond too.  It might be Wendell Berry, it might be feminist perspectives, or even a transcript from Rush Limbaugh.  It might be a whole lesson on curse words to show them how they already navigate the important subtleties of word choice.  I try to model ideal critical thinking and discussion by engaging with all ideas on equal footing, and testing them with equal rigor.  While there are good days and bad days, my evaluations seem to indicate at least some success.

Teaching can be exhausting, stressful, time consuming, and frustrating.  But it is also deeply rewarding, satisfying, and fulfilling.  It is my vocation, and I look forward to continuing to learn and improve and deepen my own pedagogy and philosophy.