Finally! The Week's Last Post! (My Teaching Philosophy Week 2)

At any given point on any theoretical plane a specific point is at a crossroads with an infinite number of lines going in an infinite number of directions that might pass through the point on which you are standing.  Thus I think one of the most tired ways of describing the present in any context is to say that we are at a crossroads.  Of course we are at a crossroads.  We are all, at any point at which we pause in our continuous frenzied motion, at a crossroads.  While our possible paths may not be infinite in variation and number there are always choices about where to go from any point at which we stop.  

Hence it is no surprise to find that, studying the history of composition briefly and (for all the reading done) superficially over the past week, to find that the current state of compositional theory is at a crossroads.  Sometimes things become cliches because they're true.  Having moved from a focus on rhetoric and oral composition to applying the elements of rhetoric to the composition of written text, and then to limiting the applications of rhetoric to a bizarre emphasis on style alone in the relatively recent past before returning to a fuller consideration of all of the elements of the composition as process, and then suddenly finding ourselves in theory and practice post-process.  We are at a crossroads where opinion and practice are diverging rather than converging around a dominant or even unifying idea of what it is we are about.

As the gyre has perned, returning us (perhaps at a higher level of our spiraling journey) to a point where process is beside the point for many of us in courses that emphasize some other single chosen aspect of rhetoric than style, we find the center, a focus on the process of actually creating written texts cannot hold under the various splintering influences.  We stand, multiple hypotheses waiting for a new synthesis to occur so that we can move forward instead of playing tug of war.  The key elements that stood out to me as I read the history texts is the continued splintering of any dominant or unifying culture into smaller and smaller self-identifying groups and how that is reflected in the split movements of compositional theory and their primarily individualistic bents.  

The other texts allowed me to place myself in terms of these compositional theories.  I am definitely most favorably disposed to the rhetorical approach and have tried to move in that direction while pursuing the essentially current/traditionalist state of Colorado writing standards for public schools.  The public schools are pushed by the assessments which have become the be all and end all of our existence toward a formalist teaching writing not because theory, research or best practice support it, but because it is easy to mark and has a clear format the test makers can grade.  

The test perpetuates the five paragraph essays and other Screwtape size demons.  These little boogers fail to promote true writing in the freedom of composition, or thought, and instead promote the teaching of rule bound formulaic hack work.  I do not think the state intended that, (I hope they didn't), but it's what they are getting because they chose to specify five paragraphs as the minimum for an extended writing piece which, intended or not, reinforces the generic painfully formulaic five paragraph essay strait jacket.  

I have tried to get my students to think beyond this strait jacket but it is hard.  A key component that I am trying to communicate is that of providing evidence for your arguments.  I am trying to move them towards evidentiary argument, and especially toward text based argument.  I believe that this best perpetuates both the practice of closely reading texts to allow for inference and implication, and critical consideration of and response to the stated and implied ideas and values of said text. Thus, with my focus on the ability to think critically and to argue clearly from textual or experiential evidence for one's own ideas or understanding of a given piece of text.  In the practice of lecture and active reading in class I try to engage the class in dialectic with each other, with the text, and with me in order to force them to think through varying ideas in the text, their implications and applications, and what they think.  

In this sense, through the attempt to engage the class through dialectic as a group, and using writing as a means of furthering class discussion and debate I hope to engage the students as thinkers.  My job as a teacher is not to teach the students what is and what isn't great literature.  My job isn't to make them life long lovers of Shakespeare.  I am not a sculptor who shapes them into what they should be or "can" be.  They are certainly not empty vessels that I fill.  Each student comes to me with everything they need to succeed if they will.  My job is to give them the critical thinking and communication skills to shape themselves into the people they want to be.  It is not my job to direct what that should be, rather it is my job to enable them to think as clearly as possible, to engage their minds by providing them with challenging texts of variety and merit, and to teach them to be critical consumers and producers of communication in any form: commercials, television, film, novels, magazines, newspapers...All these are texts of one kind or another written or not.  My job is to give them the tools they will need to decide things for themselves.  They do the shaping.  

This is why I disagree with the critical/cultural studies approach to composition theory.  It is about liberating the students from a certain manner of discourse and thinking.  Who says that's my job?  Who says they want to be "liberated"?  Isn't it just as arrogant for me to decide that by teaching this I'm liberating them as it is for some one of the "dominant culture/narrative" to tell them that that is the only way to view things?  I put forward ideas and force them to think and then let them decide.  

It might seem with such a focus on letting the students shape themselves that I would lean more toward expressivist compositional theory.  I do not.  I don't believe that emphasis encompasses all the elements needed to master effective communication.  If I were to focus on simply expressive communication, I would be failing to equip my students with all of the tools I feel they will need to be able to critically face their options and decide for themselves.  They will be well equipped to express whatever is floating through their heads, but I've done nothing to help them critically assess what's there and determine its validity and value.  

The other aspects addressed by this week's readings, the workload and professional development are the final target here I guess.  I do pursue professional development.  And, for all my embittered response, I conceded Bishop's point.  We do need to be engaged.  My frustration is with an inability to do that on top of everything else.  Of course part of that inability to pursue professional development in the manner she suggests is due to my decision to pursue it through direct formal coursework.  The time commitment makes conferences and journal reading prohibitive, as does the cost.  Were I not enrolled in a Masters program I admit I would probably still not feel I had the time or money (my grandparents are paying my tuition) for conferences and journals, but I have gone out of my way every year to study the content I'm teaching more thoroughly, to search my education texts, and look for new ones pertaining to the subjects I'm teaching, and above all to spend time evaluating my performance based on both subjective and objective criteria as much as possible  so that I can improve both myself and courses so that I am better able to offer the students what they need.  I also have made efforts to move toward a more interdisciplinary approach, corroborating with the other teachers in the building where possible.  I even was part of a team that sat down at my suggestion to align our world history literature course curriculum with the world history social studies course .  Having been given tools by my teachers, and discovering new ones through personal effort and the kindness of colleagues shaping myself is a continual process as well, as a teacher, a scholar, a professional, a writer, and above all as a man.