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Kathryn WellerDecember 11, 2013TE940 Final Project

Exploring My Identity as a Teacher

I hope it’s natural to have doubts about ourselves, particularly when we’re about to

head into untested waters. I intend to teach composition at the community college level in

Chicago after completing my master’s degree, and while preparing my professional

portfolio and writing a teaching philosophy in order to apply for instructor positions, I have

begun to ask some questions of both my instincts and my intentions. However, by

juxtaposing several of my pedagogical documents1, and moves alongside principles from

Dewey (and Berding), Rancière, and Schwab, I hope to explore, discuss, and potentially

resolve some of the issues I have identified within my philosophies of teaching and

education.

In order to engage with the discomfort I have sensed within my understanding of

myself as a teacher, I will first lay out the primary issues. When composing documents to

prepare for teaching, I struggled with some of the vocabulary I instinctively chose to use. I

frequently referred to future learners as “my students” and described the course tasks and

my role as a teacher as “allowing” or “helping” learners to do something, or “giving” them

something they do not have, all of which feels patronizing and dehumanizing to students.

(In honesty, I typed out “my students” just then.) Sensing this, I have begun to be hyper-

aware of my word use, which has led to anxiety over using realistically innocuous pronouns

1 Some documents were created previously, and some were written for this project. Project 4’s assignment sheet and the journal description were written previously for an independent study focusing on theories of adult learning and literacy instruction. The individual journal prompts, the first-day questions, and the activities for Project 4 were conceived and written expressly for this project. All analysis was written expressly for this project.

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like “them” and “they” when referring to learners. Even though I have been successful in

appropriately rephrasing my official documents, the distress has led me to look deeper into

my perception of learners and as myself as a teacher.

Undoubtedly augmenting this anxiety are the concepts of privilege and inequality I

have studied and considered through my graduate studies, namely from reading Paulo

Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1934). I have worried that I am an “oppressor” who is

“rationalizing [my] guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while

holding them fast in a position of dependence” (Freire 49). Since reading this work I have

struggled to consider myself a dedicated teacher without also imagining myself a

benevolent savior, a bestower of knowledge upon those “less fortunate” than myself. I sense

an unequal distribution of power between myself and future students, stemming from two

primary sources: the first, that I could be perceived as possessing the information and skills

that they need to succeed but do not have; and the second, that in addition to being the

person who controls the distribution of this knowledge, I am the person who assesses

whether they have worked hard enough or grasped enough of the knowledge to receive the

credential that is on a fundamental level the goal of the course they have enrolled in.

My sense of an unequal distribution of power only becomes more problematic to me

when I consider myself not just a teacher but as a member of a larger society that dictates

to community college students what they don’t have but “need” in order to “succeed”. When

considering the various purposes of education and adult literacy curricula in community

colleges, I feel that while “social transformation”, “child [student] centered learning”, and

knowledge for knowledge’s sake are the kinds of education I would want my own children

to experience, “social efficiency”, “credentialism”, and “civilizing/ normalizing” are the

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purposes of education I will be participating in and furthering. Individuals and

organizations in more privileged segments of society, some of whom might never have lived

lives similar to many students’, are able to decide for these students not just what they

“need” but what is the best (or perhaps only) way to receive and demonstrate that

knowledge.

How can I pursue this career with conviction when faced with this uneasiness? Can I

simply rely on my own good intentions to avoid doing harm to students? I’m not sure.

However, several of the authors and concepts we have studied in our course this semester,

supported in no small part by our group discussions and activities, have helped me to

conceive not just of better ways to present my philosophies to others, but to begin to

reconcile my own intentions, philosophies, and responsibilities with the kind of teacher I

hope to become.

I have taught two semesters of first-year writing during my graduate studies, and I

think it is fair to say that I have learned as much, or more, by interacting with students in a

classroom and reading their writing than from all the theory I have read over the last year

and a half. Drawing from Schwab (1969), I realize that without being able to work with

actual students, much of the teaching preparation and research into theory I have done

cannot be complete or adequate. As Schwab points out, theory necessarily ignores specifics,

anomalies, “nonuniformities,” and “particularities” in favor of the “regularities,” the “general

or ideal case”. In order for a theory to be useful to as many stakeholders as possible,

generalities must be made; however, it is vital to remember this shortcoming and to not

allow ourselves to put these generalities above actual students and their actual needs.

Schwab reminds us that “curriculum in action treats real things: real acts, real teachers, real

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[students], things richer and different from their theoretical representations. Curriculum

will deal badly with its real things if it treats them merely as replicas of their theoretic

representations” (12). I believe that in engaging in this kind of preparation and forethought

but with only theoretical students in mind, I have let the theories take over. I expect that

whatever theoretical knowledge I do have will be adjusted, contradicted, strengthened, or

embodied by real students. In fact, I hope so.

The presence of students in a classroom does not create an engaging learning

environment for students or for me as a teacher. To create an inclusive learning

environment through the application of theories, I need to get to know all my students, at

least on some level. This necessity is behind my intention to implement a questions-and-

answers icebreaker activity during the first class meeting and a journal writing project over

the course of the semester. Having some knowledge about students’ lives and the

circumstances that have brought us together in the classroom can give me the opportunity

to respond to students’ interests and experiences when designing writing projects,

facilitating course activities, or assessing student work. Berding assures us that Dewey did

not mean “that education does not centre in the pupil. It obviously takes its start with him

and terminates in him,” but that “the starting point [of education] is always the impulse to

self-expression” (Dewey, qtd in Berding 28). To discover our “impulses to self-expression,”

during the first meeting of the course, students and I will introduce ourselves to each other

by asking each other questions, drawing on an activity facilitated by Dr. Lynn Fendler in our

TE940 course. Possible questions [see Appendix A] will include those clearly related to

academia and our course content, such as “How do you feel about writing?” and “What kind

of learner do you think you are?”, which might speak to students’ academic strengths and

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characteristics. Some seemingly superficial or trivial questions such as “What superpower

would you choose to have?” and “What is your favorite game?” can help us, my students and

I, get to know ourselves and our needs, expectations, and experiences, on a more personal,

human level. Additionally, this information might help me create more engaging and

relevant experiences for students. For instance, if a student answers that she feels she is an

auditory learner, I can make an effort to provide extra aural stimulation, repeating and

emphasizing vital information. If another student indicates invisibility as his superpower of

choice, I can be more sensitive or understanding if he chooses to participate less vocally in

class discussions, and perhaps designate alternate ways for the him to engage with his

peers and earn participation points.

The semester-long journaling project [see Appendix B] accomplishes similar goals

concerning learning about students’ lives and experiences, but it also touches on another

important issue for Dewey: that of the complex relationship between the individual and

society. “[T]he child is not isolated; he does not live inside himself, but in a world of nature

and man” (Dewey, qtd in Berding 28). When teaching first-year writing in the spring of

2013, I implemented a journal project, to which students reacted very well. They were able

to gain fluency in their writing and continue to practice their analysis and inquiry. However,

the project was flawed in that the students corresponded in their journals to only me; by

the end of the semester, I felt I knew the students better but they still did not know the

names of all their classmates. Additionally, I knew much more about the students and their

experiences than they did about me, which contributed to a sense of an unequal

distribution of power. In the new journal project I have designed, students are still

practicing their writing in a low-stakes environment, but are also engaging with their peers,

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building relationships, and creating a social community of learners. As Berding states,

paraphrasing Dewey, “A school can be a place of practice where there is real participation

along with an emphasis on interactions and communication between individuals and

groups on all levels” (29). In reading and responding to the experiences and perceptions of

their peers, students can relate to or further their understanding of others’ lives. This

creation of a learning community could allow not only for more productive work to be done

in the classroom (such as peer reviews) but could lead to increased empathy and

understanding in various professional and interpersonal interactions in the future. This

exchange of knowledge and experiences, an attempt to learn more about and live in greater

harmony with each, builds on Rancière’s axiom of equality, in that it requires us (or perhaps

allows us, encourages us) to have as much respect for our peers’ experience and knowledge

as we do for our own. As the next section will explore, the nature of the exchange between

the individual and society is vital to both Dewey’s understanding of the “problem of

education” and to the first-year writing curriculum I hope to enact in the future.

In the penultimate project of the semester, I will invite students to choose a social

(political, medical, financial, educational, etc.) issue that concerns them, research the issue,

and create at least three argument pieces designed to convince specific audiences of their

position or solution, potentially utilizing multimodal composition [see Appendix C]. Dewey

writes that “the true centre of correlation of the school subjects is not science, nor

literature, nor history, nor geography, but the [student’s] own social activities” (Berding

29), and I hope that in designing an argument project that is driven primarily not by my

exhortations and explanations or the students’ need to pass the course, but rather by the

passion the students have for changing something in their world that they see as unjust, I

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am creating a rhetorical learning experience that is not “put before [students’] social

activities, but emerges out of them” (Berding 29). Additionally, in examining the

implications of this project, I begin to sense how to work through my discomfort with

encouraging students to play into the power structures inherent in society; that is, how to

reconcile the many “overlapping” purposes of education (“Purposes”), such as blending

“civilizing/normalizing” with “social transformation”. Berding writes that “the individual,

who lives in an environment that appeals to its innate powers uses the environmental

conditions to get better adjusted to the ever more complex demands of that environment”

(Berding 28). I can conceive of the classroom and work that I facilitate as the environment

in which students, individuals, can harness their own powers and “get better adjusted” to

the demands of their societies. This is not enough for me; what is the point of creating

space for students to “get better adjusted” to an unjust and immovable society? What

progress is made there? However, Berding has an answer for this: “At the same time the

environment is constantly reshaped by the coordinated actions of the individuals” (28). The

argument project is not simply training students to speak and write in standard ways that

will allow them to get by or make it in society; this project will offer tools and strategies that

students will use to make their wills known, to make those in power take notice of their

ideas and passions, and to create change, hopefully for the better. This understanding can

also be considered in terms of Rancière’s assumption of the “freedom of action…that people

are always more free than social scientists and external observers give them credit for”

(“Five important threads”). If we have respect that students are not necessarily repressed

by the social systems within which they exist, then perhaps we can more realistically

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perceive students’ interactions with society as productive more so than oppressed or

marginalized.

These noble goals for the argument project cannot come to be realized unless

students can trust that they and the tools I am offering actually have the potential to effect

change in their lives. My insistence that they do, no matter how earnest or fervent or well-

intentioned, will do little to convince them. Instead, it is my responsibility as their teacher,

their guide, to offer activities [see Appendix D] that students can experience and reflect on,

and then decide how best to use the skills and understanding they have acquired to

accomplish their goals within the classroom and without. When we begin to consider the

project, I anticipate some students will balk at the prospect of multimodal composition, of

relying on more than just words printed on paper to make their point. To help students

realize the power of nonverbal communication, I will invite students to participate in

several games, including charades, Pictionary, and name that tune. All three of these games

are based on taking away the players’ ability to use words, the most common and easy

mode of communication, and so through playing them, students may reevaluate the value

they place on body language, images, and music, as well as other forms of non-verbal

communication. Similarly, when discussing rhetorical decisions to be made when analyzing

research to support a position on an issue, I will offer students an opportunity to prepare

for and participate in classroom debates on certain issues. While participating in this

activity, students may recognize concepts related to audience awareness, analysis and

support of evidence, and multimodal composition that they might not glean from a

classroom discussion or lecture. I have conceived of both the games session and the class

debates as related to Dewey’s concept of “an experience”: for Dewey, “the emphasis [is] on

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experience as the combination of trying and undergoing” (Berding 25, emphasis in original).

As the students undergo the experience, that is to say, are acted upon by the situation they

are placed in (a game of charades, for example), they are trying to communicate with their

peers, trying to not use words, and trying to be better at this than the other team. In a game

of Pictionary, the student (as player, as artist) has to manipulate the artistic implement in

order to create an image that communicates a meaning to his or her peers. As Dewey tell us,

“every experience is the result of interaction between a live creature and some aspect of the

world in which he lives” (Dewey 45). When the artist/player/student succeeds in

communicating through the image, when “a mutual adaptation of the self and object

emerges…that particular experience comes to a close” (Dewey 45).

In order for this experiences I have designed to truly embody Dewey’s

understanding of an experience, three more aspects must be considered. The first is to

continue to emphasize the interaction between the student and the environment in which

he or she lives and interacts with others. As Berding/Dewey states, “experience is neither a

purely individualistic affair nor a purely social one” (27), which indicates that when

designing classroom experiences for students, I need to be aware of how activities engage

with both students’ personal experiences and their social interactions with each other. For

instance, while an activity like playing Pictionary clearly has social elements of teamwork

and communication, the student must struggle with her own instincts and expectations

when trying to communicate with her teammates. Dewey believed that “the central

problem in education is how to avoid an artificial antagonism between these aspects,”

(Berding 27), and with classroom activities, as well as all other aspects within the

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classroom, I will strive to keep these aspects in balance with each other as well as the

requirements of the coursework.

Secondly, Dewey identifies as another problem in education the inadequacy of

conceptualizing experience as “exclusively (purely) intellectual” (26), which to me can be

understood as the importance of both feeling and thinking through experiences. I’m afraid

that this may be the element of Dewey’s conception that I am least prepared to facilitate for

my students. While activities like charades or a classroom debate will involve the

embodiment of students in ways that a traditional classroom lecture will not, I am not yet

sure how to emphasize the emotional or physical elements of certain experiences. However,

Dewey writes that “it is not possible to divide in a vital experience the practical, emotional,

and intellectual from one another and to set the properties of one over against the

characteristics of the others” (56); from this, I believe I need to, rather than just focus on

creating new activities that enhance emotional aspects of an experience, look to the

students to discover how they are already connecting with their emotions as well as their

intellect.

Finally, I do not think I can overemphasize the importance of reflecting on the

experiences we have within the classroom and how those experiences can be valuable to us

as writers and citizens. Dewey defines reflection as “the discernment of the relation

between what we try to do and what happens in consequence” (Dewey, qtd in Berding 26);

I hope to keep this definition in mind when facilitating reflective discussions in the

composition classroom. If an activity is designed to invite students to consider alternative

ways of communicating other than speaking or writing, it is vital that we take the time to

reflect on how that activity made us feel, think, and act, and how those responses connect

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to the rhetorical issue at hand. Individual reflection will afford students a chance to come to

terms with and make connections from their own experiences, and group discussion on

those reflections will give students the chance to learn from each other, and perhaps create

additional understandings from the alchemy produced when new ideas are thrown

together. The moment of reflection, of considering what we tried to do and what took place,

is also important if only in that we, as a class, can ascertain if the experience was successful,

and how to improve or alter it in its future iterations.

To end this exploration of my teaching practices and philosophies, I would like to

include one more thought from Berding: “Again, in education not transmission and control

but invitation [and participation] is the key word” (29). As a new teacher, I hope that I will

be able to create an educational space in which students feel invited to participate, rather

than controlled or coerced. By examining several of my course documents through the

lenses of Rancière, Schwab, and particularly Berding and Dewey, I am not only able to feel

better prepared and comfortable beginning my teaching career, but I am confident that my

philosophies and practices will continue to improve over my career as I continue to read,

interact with and learn from students and colleagues, and reflect on what others are willing

to share with me.

WORKS CITED

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Berding, Joop W. A. “Towards a Flexible Curriculum: John Dewey’s Theory of Experience

and Learning.” Education and Culture XIV (1997): 24-29.

Dewey, John. “Having an Experience.” Art as Experience. New York: Perigree Books, 1934

“Five important threads in Rancière’s writing.” Museum of Education.

Educationmuseum.wordpress.com. 2 Nov 2012. Web. 11 Dec 2013.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970.

“Purposes of Education: Practices.” Philosophy of Education Wiki. College of Education,

Michigan State University. Web. 11 Dec 2013.

Schwab, J.J. “The Practical: A Language for Curriculum.” The School Review 78.1

(1969): 1-23.

Appendix A: First Day Questions

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1) What do you hope to get out of this class?

2) What do you think this class will be like?

3) Why are you in college?

4) What is your favorite game?

5) What is something you have memorized?

6) What do you do when faced with a problem?

7) Do you have a favorite television show, movie, or book? What is it?

8) How do you feel about writing?

9) What kind of writing do you do most often?

10) What is something that makes you angry?

11) What is something that makes you happy?

12) What subject(s) in school have you enjoyed?

13) What subject(s) in school have you not enjoyed?

14) What superpower would you choose to have?

15) Who or what inspires you?

16) How do you like to learn new things? By reading? Watching? Listening? Doing?

17) What do you like to do for fun?

Appendix B: Journals

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JournalsThis semester, we will write and respond to weekly journal posts.

What are the learning goals of the journals?To practice writing in a low-stakes environmentTo reflect on our lives and ourselves and ask critical questions about our beliefs and customsTo strengthen our analytical and supporting skillsTo learn more about your peers and help to build learning communities in our classroom

On Friday mornings, I will share via our Blackboard site two or three journal entry topics, and you will choose one you would like to complete. (Occasionally, when it is relevant to our coursework, a particular journal topic may be assigned to everyone.) You will post your journal entry onto your team’s Blackboard discussion board by our Wednesday night class meeting. Then, before our next Monday meeting, you will be required to respond to two of your teammates’ posts. I will also be reading and reviewing the posts and may post responses of my own. Feel free to continue the conversations on these boards as long as you like, but I will no longer be reviewing them.

Your original journal posts should be between 300 and 500 words. If you are having trouble reaching your word counts, read through what you have written and look for spots where you can add more details, get deeper into your thoughts, or answer a question beginning with “why?”

Your responses to your teammates’ posts should be between 100 and 300 words. These responses can include questions you’d like to ask your teammates, your personal reactions to their posts, or anything else you feel might enhance the conversation.

We will develop a rubric in class for evaluating these journal entries, but each original post will be awarded 0, 5, or 10 points, and each response post will be awarded 0, 3, or 5 points, based on length, effort, and thoughtfulness. I will review the posts and responses and award scores based on the rubric. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss the points you receive on a post or response. There will be 14 required journals over the course of the semester, for a total of 210 possible points for this project.

Please remember to keep these discussions professional and respectful. If you feel that any student has acted disrespectfully or in a way that disrupts learning, please report it to me immediately, and appropriate actions will be taken.

Appendix C: Argument Project

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Project 4: ArgumentWhat issue are you passionate about? What would you like to change about the world we live in? In this project, we will use all the skills we have developed throughout the semester to create effective and persuasive arguments.

However, not all audiences will find the same arguments or modes of delivery as persuasive as others, and it is our job as writers to respond to these differences. Therefore, we will analyze our audiences’ expectations and create pieces that are most likely to persuade them to agree with our position.

What will this project include? For this project, we will create three pieces, each designed to persuade a different audience of the validity of our position on an arguable issue.

We will choose our topic and our position on that topic and then identify three audiences who might disagree with our position or are undecided on the issue. We will then decide what modes of delivery (newspaper editorial, poster, brochure, website, position paper, letter to a representative, among many others) would be most effective for convincing those audiences, and create those pieces.

What kinds of issues can we discuss? The issue can be social, medical, educational, political, business-related, etc. Choose something that interests you, whether you already know a great deal about it or you have always wanted to understand it better.

Choose an arguable issue. For example, most people would agree that world hunger is a problem. What might be an arguable issue is which particular method of eradicating world hunger is the most prudent, as it’s something that different members of society (farmers, politicians, families) could disagree on.

Overall, your pieces will all argue for the side of the issue or the course of action you believe in. To do this, you will need to include and analyze research that pertains to your issue. While your final pieces may not include traditional citations, please submit a reference page for all sources used in creating your pieces.

Scope: If your issue is too broad, your pieces might be vague and unfocused. Being able to assess the constraints of your medium and adjust the scope of your argument accordingly is an important skill, both professionally and academically. Most large issues can be broken down into smaller, more concrete, and more manageable chunks. Look at some of the smaller issues within a larger issue to find an issue that is more suitable for your pieces.

After the projects are completed, any student who would like to pursue their project further is encouraged to do so; that is to say, for example, submitting a letter to a local paper or state or local representative.

The learning goals for this piece are to:

Strengthen persuasive rhetorical skillsEvaluate audience expectationsPractice composing in different modesMake arguments that are supported by evidence

Appendix D: Argument Project Activities

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Week 1010/27 Argument Project introduced and discussed

Applying SPAM to this piece Experiences to talk about communicating without words

Pictionary, charades, name that tune Reflecting on how communicating without words can be effective

What audiences might there be for your topic? What modes/genres might be convincing to the audiences? Journal 9 Response

10/29 [meet in Computer Lab A2] Researching our issue How do we integrate our research while still making an original argument?

How do we choose a topic? What makes a convincing argument?

Create rubric for Argument Project Journal 10 Post-- What topic are you going to research?

Week 11November 3

What will strong analysis look like in this piece? How will we develop our thesis for this piece? In-class debates, part 1

o Vote on parameterso Form teamso Choose issueso Research

Journal 10 Response-- What topic are you going to research?

11/5 In-class debates, part 2 Reflection on debates

o What makes for strong support and analysis?