Teaching Philosophy

Jeffrey Johnson

Me dummy, me dummy, I would say at age two mimicking my father. Even though I had no concept of the meaning at the time, my father taught me to say what I would believe about myself to varying degrees for the next twenty years. My twelve odd years in public school would reinforce this concept over and over. I was a victim of a learning model designed to make me sit still and follow directions. I couldnt sit still and I had trouble following directions. I went into hiding. I thought school was a punishment for being bad. Finally, after years of hiding in the classroom, when my parents saw that I was not learning, they decided to intervene. For the next two years, I sat with my parents at the kitchen table learning to multiply, spell, and punctuate from worksheets. Ironically, my father would tutor me in the behavioral model that I was unable to learn from, but I couldnt hide from himI had to engage and learn. What happens to those kids who dont have parents who are willing or able to fill in the gaps? What happens to those kids who dont understand whats being taught or who have already gone into hiding and have given up? What happens to the kids who arent getting filled with the information the teachers try to pour into them? Having taught high school English for eight years, and college composition for two years, Ive come to assume the position of reading, writing, listening and speaking coach. I enter this position by prioritizing the skills of reading and writing that are going to get students to reach their next levels of development. Students come to us at different developmental stages, and as a coach, I must be prepared to meet them where they are. It is my job to learn about my individual students and help them move to the next level of their proximal development. Only then can I teach students to use writing as a cognitive tool so that they learn to think critically about the world around them. Indeed, we all must teach students to write, read, and think critically, so that they can use their own unique voices and actively participate in high school, college, and the world of work. One of my major goals at all levels is to reinforce the idea that writing is as much a process of discovery as it is a product. The idea that writing is a process is opposed to the linear view that emphasizes the finished product. Instead of obsessing about the ends, we focus on the means of writing that will take the class to exciting new areas of discovery. To borrow ideas about the writing process from Donald Murray and Donald Graves, the process-oriented focus will entail learning writings recursive nature, or that the process is constantly folding back on itself. I support the recursive nature by creating writing activities so that students can visualize writing as a process that starts well before the night the paper is due. Students will do in-class free writing and respond to teacher and student created prompts while sharing what they write and think with partners. Mentor texts will be selected and provided depending on the thematic unit and genre in which we are writing. Furthermore, students will plan what they are going to write before they write, while they write, and even after they write to explore the writing processes recursive nature. While students are in the process of drafting, I often write along with the students as a model of struggle. Later, student generated coaching sessions will help writers through the writing processstudents will get advice and offer it in return, so they support each other in cooperative writing teams. The final products will be turned into a classroom portfolio that makes up just under half of their grade.

However, it is the process of revision that is emphasized by having students reflect on the multiple revisions before the portfolio is graded. This will occur with mini-lessons on the writing process dealing with the portfolio and student directed projects that explore different academic conventions. Before the portfolio is due, students will write a cover letter that encourages the writer to reflect on their own personal revision process. As students internalize writings recursive nature, the class will have a cornerstone for improvement that focuses on how meaning is created in the classroom. My second major goal is to improve student writing by introducing students to the academic discourse community. My English class focuses on the writer and readers role in constructing and creating meaning in an inter-textual world. To create meaning in the context of the classroom, we strive to be active readersstudents who vigorously analyze, interpret, and synthesize what they read. To reach this goal, students engage with rigorous text that challenges students to see the world as a text or, as Paulo Freire suggests, to read the world by reading the word. Students are taught to use reading comprehension strategies to make sense out of what they read; they predict, connect, question, visualize, interpret, use context clues, and synthesize to understand and know when they are not understanding what they read. From there, students share their thoughts with each other and the class as a whole. The texts and strategies help us build a dialogic atmosphere where students can construct meaning both individually and with others. The meaning that is generated becomes the vehicle students use to find writing topics and information to support their written claims. By becoming active readers, I demand that students work as, what David Bartholomae terms, student researchers who are able to create meaning from both the written word and the world, while having an awareness of writing within an inter-textual academic discourse community. Entering the community, students have a better chance at internalizing reading and writing strategies that create meaning through the process of discovery. Students must be shown how to discover and uncover meaning both through the process of writing and by wresting with challenging text. However, as a teacher and a coach, I must never assume that my students come to me knowing how to do this; we must show our students how to discover meaning. I suspect that a majority of my teachers wanted to fill me with information rather than show me how to make meaning out of text that I found interesting and relevant. I was lucky. I had parents who would catch me and pick me back up. However, that is not a luxury that a majority of my students have. I must show them how to discover meaning through writing and uncover meaning though active reading skills. As students become more experienced in the academic discourse community, they will be able to take on more social responsibility as they learn to think critically about the world around them. To transform the world, we should expect our students to write and read critically every day, and share their experiences with other students. As students see and hear multiple points of view and synthesize their point of view with others around them, we will create socially responsible young adults.