Teaching Philosophy The key concept around which everything else orbits in my writing courses, aside from the

act of writing itself, is context. When teaching, I am constantly shifting between contexts. My students are likewise frequently considering new contexts, many of them at once. Alongside the discussion of what exactly is rhetoric, we discuss what terms we will be using in the course, what they mean within the context of the course, and why we have them. As a method of negative definition to accompany the terms contextual definitions, we discuss alternative definitions these terms might hold in other contexts. My teaching process is informed by a variety of important theories, including feminist and post-process. The theory that most informs my practice is that of critical pedagogy, as evidenced in the work of Ira Shor and Paul Freire. As we move in and out of various contexts in the classroom, shifting from module to module and topic to topic, I am careful to keep my students focused, in the moment, and aware. I work to keep them aware not only of their role in the classroom, but of their implicit agency in the university and in the world in which the university is situated. In Composition I, students acclimate themselves and their body of knowledge to the university, much like Bartholomaes concept of a students negotiation with academic writing (Inventing the University). As we cater to the ever-changing culture and new technologies that engulf students lives in the present and more so in the future, students bring a new knowledge base to the classroom, much of which falls into the shared space between the spheres of what they know and what we know. Before entering into First-Year Composition, most students are already aware of gradients of tone and stance, as well as various mediums and genres. They know the difference between a resume and a text message, and they know to address their boss differently from their best friend. What they dont know is that the knowledge they already possess is in many cases synonymous with the information we are using and sharing at the university. Thus, Composition I is a time to incorporate students knowledge with our academic knowledge, and codify it in such a way that they feel confident using what they know in the academic context, and we feel confident in sharing ideas with them from our knowledge banks. Consequently, Composition II is a time to encourage students to actualize their grounding in the academic community by not just using what they already know, but improving those skills with accuracy, efficiency, and expertise. If they can do all of this and simultaneously recognize their agency in the classroom and thus their implied agency in the university and the outside world, then my Composition II course has been a success.