As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. –Toni Morrison

Download this document [PDF]

My experiences as a student have indelibly shaped my values as an educator. Through my professors, I have radically changed the way I view and interact with the world. As a result of having taken their courses, realized the rather fundamental nature of narrative and rhetoric and have become more invested in the nation’s political, educational and social climate. This interest in the rhetoric and narrative surrounding political and social discourse continues to influence my teaching. In this conversation of political and social discourse, I found a place to insert my voice. I have been fortunate enough to have taught both at the secondary and post-secondary levels and consequently have had a breadth of teaching experiences in urban education. At each level, addressing my students’ difficulties in analytical thinking and writing forced me to refine my personal research and writing and become more cognizant of my teaching skills and pedagogical values. If I were to take Morrison’s advice to heart, my dream would be to assure that my students can find a way to contribute consciously and intentionally to community discourses that affect and interest them, to prepare them to be reflective, conscientious citizens and scholars. To achieve that, I center three concepts in my teaching: rhetorical awareness, writing as thinking and process and, the classroom as an inclusive space.

Rhetorical Awareness

Through my courses, I hope to help my students see that rhetorical discourse is not something that occurs solely in an English classroom. I also hope to help them see themselves as participants in community discourse. Consequently, rhetorical awareness is a central goal of my courses because, without it, students may not be able to effectively understand or participate in the conversations that occur around them. I use the interests and concerns of my students as pathways to helping them understand how the literature and theoretical pieces read in class both respond to and inform our understanding of ideas, values, and concepts. While I believe that it is crucial for students to have a grasp of the western literary and philosophical canon, I believe that it is more important to teach students the skills they would need to understand any text they encounter, rather than rigidly focusing on covering specific material. Moreover, students learn best through interactions, interactions that force them to examine their prior knowledge, participate in discourse and challenge their abilities. Ultimately, I would like to see students demonstrate their understanding, not through an encyclopedic regurgitation of Plato’s allegory of the cave, but instead through the application of the allegory as a means of reading a text. Even if that text is Cardi B’s “Money”.

An example of this in action occurred in, of my ENC 1101 classes, I assigned a visual analysis essay as a major paper. I asked that they not only describe how that piece of visual media made a persuasive argument but to critique what values and assumptions the argument made and discuss how that argument fit into a broader discussion of society’s values and norms. Many students had difficulty understanding how a single company’s advertisements had any relationship to their lives, let alone society as a whole. I could see their interest in the assignment and the class wane as I made several failed attempts to explain the interdependence of media and societal values and assumptions through sample essays and group image analysis. Finally, I remembered that this class expressed interest in Disney movies they saw in their childhood several times before, so I used The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s “Hellfire” to practice image analysis as a group in class. Using guiding questions, we discussed what the film says about good and evil and how that compared to society ‘s expectations. The drafts following this assignment were markedly better in terms of analysis, organization, and support. This experience redoubled my conviction that using student interest as a vehicle to understanding is integral to good student outcomes.

Writing as Process, Writing as Thinking

Often, students come into my classroom both convinced that they are “bad at writing” and that “good writing” is a product that can be created on a whim because of the innate talent of the writer. I aim to teach them that good writing is a process which includes planning and revision precisely because the ideas and concepts addressed therein are not necessarily well-formed before pen meets paper. Consequently, creating welcoming, inclusive, engaging, discussion orientated environments where students would be comfortable enough to challenge ideas, think critically and learn to express their opinions, no matter their stage of development, is of paramount importance. To foster discussion, I encourage students to view it as part of their writing process. Early in the semester, we complete an activity which highlights the benefits of dialectic talk. Students are asked to consider a work of art and come up with as many thought-provoking questions as possible on their own. Then they are put into groups to discuss their ideas and refine their ideas. We then discuss the effect the group discussions had on the quality of the questions and their possible answers.

To foster the writing process, I ask students to turn in topic proposals, outlines, and annotated bibliographies and to schedule at least one conference with me regarding their essay for each of the major papers. In this way, students spend a great deal of time working on their documents and refining their arguments before submission. I ask my students to peer review each other’s work which helps them see their peers as authorities in writing and argumentation in their own right. On their final draft, I ask that they complete a writer’s memo detailing what they have learned about their writing process and how they might make use of the skills and concepts learned in that unit in future writing. Often they are surprised by the progress their drafts have made. With this meta-analysis of their writing, I hope to encourage greater awareness of themselves as rhetorical beings, which will hopefully help them transfer their skills to a variety of rhetorical situations.

The Classroom as an Inclusive Space

In addition to those central concepts, I aim to make my classroom as inclusive as I can. Early in the semester, I ask students to reflect on their experience with productive and non-productive class discussions and to allow that to inform what kind of structure they would like their studies to take. I often find that this, along with repeated reminders of their conclusions throughout the semester, helps foster healthy discussion environments both within groups and as a class. We also review rules of professional communication and netiquette, which I make clear should guide students interactions with myself and their peers.

To foster accessibility to the texts examined in class, I use universal design takes a central role in lesson planning and material selection. Therefore, multiple forms of media, such as movie clips, memes, scavenger hunts and of course the texts, are built into each session. I am also careful to be sure that any resource used in class is also available online for students to access at any point during the semester. In the past, many of my students were people for whom English was not their native tongue, and this allows them to review material at their own pace. In the end, I hope the resources available to the students, coupled with class structure and content, encourage students to question narratives they find in both the texts read in class and their lives outside of the classroom.