When Im asked about my teaching philosophy, I feel like a beauty pageant contestant on stage

who is being asked about what they want, except that, in my minds eye, Im in my Spider-man
t-shirt (but with the tiara), and Im saying: world peace. Its a ridiculous image and saying
something like world peace unironically in the 21st century might be ridiculous too. But, when
Im working with my students or coaching 5th graders in baseball, thats what I really think Im
doing; I am teaching and doing the work of peace and change. Over and over, I come back to
Ihab Hassan who asked if is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?
I wonder that too.
When I started teaching at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha six years ago, I was
confident. After all, I had been teaching ESL and composition, and had been a high school
teacher too. I had years of experience. I was comfortable working with other cultures and had
worked with students from a 100 countries. I had travelled all over the world talking to and
recruiting students. I was ready, right? But I wasnt ready at all. Oh, it was true I had good
lesson plans and ideas about scaffolding and process-oriented writing pedagogy, but I wasnt
ready for the massive barriers that were in the way of my students success and learning. My
students were poor; many times they were (and are) more worried about keeping the lights on
and working to find their child healthcare than they are about my journal assignment. And
rightfully so. I found myself dealing with students traumatized by violence who suffered from
generational poverty and who had been oppressed and sometimes thrown away by the powerful
institutions in our culture. Their school experiences had not taught them to read the word and the
world in ways that enabled them to seize agency in their lives. My work with them was fraught
with fits and starts. I simply didnt know enough to give my students what they needed.
What saved me were the courses I was taking at University of Nebraska at Omaha for my
masters degree in Language Teaching. I took courses in discourse, culture, and power and
began to learn about critical pedagogies. I began to question the system that I worked in that was
meant to educate and uplift, but seemed to aggressively reinforce stratification. I was able to
look at my discourse in the classroom and to begin looking at the discourse of the classroom in
general. I am now acutely conscious of my teacher talk. Still, this isnt enough, and it wont be
enough if Im in the minority of faculty at my college who are thinking about this. I began to
wonder that, if we are a community college, then how do we teach our students to navigate the
different registers and discourses to which they often have no access? And more importantly,
how do we train teachers to be able to step into the classroom and do this work? These questions
are among the reasons that I decided to pursue a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric at the
University of Nebraska at Lincoln. My work at UNL and at MCC have intertwined together to
look at the best teaching and teacher preparation practices so that we can serve our most
vulnerable students.
One of the other things that my time at Metro has made me deeply aware of is class. I know that
class isnt talked about much in the United States and that some in our national dialogue say that
there is no social class here, just different income levels. But at Metro that lie becomes
laughable. And interestingly, I started to think back to my own background. I was the first to go
to college and my parents were decidedly working-class. In fact, a great example of this is when,
in 2001, I was telling my dad about the fellowship and scholarship I had just won to Kansas State

for my MA in English. He was happy, but confused. He said to me: I didnt think they gave
scholarships for anything but football. I was crushed, but really, he didnt know. After all, hed
been working in the same dirty print shop for 40 years.
My background, which always seemed to leave me out when I was in college or at Kansas State,
became an asset at Metropolitan Community College. My maneuvering the different layers of
class is another transferable skill. I talk explicitly with my students about the language of the
college. I remember being a freshman at UNO and not understanding the vocabulary of the
university. What was an advisor or a registrar? This work, the work of cultural literacy is what
Ive found that I must do in my classroom.
Finally, I see myself primarily as a basic writing teacher. And what Ive been doing for the last
six years in my BW classes is mixing graphic novels in with traditional books, while exploring
critical literacy and writing. Its the most successful thing Ive ever done in the classroom. My
students are making leaps in critical thinking and writing that Ive never seen before. And its
working so well that we now have five other teachers beginning to work with visual and textual
literacy in their classrooms. This space is a place that I can make a contribution to literacy
studies and basic writing that will be valuable for students. As I develop as a teacher, I hope to
be able to study different types of literacy, especially visual and textual literacy and how it
applies to Basic Writing.
My journey has really gone from denying where I come from, my class and cultural identity, to
embracing it and seeing it as part of what I can add to the world. Im still a working class kid
who loves comic books and who isnt always sure that hes moving through the levels of our
culture successfully or gracefully. But I believe that this journey is important so that I can teach
and write. Adrienne Rich wrote that language is the power to our ultimate relationship with
everything in the universe. I am a teacher/scholar who deeply believes in that statement. I
believe that my teaching and writing helps to define that ultimate relationship for students.
Teaching and writing are simple things, but not easy things. For me they are tools for social
justice and world peace.