1Joseph Thurmond

ENG-683-O
Dr. Shana Hartman
10 December 2016
Philosophy of Teaching Writing

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You could say that I feel like an unseasoned chef applying for a job to instruct at a
culinary school, or a lieutenant heavily pondering his qualifications to be a major. In other words,
Im contemplating my philosophy of teaching even though I havent taken any education classes
and am not considering teaching now or anytime soon. Im simply not a teacher...yet. While I
dont consider myself ready to guide young, impressionable minds about how to write and
recognize what I perceive as good writing, I dont believe this career path is impossible for me. I
can and will be an English professor someday, especially after considering unfamiliar teaching
approaches and methods over the past few months. I uphold the importance of thoughtful
criticism of media; I love pushing others to use their unique voices in their professional
vocations and personal lives. I hold dear the impact that new media especially video games
can have in allowing others to learn about and see writing in new lights. With these goals in
mind, it drove me to construct a basic yet confident proclamation of what I would value as a
teacher of writing.
Modeling has heavily influenced me. As a co-leader of the University of North CarolinaCharlottes Writing Project and an English instructor since 2000, Cynthia Urbanski writes about
how teachers can forget to come down from the high ground they naturally occupy. They are
those who have come before, if you will, and seemingly have all the knowledge and wisdom
about writing that a student could ask of them. I have felt this way with some teachers, even
when they dont purposefully embrace this image. It just comes from being a teacher, but making
the effort to read and write alongside students as peers is a relationship that should be fostered
(Urbanski 26). Its about adopting a humble approach that builds trust and community,
showing students that youre imperfect and dont have all the answers. You reveal your process
work on class assignments, talk about your own writing mistakes and struggles, and reach out for

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students feedback and ideas (27). Teaching isnt sitting behind a desk and giving lectures just
hoping students will listen. Its about engagement by provoking personal interaction with critical
discussion, and students will zone out if this isnt honest and sincere (Kirby and Crovitz 168).
You have to give meaning to this by personally relating to students and their interests as fellow
human beings on the road of life because were all learning together. For me to pretend like I
have everything sorted out would be nothing but a shabby ruse. However, this humility doesnt
mean I would downplay my authority, experience, and accomplishments in the classroom. Its
good to be open, but being confident in what I teach with an evident, long-lived passion and wit
for writing is still possible. It just shouldnt come with a superiority complex. Historys greatest
leaders are those who lead with conviction and wisdom, while remaining eager to work
alongside and be receptive to their followers. Its the same with students. They arent objects to
be spoken at, but individuals to be spoken with. We learn from each other (Kirby and Crovitz
274).
This is how I would treat my students personally, but process writing is what would guide
my teaching. Its a matter of focusing on the act and, well, the process of writing rather than the
end product. It may seem like a simple distinction, but it alters the position of the teacher from
being self-centered to student-centered. It engages students more critically with the actual
content of their work rather than pleasing the teacher with superficial formatting, polish,
organization, and so forth. If a student can produce wonderful writing with a reasonable process
(i.e. has some semblance of common organization, formatting, etc.) that differs from my own or
is even unexpected, thats all that matters. Of course, those superficial things have their time
and place, but as the old saying goes, it shouldnt be about style over substance. The latter is
what process writing promotes (Anson 216). This fights against the current-traditional camp

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arguing that good writing is primarily correct, well organized, and stylistically appealing (215).
Writing is more than this, since horrific examples I could cite in journalism, literature, and what
have you have proven the opposite. While its best to avoid having readers sift through poor
organization or presentation, content is what they come for, and if you shirk this category for
style, you wont leave lasting legacies of writing. Process writing is about prompting students to
develop self-efficacy, confidence, and strategies for meeting the challenges of multiple writing
situations (226), and I believe thats increasingly important in our interconnected world. Writing
doesnt exist in a bubble where were graded and formatting essays and papers our whole lives
with individual, academic standards. Writing is diverse and amorphous. Anything and everything
can happen with what types of writing are expected of us, and process writing is a means to
adequately prepare for this by cultivating the voices, creativity, and critical thinking of students
to write not for me alone (the teacher), but for themselves and their future. Its why I believe
areas such as creative writing and expository writing are such marvelous ways to accomplish
this, and I hope to specialize in either of those areas so I can appropriately push students by
preparing them to think and write in multiple environments while retaining and adapting their
own creativity (Kirby and Crovitz 304). By taking one story from a novel, students can learn
how to add a new chapter, rewrite it, tell it in their own way or an unfamiliar style, craft their
own tale in the authors style, and so forth. These are basic examples of assignments leading to
different ways of thinking, and while some students may think that most writing ends when
school is over, its a lifelong practice in countless ways. We are enveloped in it whether we think
so or not because our lives are stories. With process writing, I hope to open students minds to
the richness and possibilities of taking writing seriously. Their own lives are vast chronicles that
can benefit from it in penning journals, emails and letters, or books and articles (307-308).

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However, in an age of great transition and technology, Im a personal advocate for the
roles of new media and digital literacy. I believe bringing non-traditional texts such as movies,
video games, and web comics into the classroom allow students to channel and hone the ways in
which they communicate through a medium theyve known for most if not all of their lives. To
not utilize the ways in which they think differently with media and social spaces today would be
ignorant of the changing tides of communication. Of course, literature is the basis of English for
teaching writing for obvious reasons, but allowing students to think about these things in their
language, so to speak, allows them to expand how they view, interpret, and even appreciate
traditional texts in new ways. Mental flexibility and critical abilities can be gained from this
mixed approach to content in the modern classroom (Kirby and Crovitz 295). It could be seen as
a means to practice academic initiation, which I believe is a key tenet of general writing since it
follows a process of providing relevant topics and interests to students, engaging in those things
critically, and then letting students infuse their personal views into their writing to create their
own unique, academic works (Mutnik and Lamos 24). Im also more than willing to experiment
with activities, assignments, and texts that bring my classroom into the digital age while tying in
traditional texts and methods because, from personal experience, teachers who have bridged the
past and future together created classes I remember and benefitted from the most. For example,
using Twitter as a means for students to embody characters from a novel (by impersonating them
with accounts and interacting with fellow students as other characters) is a wonderful means to
adopt different writing styles, think critically about how characters are designed, and practice
how to use social media in clever, creative manners.
Modeling. Process Writing. New Media. If I were to encompass my teaching philosophy
in a few words, these are what I would choose. Having been exposed to so little though, Im still

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open to changing my positions on how to approach and construct the teaching I would live out,
but I imagine Ill remain generally consistent with the views I present here. So, with my love of
writing and video games, will I ever teach a class on cultivating creative writing by studying and
experiencing video game narratives? Might I advocate for engaging entertainment media with
thoughtful, contemplative criticism through persuasive writing? Perhaps Ill construct a
comparative class with video games and literature, tasking students to analyze and contrast the
post-apocalyptic themes of The Last of Us and The Road, or BioShock and Ayn Rands Atlas
Shrugged? The options are ready and available, but tackling them will be for another day.
All in all, I want students to think for themselves. I want to guide students to pursue
passions and novel ideas in any of my classes that go beyond or relate to what we cover about
writing. C. S. Lewis helped me realize this in a different way. He talks about how culture can
permeate education and shape it to prize specific subjects and performance from students,
forcing them to conform to outdated, unrelatable desires and standards for good grades and
recognition. However, rebellion and deviation must be allowed if it stems from an intellectual,
reasoned place. The voices of students should not be encouraged to adopt what the culture of
education respects, but what they naturally outpour in being true to themselves, and if thats
possible in conjunction with learning the intricacies, beauty, and relationships of traditional and
non-traditional texts, I would be fulfilling my self-perceived purpose as a teacher of writing.
The highest things have the most precarious foothold in our nature. By making sanctity
or culture a moyen de parvenir you help to drive them out of the world. Let our masters
leave these two, at least, alone; leave us some region where the spontaneous, the
unmarketable, the utterly private, can still exist (48).

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Works Cited
Anson, Chris M. Process Pedagogy And Its Legacy. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, 2nd
ed. Oxford University Press, 2014. pp. 212-230.
Kirby, Dawn and Darren Crovitz. Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing. 4th ed.,
Heinemann, 2013.
Mutnik, Deborah and Steve Lamos. Basic Writing Pedagogy. A Guide to Composition
Pedagogies, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2014. pp. 20-36.
Urbanski, Cynthia D. Using The Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom.
Corwin Press, 2006.