Teaching Philosophy Rev 8 2021

Philosophy of Teaching
The way I approach teaching is an ever-evolving practice, based on first-hand experiences in

my career, and my academic approaches to usability, accessibility, and social justice, all of
which relate to my teaching of professional, digital, and first-year writing environments. I
continually change my teaching strategies based on student input and evolving research in the
teaching of writing. I strive to make my classroom an open-communicative space, safe for all
identities. I have included inclusive statements within my syllabi, and practice these statements
in my teaching approaches in the classroom, to create a welcoming space for all.
Stemming from theories of inclusion (Price, 2011; Freire, 1968; Dolmage,2017; Ahmed 2012)
and social justice within technical communication (Banks, 2008; Baker-Bell, 2017; Cherry,
2019), my teaching reflects ways of writing and communication are multifaceted approaches
requiring a commitment to accessibility, usability, and social justice.
Writing as ethical and critical inclusion: Ethics, according to Weaver (2017), is a blending of
the cultural and critical. As such, I work to integrate both cultural and critical work within my
teaching of writing, particularly in how I bring in contemporary cultural artifacts, such as a TikTok
video, to demonstrate how critical discourse stems from our everyday cultural artifacts. These
events also help students identify writing as a multimodal practice, along with a social and
cultural practice, which leads students toward critically reflective practices. Additionally, critical
thinking and cultural discourse is innately layered within the courses I teach, as professional
writing courses present students with real-life professional artifacts or scenarios they must
respond to. For example, a favorite activity of mine is to look at companies whose social media
posts have gone viral for all the wrong reasons. I encourage students to think collaboratively
about how these companies could respond in more ethical ways, and create responses that
they could then share with valued stakeholders. Furthermore, this also helps students identify
the rhetorical practices within everyday communication.
Writing as user-experience: Incorporating my knowledge of online writing environments,

shown specifically in my research on online writing instruction (OWI) and user-experience (UX)
methodologies, I create spaces for students that are as usable and accessible as possible. In
the space of any Learning Management System (LMS), such as Canvas, Blackboard, or
Moodle, students are users, and creating a user journey that fits their needs is one of my
primary concerns. In online writing instruction, I organize content within modules, by project or
by week. To explain assignments and concepts, I create short one to three minute videos along
with written content. I design writing assignments with accessibility and document design at the
forefront. Further, I recognize that not I may not have anticipated all student needs and to do so
is nearly impossible (Hamraie, 2017). But in realizing the needs I did not anticipate, I find ways
of improving the user-experience design (UXD) of my classroom and online spaces. In making
changes, I encourage conversation over issues of accessibility and disability, which moves the
discussion of disability away from the individual student, and moves that discussion more
towards social and cultural attitudes surrounding disability (Price, 2011). When this happens,
issues of ethics, culture, and inclusion all come together, creating a more collaborative
pedagogical experience for all.
References
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University
Press.
Baker-Bell, A. (2017). For Loretta: A Black Woman Literacy Scholar’s Journey to Prioritizing
Self-Preservation and Black Feminist–Womanist Storytelling. Journal of Literacy Research,
49(4): 526–43.
Banks, A.J. (2006). Race, rhetoric, and technology: searching for higher ground. Routledge.
Cherry, M. ed (2019) Recognize: design anthology. https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-

design/category/recognize/.
Dolmage, J. (2017). Academic ableism disability and higher education. University of Michigan
Press.
Freire, P. (1968). Pedagogy of the oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Hamraie, A. (2017). Building Access Universal Design and the Politics of Disability. University of
Minnesota Press.
Inoue, A.B. (2015). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies teaching and assessing writing for a
socially just future.
Price, M. (2011). Mad at school rhetorics of mental disability and academic life. University of
Michigan Press.
Weaver, R.M. (2017). The ethics of rhetoric. Muriwai Books

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Philosophy of Teaching

The way I approach teaching is an ever-evolving practice, based on first-hand experiences in

Writing as user-experience: Incorporating my knowledge of online writing environments,

Cherry, M. ed (2019) Recognize: design anthology. https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-

Weaver, R.M. (2017). The ethics of rhetoric. Muriwai Books

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