Teaching is about seeing where students stand on the rungs of their own personal learning ladders, helping them picture the next rung, and facilitating their motivation and ability to reach it. It’s about being there, through the process theorists call scaffolding, to steady the ladder as it wobbles. It’s about giving students a vision of where the ladder leads and instilling in them the confidence to keep climbing. I want students to better understand the complex nature of the writing process, the many factors which can influence it, how the process of writing is a means of learning, and that they have the right and the ability to take charge of their own learning.
The foundation for my philosophy is knowledge transfer studies; transfer is the premise upon which education is built. Thus, metacognitive opportunities like reflective activities are a key tool in my scaffolding efforts in both formal and informal formats. These include discussions, journal entries, interactive online forum posts, or more kinesthetic activities where students move around the room to “vote with their feet” or walk through a “gallery” where they paste notes on posters containing reflective prompts. One in-class critical thinking activity I like is to ask students to create advertisements for a new laundry detergent where the audience is people who identify as college men. This forces students to consider unexamined stereotypes and how those stereotypes might influence their interactions and communications. Informal activities like these not only encourage students to think more critically, but they also help me formatively assess their understanding of course objectives.
My multi-modal emphasis allows me to guide students to find and communicate clearly with the tools that best fit their audience’s needs, recognize the persuasiveness of the communications that surround them, and use the learning styles that best suit them. I feel it is important to follow National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) standards that call for college students to think critically about the modes of communication which influence them, the types of communication they will use in their professions, and the power of that communication to create knowledge. I teach the importance of treating technology as a useful tool but ask students to understand its constraints and investigate their assumptions about it. They demonstrate their understanding through writing reflections with prompts asking them to consider the differences between being producers and consumers of technology; they also demonstrate understanding in the choices they make to create ePortfolios.
I offer the following as further examples of my multimodal pedagogy: I incorporate multi-modal learning opportunities at various stages of the writing process, using a non- or partially-alphabetic element for many assignments, especially for the brainstorming/invention stage. My students investigate various media for research projects. I ask them to visually create what some in the field call loopwriting to represent the messiness and recursive nature of research processes. Discussions and small group interactions play a major role in my classes. Students turn their writing into oral presentations with an understanding of the importance of visual design principles as well as how to effectively engage and direct audience attention. Small group interactions like team projects are key characteristics of my classes, but I offer explicit readings, directions, and timely oversight about interpersonal interactions. Peer feedback, a small group interaction, has great potential, but not if students offer shallow or inaccurate feedback. So, I first discover what their prior peer feedback experiences have been. I create prompts that allow students to respond as authentic readers rather than “editors.” I review and discuss the feedback they offer each other. I see students learn together from such student-generated texts in a relevant, authentic experience. They also learn from robust discussions with the same sort of oversight. I have done research in discussion and interpersonal interactions, and my students of all levels benefit from my expertise in these areas.
I like seeing the final products my students produce as they rise to meet a challenge, and I can adapt assignments when I see opportunities for learning. An example of this type of challenge is a proposal writing assignment I modified as a response to listening to student discussions in the Business and Technical Writing Course I taught for Des Moines Community College (DMACC). It began as a book exercise encouraging students to write proposals about parking lot safety issues. Upon hearing the students brainstorm, I found that several students had suggestions for improving the actual parking situation on campus—more compelling and relevant concerns than those the book suggested. So I asked them to write proposals as small groups, addressing actual parking lot concerns. The students asked me if they could actually send their proposals to the college president. I decided that might be a good way to facilitate their rhetorical education about invention, audience, tone, and other course objectives. Rather than approach the president, though, I had them craft their proposals to the safety officer of the school; out of these documents we created one class proposal to send. The safety officer came to our class to discuss the students’ ideas; he accepted their feedback and offered explanations for issues they had not had the background to consider. It was a meaningful activity where students felt that their voices were heard, and they had a real-world goal for their communication task. I enjoy seeing assignments meet students where they are, challenge them, and encourage them to work outside the walls of the classroom. My grading and feedback on assignments encourage students to learn professional ways of organizing thoughts and expressing themselves clearly and with detail; I also lead them to think about the relevance of their coursework to other assignments and to their future careers, targeting areas where they need to improve for communication effectiveness.
These examples illustrate how my research, experience, and education have informed my approach to my curricula. My work as a teacher/researcher allows me to more mindfully develop classroom practices that facilitate meaningful learning; in short, I’m the reflective practitioner I challenge my students to be. I adjust lesson plans to address questions and needs; I adjust course curricula from semester to semester. Each semester is an adventure with new students’ unique worldviews, past experiences, and voices. They need to challenge assumptions about themselves as writers, composers, readers, and thinkers and about others (including me) as collaborators as they take advantage of the opportunity to climb.