Who am I as a Writing Teacher?

Who do I want to be as a teacher?

I am getting closer and closer to my year of student teaching, then graduation, and finally my hopeful first year of teaching.  As I get closer to reaching my future goals a reflection is necessary.  For my Foundations of Teaching Writing course we are writing reflections on what we feel is the most effective approach to teaching writing.  Instead of the traditional academic format I have decided to take the blogger route and see if it’s less rigid format allows me to analyze my philosophy of teaching in a new way.

For each post I will ask myself a different question and hopefully begin to see patterns in my philosophy.  If no pattern emerges, then I must be destined to become the scattered brain teacher that all students dread! And I can’t have that! ;)

The first question I want to ask of myself is; how do I want my students to view me as a teacher of writing?

I want my future students to see me as someone who loves writing and wants to show them why I love writing. I want to be a model for my class; I don’t want to just stand in the front and inform them of how best to write down their ideas, but show them how I write down my own ideas and help them understand that the writing process is different for everyone.  In one of the informal responses for our class I stated that, “Helping students understand that the teacher goes through the same writing process that they go through will help them become more confident in their own writing.”  If a student sees that writing can take many different forms and that there is no set way of writing carved in stone for all to follow then they will feel able to experiment with their own writing.  Also, if a student sees their teacher as a fellow learner instead of just a teacher, they can more easily see comments as helpful suggestions and not personal critiques. 

Paul Rogers discusses the importance of modeling writing in the classroom.

I also want my students to see me as helping them learn the best way that they write and then developing their individual style of writing.  Learning my own writing style and voice helped developed my own love of writing and helped to expand my writing skills.  In my 5 day Unit Lesson Plan on Freytag’s Structure I stated that, “I began to love writing(academic and creative) when I was able to find my own writing voice, by extending this lesson I hope to show my students how voice and style can change how they write and how they feel about writing.”  Writing is not just stating an argument in a formulaic essay for other academics to read; writing is personal, creative, stylistic, and influential.  I want my students to see that whether I am writing an incident report at work or a Petrarchan sonnet, my writing is always stylistically my own. 

I want my students to see me as a teacher that values individual thought and individual style.  My focus is not on a one size fits all formula of writing, but on experimentation and development of each students own unique writing voice.  All students need to learn how to write an argumentative academic essay, but that does not mean that all of our students should sound exactly the same.  For students to enjoy writing they need to have a personal connection with the writing, and that’s what I hope to develop in my class.