Teaching Vision | academiclife

Vision Statement

Good Teaching? The Real Question We Should be Asking

Years ago, before I ever entered a classroom, my teaching philosophy looked something like this: teachers must integrate knowledge, research, technology, and lifelong skills in order for students to apply course material outside of their classroom. I used the phrase knowledge integration every other sentence, as if I truly understood what the concept meant on a day-to-day teaching basis. Here is a piece of honesty. That abstraction led to generalities which, for me, led to few applicable skills within the classroom; I did not fully understand all that encompassed the task of professor at that point. Technology integration was the foci of my multiple teaching philosophies at the start of my career, and while I value continually improving composition pedagogy and educational instruction, I’ve begun to ask different questions related to productive and effective classroom practices.

What question have we been asking? As Burns states, instructors should be “up to speed” in teaching. While Burns establishes this in terms of technology and digital literacy, I fear, as Burns brings up as well, we’ve made technology the central end-all solution to appropriate and engaging teaching. For me, I align more with Ehrmann, author of “Asking the Right Questions: What Does Research Tell Us About Technology and Higher Learning?” who suggests that educators are asking the wrong questions about technology and education. According to Ehrmann, we’ve been asking useless questions revolving around the search for an ideal method of technological integration in educational settings. The assumption, as he states, is that if technology is faster and more efficient, therefore everyone should be using it in classrooms. This is, in fact, an assumption. It’s a clean, neat paradigm which ignores the complexity of learning and the variety of effective classroom methodology, and as Ehrmann says, this assumption, “doesn’t define the higher education I know and love, nor the higher education revealed by research.” If we are asking and entertaining useless questions, then what is a useful question? For me, the question should be: “What is good teaching?”

What makes good teaching? It does not happen automatically. It does not happen the first day you enter a classroom. It comes from years of practice, work, trial and error, and admitting a few times (sometimes more than a few) that you need to change some classroom aspect. I will admit there were methods I used my first year as an English teacher that simply did not inspire, did not engage, and frankly, just did not work. Several methods I have used over the years have worked beautifully; regrettably, others methods did not. Just saying that requires a bit of humility. Nonetheless, I took on another year. Semester after semester my teaching improved, only because I looked at what was working within the classroom and what simply was not. That includes cutting out technology that wasn’t essentially beneficial to the content and/or adding technology when helpful to the learning process.

There still is a wave of shock that sweeps over me when I think of the positive evaluations I received my first year teaching. Sometimes I wish those same students could come back and see my classroom now. If they liked me as a teacher then, in all my beginning stages of instruction, then they would possibly love me now. Simply put, teaching takes practice. Do I use a chalkboard every now and then? Yes. Does that suggest out dated teaching? Of course not. That is essentially the wrong question, as Ehrmann concludes. Teaching is multi-faceted in a way that allows for teaching variety, various material uses, and a place for types of technology where relevant to the students, content, and context.

Therefore, this is what I believe about teaching thus far: I strive to teach students not only the content at hand, but concepts such as resiliency, innovation, and civic engagement. I am not so naïve as to believe that every aspect of what I discuss, lecture, or apply in the classroom will cling to the student’s mind for his or her lifetime; however, I do believe that each student has ingrained in his or her humanity an ability to innovate naturally, be resilient through difficulty, and engage with his or her surroundings. Call it wishful thinking, but I have seen students struggle with life circumstances that I, myself, could not imagine. Not only is it my duty to provide instruction, but to go beyond simply instructing, and create a student-centered classroom based on flexibility, adaptability, and scholarship. This may not look revolutionary or demonstrably different than my first teaching philosophy to some observers, but to me, I understand each aspect of the philosophy now, more so than ever, and I will continue to improve myself and my students’ experience within my courses.