Laurie Cubbison
Teaching Philosophy
As
a teacher, I consider myself both a writer and a rhetor, and I see my role as
teaching others how to be writers and rhetors as well. In using the word rhetor,
I recall Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as “the ability to see the
available means of persuasion” in any situation, to understand and perform acts
of communication through writing. Knowledge of how to communicate is one of the
most powerful forms of knowledge in the world. No matter how much one knows, if one cannot communicate that knowledge, one is powerless
to affect the world. That is perhaps my most fundamental philosophy, not only
as a writer, but also as a teacher. If I as a teacher cannot
communicate my knowledge to students, then I am powerless, and I gauge my
ability to communicate my knowledge to students by gauging the extent to which
their ability to communicate increases while under my tutelage. This
principle applies whether I am teaching English 101 or 102 or whether I am
teaching graduate students how to teach writing. I want the graduate students
to understand that the act of teaching is an act of communication, and the same
principles that their 101 and 102 students learn also apply to how they teach.
As such, I am always aware of my students as an audience that I must persuade
to value what I teach.
My objective
My
objective as a teacher is for students to see writing as action in the world,
not just an assignment in the classroom. Although the nature of the university
is such that students will write, and teachers will read and grade, I believe
that assignments can be developed which encourage students to write to and for
people outside the classroom setting, for the students’ own goals, with the
teacher serving as a secondary or even tertiary reader for the students’ texts,
providing such guidance as may allow students to achieve their goals in
communicating with these other readers.
Course Preparation
Each
time I prepare a course I think first of what I want my students to know and do
by the end of the term. Since most of my courses are writing courses, I develop
a set of criteria for the course—a successful student in this course will be
able to…. – and then accompanying criteria for each assignment. As I clarify for myself what I want students
to learn, I then develop the assignments the students will carry out. Each
assignment is designed to support the objectives of the course as developed by
the department but also to build from prior courses and assignments and towards
subsequent assignments and courses. The first assignment of the course assesses
the skills and knowledge the students bring to the course. The second leads the
students into the new territory of the course and sets them up for increasingly
more complex assignments later in the semester. In my English 102 course, for
instance, the various papers and journal entries of the first half of the
semester present students with the skills and concepts they will use as they prepare
their major research project. Students find that the work they’ve already done
continues to be useful. A project isn’t completed and forgotten, but rather it
serves as the basis for the next project.
As I write assignments, I also write the supporting materials that will lead students through the process of carrying out the assignments as well as the criteria by which each assignment will be graded. I believe that many teachers give assignments but do not teach students how to do them. Those students who figure them out on their own will get A’s; those who can’t figure them out will not do well in the class. I prefer to make at least some degree of success possible for all my students, even those who come least prepared to write at the university level. I feel strongly about this for my first-year composition students, in particular, as what they learn about writing in my class will have a direct effect on the rest of their college careers. As a result, I break the major projects down into various assignments that teach students to think and write in the ways required by the projects. Students who do all of these supporting assignments are better equipped to write the projects and, I hope, better equipped for their future writing situations outside my course.
Mentoring graduate students
One
of the most important aspects of my job is the work I do to prepare our
graduate teaching fellows to teach English 101 and 102. As coordinator of the
English department’s GTF mentoring program, I match GTF’s to their faculty
mentors as well as planning the program meetings in which the program’s faculty
and GTF's gather to discuss effective ways of teaching writing. I also teach
English 651, Teaching Expository Writing, the course intended to introduce
graduate students to the theory and practice of composition studies. Although in the past this course has been
limited to GTF's, I’ve encouraged other graduate students in English to take
this course. Given that many of our M.A.
students will teach either at the college or secondary level after they finish
their degrees (regardless of whether they hold RU teaching fellowships), I feel
that we are obligated, for their own sake and the sake of their future
students, to educate them as teachers, not just as scholars. I feel that one of the best things I can do
for them is to serve as a model of good teaching, just as my mentors did for me
when I was a graduate student.