Week 11, Post 1: What I Wanna Say Is

Flesh out your teaching philosophy a bit more for part 1 of the portfolio. (Feel free to draw on the quick-writing that we did in class.)  Bring 4 hard copies to class.

If philosophy means my general orientation or viewpoint about reading and writing, and the way I hope to help students, I'd say I'm an expressivist-cognitivist.  I found my passion for reading and writing by doing plenty of "outside" reading and journaling in high school.  In this much, at heart I'm an expressivist.  I learned to assume a more formal style for essays and research papers, paying attention to form as well as content.  In this sense, I'm an objectivist.  I find placing a text in historical context adds many layers of additional meaning to it, so delving into context is useful, though not nearly as important as other aspects like the author's intention and  the reader's schema.  Given the time and resources, such social studies can be fascinating, but it's hard to justify that time spent with so many other pressing priorities; thus, only incidentally would I call my philosophy socio-cultural.

* It essential to honor the student's own schema, rather than foisting one correct meaning of a text.

* It's vital to engage the student in meaningful experiences with language -- as personal and usable as possible.

* It's important to give the student a great variety of opportunities to read (magazine articles, hypertext, fiction, nonfiction) and to write (personal narrative, descriptive essay, argumentative essay).  It's equally important to give students the chance to read books of their own choosing (for pleasure) and to write "low stakes" pieces, such as free writing and non-graded journals.

*While I generally favor an expressivist approach, like B &P, I would employ pre-reading discussions and post-reading comprehension questions to ensure the basic points are clear.

*While I admire McCormick's socio-culture angle, I prefer B & P's reading/writing saturation approach, which doesn't allow much time for the historical study of the structure of power and the plight of the victims.  However, as a matter of respect to all students and all cultures that they represent, there should be some lesson(s) on the erroneous misinterpretations of SE as the superior dialect, and an acknowledgement of all dialects as honorable and valid.

*It seems crucial to integrate reading and writing (I still need to understand this better).