Professor Joe's Teaching Philosophy
I define creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. Creative work in any field often passes through typical phases. Sometimes what you end up with is not what you had in mind when you started. It's a dynamic process that often involves making new connections, crossing disciplines and using metaphors and analogies.
My teaching philosophy is a student-centered approach leveraging creativity and collaboration. Intrinsic to this approach is a conception of failure far removed from traditional definitions of failure. In the way a video gamer embraces the process of solving problems and learning from failed attempts, I see teaching writing as process of teaching students to embrace a process of prototyping, falling short, and making adjustments.
Unlike the sage-on-the-stage philosophy, where the teacher is the center of the class, my philosophy embraces an approach leveraging students as collaborators and as co-facilitators of courses.
My philosophy is exemplified through classroom practices and activities that leverage both creative and collaborative learning experiences. Students engage in extensive take-home peer reviews for every paper, allowing them space to engage as audiences and critical collaborators.
Furthermore, I also allow students to complete re-writes for every assignment after getting my feedback. They come to office hours with their new draft and the old one, and we review the new work. They can re-draft a piece multiple times, and when they come to office hours, they get a new critique offering more advice encouraging yet another draft. In order to properly serve many students, I hold more than twenty-five office hours per week. These practices (peer review and redrafting opportunities) give students more pathways to redraft papers that are often not present in more traditional writing classrooms.
In order to engage students in creative collaboration, I also use many low stakes collaborative writing opportunities. For example, my 1102 students prototype their primary research in a workshop setting evaluating each other and delivering suggestions on ways to make the research methods sounder. I also use another creative exercise where students post their research questions on the walls around the room. We then walk around and make suggestions on ways to narrow or shift the perspective of the questions.
Through modeling and collaborative writing tasks, I also promote sharing and deliver critiques of my own writing. I deliberately become highly critical of my own work and point out many shortcomings in my writing as a way of connecting students to this idea that writing is an ongoing process. I also have students collaborate in many mini-writing tasks calling them to pass their work around the room building on each other’s ideas. My Rhetoric and Civic Engagement syllabus demonstrates my commitment to creativity and collaboration.
I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.
My teaching philosophy might be best described through viewing an image: a painting by Rafael, The School of Athens. If you follow the link, you will see learning happening at all corners of the piece. Even though Plato and Socrates are depicted towards the center of the painting, all kinds of learning is taking place throughout the landscape. Learning is happening in many different ways, and this model is emblematic of the vision I have for my classroom. Matt Bryan’s evaluation of my class demonstrates my philosophy quite nicely and gives a concrete example of what my creative and collaborative classroom is like.
Most students will forget much of the information learned in classes within two years. The best lessons, then, are ones that can leverage and promote students to be active agents, active thinkers, and I believe a student-centered approach to teaching lends itself better to transfer than a sage-on-the-stage model. I believe my creative, collaborative philosophy is closely aligned with the values shared by many within UCF’s DWR.