A Teaching Philosophy: Wendy Schissel
Women's & Gender Studies,
U of S - 2002
My early experience as a high school teacher, my seeing of my sons through school and now
university, my experience as a college administrator responsible for the quality of teaching in
my institution, my fourteen years of teaching university-level classes, my experiences as a
small business owner in private, supplemental education, and my most recent experiences of
teaching on-line have impressed upon me that teaching and learning are a reciprocal, joyous,
and sometimes unnerving, but never-ending, process. The best teachers, it seems to me, are
those who know that education happens in the exchanges that occur amongst learners,
themselves included, teachers who facilitate the exchange of ideas and enthusiasm through
their own desire and excitement for life-long learning.
I have had the great good fortune since coming to the University of Saskatchewan in 1989 of
teaching for two different departments: English and, from the time of its first course
offerings as a program, Women's and Gender Studies. The former is the discipline of my
graduate education (although my dissertation was interdisciplinary: Canadian literature and
art), the latter is the post-discipline of my most exciting years of teaching. Included in all
that teaching has been a good deal of team-teaching, of the real variety not the serial kind.
Most of that cooperative instruction, I have done in English courses with Dr. Barry Popowich,
but in the most rewarding circumstance I taught an introductory course in Women's and
Gender Studies at St. Peter's College with a team of six other very talented instructors from a
wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds.
What I like best about interdisciplinary teaching is that it is so exciting when a class of
students in Women's and Gender Studies, most of whom still come from traditional
disciplines, find they have common ground, when they see that the knowledge they believe
has been discovered in their own disciplines is really just one form of the making of
knowledge particular to a temporal and cultural milieu. More exciting yet, is the planting of
the expectation in first year students that their entire university education will be as critical,
interdisciplinary, socially relevant, and lively as their first year Women's and Gender Studies
class. The challenge for an interdisciplinary teacher is that there is always so much more to
learn and so much more that can be incorporated into a curriculum. But it is not content that
motivates me as a teacher, so much as the making of the educational experience for students
one in which they will be actively engaged.
One of the tenets of feminist (and other critical) pedagogy is that the classroom - or the
virtual version thereof - must be a safe environment, one where everyone's voice counts and
mutual respect is paramount. There are two things a teacher must understand, in my
estimation, in order to establish such an atmosphere. First, and though it may take a good
deal of what feels like very limited time, the process by which a student is enabled to "claim"
her or his education must be an obvious part of the curriculum. To begin that reflective
process, we start each of my courses with a discussion of the educational experiences we
have had, good and bad, and engage in discussions of what an ideal education includes.
In order to encourage everyone's participation in classes, I have students write a weekly
"take" or a one page response to one of their readings or something else that I might assign
that is relevant to the discussion for the day. Not only are students required, on a regular
basis, to put their ideas down on paper in a succinct way, but because all my courses are
discussion-based, students subsequently read or talk their classmates through what they have
written. There are no right and wrong answers in "takes," only a working through of an idea, a
question, a delight with or an exception to the material we share. "Takes" in my classes are
not graded, but recorded toward a participation grade which I have come to believe should
always be a substantial portion of the course grade. I do, however, correct and comment on
each and every "take" with the eye of someone trained for English teaching. I also make every
effort to do a little dialoging with the student on the content of what she/he has written by
way of making the experience more personal and showing each of them in a personal way how
much I value the exercise of writing "takes." So, students get feedback every week on their
writing; they come to see what their particular problems in expressing themselves are and
can work toward correcting those concerns for writing across disciplines. Fundamental to
students' success in the academy is their facility with language, written and oral. Sometimes,
a student will write a second and unsolicited "take" for me on the same material as the first
"take" but from the hindsight of class discussion. Since I began assigning "takes," I have found
my classes are more student-centred and never short of discussion. I have also found that the
"takes" work to promote a more intensive, creative, and caring exchange amongst students
when used as a basis from which to begin group work or projects. In my classrooms, I
endeavour to encourage students to be peer teachers and teachers of their teacher.
The second and related thing that I believe is needed to create a safe environment where the
exchange of ideas can occur is that a teacher must let go of the need to control, to always be
the "authority" on the content or over the conduct of the class. The need for absolute control
and authority are, to me, counterproductive to effective pedagogy. An interdisciplinarian can
never be an authority on everything she teaches: for example, it is clear to me when I teach
feminist art history how much more I have to learn about art history and that I can never have
the insights that an artist in my class might have. When the teacher makes room for the
knowledge that students bring to classes - and they all bring unique knowledge even when
they are not aware that they have it - she encourages listening, and through listening the
recognition that all our ideas are limited by our experiences.
I have also learned that while I may teach the same material many times, the way in which it
is taken up changes with every group of students. I have come to appreciate that in some
ways I do not know, going into a class, just what exciting (and sometimes troubling) things
can happen. I taught many teachers of children in my business, and the first thing I imparted
to them was my "5 R's" of instruction, the most important two of which are relaxation and
rejoicing (laughing a lot with students!). I think relaxation is the single most difficult thing for
a teacher, but when she talks less, feels herself less "on stage," and students (of any age) talk
more, there is more space for active and participatory learning on everyone's part. I do not
think that we should underestimate the power of laughter to help students relax, either. I
think I will always remember a WGST summer school student who had child care
arrangements that made her 15 minutes late for every class courses telling the class that she
could never remember the room number but found the class by listening for the laughter!
Another way in which we help our students understand our humanity as teachers is to err on
the side of trusting them and, to the extent that it is possible, accommodating them. Women
students, particularly, can come to classes with concerns that make learning more
challenging. I have had women bring their children to classes when their childcare has failed
them or if they are nursing a baby. As a teacher of Women's and Gender Studies courses,
especially, I feel that I must work to create the kind of space that feminist pedagogy scholars
have said has been for the most part absent in universities. The nature of the material we
cover is also so often of such a personal nature for women students that it is not unusual to
have someone begin to cry or to rage a little: handling these things is a challenge, but I think
they are a necessary part of moving the personal into the political. Feminist teaching is about
two things: first, critiquing society and its cultural artifacts, including the theories produced
in the academy even by feminists; and second, taking action beyond the classroom. More than
anything else, teaching is to me a profoundly important form of activism.
I challenge even first year students to create their own term papers or projects (and I have
had some wonderful art projects rather than essays) knowing they will work best on what
they are interested in or angry about. I encourage them to do community-related projects. I
encourage them to work together for their term papers or projects, in order that they might
learn from each other, while recognizing how limited their time is. I have always tried to
make myself as available to them as I can by phone or e-mail after hours because I recognize
how complex the lives of students have become, again especially women studentsà lives, but
also because I have done a good deal of teaching out of town.
While I know that extension teaching is not for everyone, I delight in it! There is so much
reward in working with students who are learning at a distance, and that reward just got
bigger for me. Writing the on-line and independent studies versions of WGST 110.6 was much
more of an undertaking than I expected, but it has been refreshing for me as a teacher in
several ways. I had to think about how to encourage participation of the kind that I try to
encourage in the classroom. As it turns out in the teaching of the on-line and independent
studies courses, the weekly short writing exercises, or "takes," keep students on track and in
touch. Students e-mail their writing to me, I proof it on screen with the track changes
feature, and send it back to them with my comments. Again, the assignments are not graded,
but students' thoughtful completion of them constitutes the participation part of their final
grade. What I want these and all my students to understand is that I see myself as the
facilitator to their learning at all kinds of levels.
From my time in the classroom and from the experiences that my own children have had in
classrooms from kindergarten to university, I know how important the teacher is to student
engagement and success. One study at an American university revealed that the majority of
students chose their majors based on their experiences in their classrooms. Teaching is a
social contract. Sometimes, through the years, I have found the responsibility that social
contract implies to be intimidating, but always I find it rejuvenating!