Bee
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy has been evolving around my teaching experiences in different
contexts. By reflecting from my teaching experiences, I have come to a working definition of
teaching as a dynamic process of educating students and learning from them as well. With my
unique lenses as a second language compositionist and an applied linguist, I believe that I can
contribute to students’ learning in multiple perspectives.
From the second language compositionist perspective, I believe in unique perspectives
students bring into the classrooms; they should be empowered and reflected on their experiences.
As an example, students in my composition classes are writing about their significant moments
in their lives through poetry writing projects. Students start the projects by drawing their lifelines
and listing down their important moments in their lives. Then they write down description of
those significant moments. Using poetry writing, not only students, especially ESL students,
have a chance to play with language, they also learn to write in a new genre in creative ways.
I also employ different techniques by focusing on students’ sensory systems such as
using sound effects and scented candles. By using scented candles, classrooms have transformed
into a safe space for students to write about their experiences. By asking them eliciting their
personal experiences, not only students have their motivation to learn how to write, it also allows
them to write about issues they are passionate about. By assigning this project, students come to
see and value the ownership in their own works in a concrete format – their poetry books. With
ownership in mind, students will invest their time and effort in composing works they are
assigned to accomplish.
Besides students’ perspectives, I also believe in experiential learning. To prepare students
to write for upper division classes, students in my first year composition classes--both
mainstream and ESL classes--are required to write a mini research paper with a minimum of 12
pages. At first students are very worried about the page length requirement because they have not
written as long as this paper. I scaffold my writing activities I ask them to write in chunks and in
multiple drafts. They also have multiple chances to share their works with others by talking
about and giving comments on each other’s drafts. By the end of the semester, some students
finish their research papers with over 14 pages.
Bee
With my teaching experiences both in Thailand and in the United States, I embrace
diversity in classrooms including cultural diversity, students’ learning styles, and strategies. As I
stated earlier, students bring in with them perspectives that are valuable to themselves and others,
I design my teaching by incorporating discussions into every class. By doing so, students will
have a chance to not only share their drafts to others; they will also have an opportunity to
interact with other classmates through speaking. Students will be asked to work individually;
sometimes they are asked to discuss in groups before reconvening as a whole class discussion.
This will give a chance to every student voice out and value each other’s opinions.
As an applied linguist, I value students’ contributions to the classroom. In composition
classrooms, students are not only assigned to write their papers, students always have to present
their work in front of the whole class. With my public relations and advertising background, I
personally believe that public speaking and giving presentation is an activity that students should
have a chance to practice and perform in every classroom. Students are required to perform an
academic presentation at the end of the semester. If they choose not to participate in the
academic format, creative performance will be encouraged. By the end of the poetry book
project, students will have a chance to present their poems. Some students perform their poetry
reading by dressing up or act out their poetic performance.
Another aspect of my teaching is that I design my classrooms as a collaborative
community. Peer review and multiple drafting will also be modeled and will be included as main
activities in class. This will help students learn how to give constructive feedback on their peers’
papers. When students are asked to do peer responses, I always instruct students to respond to
questions such as “What do they want to learn more about this topic?” “How does it change the
meaning if you…?” By employing these questions, students will give constructive feedback, not
only mechanic comments, to their peers for future revisions. In students’ reflections, students
write that they learn from others students through feedback they received during the peer
response activities in class.
As I have discussed my teaching philosophy, I have come to develop my passion of
teaching and learning with students. Teaching with passion and multiple perspectives gives my
students a meaningful experience that contributes to their own learning. With sincere enthusiasm
and passions, students will connect their learning in meaningful ways.