Teaching Philosophy

Teaching has been my passion for a long while now as I have entered the halls of this institution—Missouri Western State University. I have grown immensely over my tenure as an undergraduate and graduate and as a first-year teaching assistant. My eyes have been opened before me as I have encountered the love of their passion who has both challenged me as a student, as an individual and finally, that of a humanist.

I have learned that a letter grade means nothing—even as a teaching assistant. Who cares if an individual receives an A or a C—what real growth is founded? How one critically thinks and analyzes a situation, an experience, is where the real knowledge lies. Though it is not enough to be knowledgeable in one area, we must be willing to explore all areas, all avenues of life. We must challenge the societal norm—even that in which we live within—before we conceive our own finding, our own rationale. It is with that that I invite criticism and controversy within the walls of my classroom where I too may be challenged and pushed to my limits.

It is my goal as a teaching assistant to push students to their limits. With that in mind, they have to be willing to venture forth and embark on a journey of questioning. That is one thing I ask of all of my students—don’t rest until we find absolute truth. Be open-minded in this society where it encourages mindless pawns to go about their business, not to question authority. It is exactly what our country does not want—for us to become our own subjects of truth and of knowledge. Question authority. Conduct our own research. Go after what we want, but do so rightfully. Educate ourselves in the riches of education and literature and in the texts that seek to challenge our cultural myths. For if we are not willing to do so, we become sequestered in the very vacuum our society imposes. Welcome this controversy. Invite it into our lives. Do not rely on our first-held assumptions, but challenge ourselves, our belief systems, our very core values and morals.

It is my duty as a teaching assistant, as an educator, to impose such challenging remarks to my students to push themselves personally and within their writing. Rhetoric is power. There is power in the written word. So many of our students think they are incapable of possessing such power, the art of persuasion, the very act of critical consciousness. Make the best out of our situation and seek to rise above it out of the depths of our inner hell. To my students, we reference Malcolm X who did so while he was in prison. Malcolm X spent nearly 15 hours a day educating himself of the social injustices of his people. “No university would ask any student to devour literature as I did when this world opened to me, of being able to read and understand” (Malcolm X 212). He sought change through all available avenues to him at this time. Although he did not seek to achieve a college degree, he became angry over the “sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the back race in America” (Malcolm X 217). Our students can do this as well by taking advantage of the situation they are in with our help. We need to encourage writing as an avenue of sparking criticism and controversy. We too can make a change. We too can make a difference. There is freedom within the very confines of literacy—of being able to read and write. We need to spark the critical consciousness within each and every one of our students.

I require the readings of very diverse texts such as Malcolm X’s Learning to Read, Maysan Haydar’s Veiled Intentions: Don’t Judge a Muslim Girl by Her Covering, Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Story of My Body, and Jonathan Kozol’s Still Separate, Still Unequal. I believe that in order to spark criticism and controversy is to first acknowledge ourselves and our connections with the text. What approach do we make? What assumptions do we make? What rise do we give to these assumptions? How can we not become enablers, but facilitators? How may we facilitate change? How may we do so through our own voices and our own connections? What knowledge can be drawn?

These are the same questions we must ask ourselves as we too ask our students? How may we encourage criticism and controversy among our students? This is the very definition of my classroom. It is something that I still continue to question and seek to answer each semester before the onset of each class. Each set of students are different. It is in my own interests to encourage each and every one of my students to critically think and analyze how they can become the best that they can be. That it is up to me to invite criticism and controversy by establishing such an environment.