Thinking about Teaching Philosophy

     The Composing Process

        Over the past semester I have been thinking about where I would place myself as a Composition teacher or as a teacher in general. It seems I go more along the route of the Expressivist. I do think that writing, in itself, involves an internal process that needs to uncovered, refined, and then put to use in a context that matters. The last part is what informs my style and my approach to teaching the most. There are going to be instances in time when a student will ask me, "Why do I need to learn this?" and the short answer is that everyone uses it whether they realize it or not. What separates the good writers from the bad ones is that the good ones took the time to sit down with themselves and figure out how they write. Learning how their process informs their writing is what separates them from the pack. 

       That being said, I think there is a bit of social constructionist in me too. I do realize that there is a process that informs the writing, but I also realize at the same time there are forces at work within the the community that change and alter that process. In the context of the discourse community a writer is combining their process while adapting it to what the community sees as standard fare when it comes to entering their community. This sort of awareness of the writing and how that shapes a person's writing is also important to take in to account when teaching a course. It's much more difficult to teach a composition course where outside forces will not have any effect on what the writers in the course are writing. They have a discourse community to write to (in most cases), but they haven't cornered their process. How do I, as a teacher, bridge this gap without overloading or confusing the students? Another short answer is, I don't know yet. As time goes on and my style as a teacher changes and my experience grows so shall my philosophy. As it stands now, I believe that I would err on the side of Expressivist.