A Personal Teaching Philosophy Statement

Father Ben Torres’ room in the rectory was lean and spare. A tall Eurasian Jesuit priest, he taught my first-year Oriental Philosophy section. Aside from his rolled-up futon that he sat on, and a large cushion that I sat on, the only other furnishings were a tall wardrobe and a low table upon which he had fashioned a devotional altar. Inside his room all was peaceful, contemplative.

But outside it was 1970, and social unrest over the Vietnam Conflict swept through the several university campuses of New Orleans. I was caught up in it like many other students, but I had personal unrest as well: my father had died suddenly in the previous semester. And I was drinking heavily.

“Are you sure you want to do this? The incomplete automatically becomes an F, you know.” Father Torres tried to guide me gently toward the correct conclusion, the correct action — just as he did when he lectured on Confucius’ methodology in class.

But I was stubborn, my mind was made up. I was dropping out.

“Well, then,” he said. “There’s only one thing any college can teach you, really, and that’s how to teach yourself. Once you know how to do that, all the rest is secondary.” Often his words came to mind as I drifted, rudderless, from one thing to another in the following years. I survived those times by teaching myself whatever I needed to know.

Father Torres’ principle became a core primary element in my teaching philosophy: teach the learner how to learn.

Good teachers coach us to learn effectively but in the end we all teach ourselves. I put Fr. Torres’ advice to effective use after I left school and taught myself how to build looms and weave in order to land a job that I knew was open at a historical site. Some years spent doing that landed me the opportunity to work as a Folk Artist in Schools for an eighth-grade magnet school. My Folk Arts studio was installed in the abandoned shop classroom. For two years I devised and orchestrated activities and demonstrations that linked a folk-art practice to the current social studies module. As I watched students’ interest come alive during these presentations, I came to believe that the demonstration method is one of the best teaching practices.

But learning needs more than just demonstration. Learning is enhanced by an empathetic interaction between teacher and learner. I brought that into my studio classroom by using a framework of five learning principles that form the basis of my personal ethos for learning:

• Anyone can learn, anyone can improve.
• Do no harm.
• A peer dynamic works better than an authoritative hierarchical dynamic.
• Feedback should be understanding, supportive, encouraging.
• When in doubt, best practice wins out.

The most effective learning, then, would occur under teaching strategies that establish affinities and links with learners using these five concepts to reinforce learning.

One of my philosophical convictions about teaching is that it must recognize the importance of prior experience and learning, even when such learning takes place outside the educational structure. One student in my studio came from a family who were generationally well-known for raising and training hunting dogs. In an interview project for class, he documented his uncle’s technique with the dogs and authored an article analyzing it. He was a disadvantaged student from a poor rural community, and to see the new perspective of pride that he felt in his family’s accomplishment being honored by such a project was thrilling.

Best practice is the ultimate arbiter of what takes place in my classroom space. Those best practices that I adhere to are:
• Recognizing that teaching effective writing skills helps learners establish competency in the wider world outside the classroom.
• Understanding that context drives learning processes, and that the context with the most value should be the one employed.
• Acknowledging learners’ prior experience and taking that into account when planning.
• Understanding that learning requires supportive supports.
• Embracing the value of assessment, not just for quantitative data, but for the contribution that well-designed assessment can make to outcomes.
• Making sure that the learners’ autonomy is respected and that they have the tools for confident self-directed learning.
• Enhancing the opportunities that learners have for communicating with each other and with instructors, ensuring their voices can be heard.
• Acknowledging that learning outside the classroom has value.
• Seeing myself as a learner and taking an active role in maintaining my own continuous learning.
• Devoting myself to supporting policies that focus on continual learning.
These practices are supported as best by scholarly research.

Though I was considered an adjunct resource for the eighth-grade center, and not a licensed educator, I took in-service trainings alongside the more experienced and qualified teachers. My disposition to see myself as a learner accommodated this; it helped me think more like a teacher. My teaching philosophy places a high value on continued training. Accumulating such training is a strong professional goal for me. By developing my methodology for creative writing classes geared to Senior learners, I demonstrate the validity of my own maxim: “Anyone can learn, anyone can improve.”