The purpose of education is to set scholars on a path to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, who are able to communicate with clarity and deliberation. These scholars emerge as engaged citizens when they are empowered to self-direct their learning experience. I aim to support scholars of all ages and levels in their efforts to become the best communicators they can be.  My philosophy, which guides my classroom strategy as well as my approach to faculty development, is grounded in the belief that learners come to my classroom with many analytic skills and literacies that they may not yet recognize. My research in assemblage theory forms the basis for this belief — no one is an island, no educator is the sole, steady stream of content: how humans learn to gather information, or how to parse out the information impacting them unconsciously, is revealed using assemblage theory. Non-linear ways of learning (Strom 2012; Cobb and Croucher 2016) and information gathering and application are not only legitimate, they have the capacity to result in profound intellectual and emotional growth. When instructors see themselves and their students as contributors in active educational assemblages and recognize that both they and their students are part of assemblages unknown to the other, learning can take on a dynamic quality. Students bring valuable information with them everywhere they go. I see my role as a model, facilitator, mediator, and encourager; I serve to guide learners at all levels into recognizing and using their antecedent skills and literacies.

I aim to encourage students to expand their analytical communication toolbox, and to embrace the concept that they will benefit for the rest of their lives from being clear, consistent, compelling communicators. My overall classroom goal is to empower students by doing the following:

• Making them aware of available resources and how to effectively access them.
• Helping them see where their strengths lie and energizing them to identify personal challenges to improve
• Supporting their explorations as writers and researchers by demystifying the writing process as less a “magical” art form and more as a practical, achievable strategy

I firmly believe that my students should see me as fully invested in the importance of writing, as a writer myself, and as fully invested in their success as writers. I believe in more transparency than less. I share my highs and lows as a writer (both as an academic and as a journalist) to let students know that all writers are always learning, if we care about our ability to communicate! I use myself as an object lesson, especially when I make an error, or I experience a challenge. Instead of lecturing, I try to model reading, writing, and researching behaviors, so students can experience my narrated, annotated experiences. I believe in hands-on, experiential learning and try to turn my classroom into a casual writing laboratory, where the most necessary ingredient is courage.

The most effective methods for teaching writing, in my experience, are creating “workshop engagements” where students share their drafts of their writing with each other and with me for low or no-stakes assessments. I know this because dialogue fosters trust and inspires creative risk-taking, and given how personal writing is as an activity — and how vulnerable writers often feel during the process — I consider it my mission to present scholars an opportunity to enjoy the revision process.

I deliberately scaffold my assignments and exercises and I explain to students my strategies behind that scaffolding. Students gain confidence as they accrue and improve their skills, and small successes lead to more significant ones. I endeavor to ask good questions rather than proclaiming answers, and to incentivize students to take ownership over their learning through low-stakes, in-class or online discussions.

On the first day of class, I tell the students that I believe they all have skills, including skills that may not even be known to them yet, and that everyone can learn to improve their ability to communicate. I encourage them to nurture the skills that come from their unique lives and cultures. Too often I encounter students who have internalized the idea that they are “bad” writers who “can’t” write. I devote energy throughout the semester to building up their courage and confidence, priming them to take chances through many low-stakes assignments that culminate in a longer, more in-depth final research project. I employ portfolio and reflection papers to emphasize the iterative nature of writing. The students are constantly evaluating their writing and making requests of me for specific advice on their writing projects.

The most important aspects of my teaching are my ability to inspire scholars to take creative risks. Students learn best by being given a warm yet challenging environment where they focus on writing and reading as a process that is rewarding. I want scholars at every level to come away from our interactions feeling more confident in their ability to communicate with others. My goal is that they see writing projects as achievable.

I also want students to have confidence in their ability to find and evaluate information. For several semesters now, I have made information literacy the theme of my composition classes. I believe scholars at all levels need more training and more support in their effort to find credible information, to evaluate the utility of the information they find, and to integrate new knowledge into their existing body of knowledge.

At the end of the semester, I invite the students to leave anonymous feedback for me and advice for future students on our class message board. I take formal and informal feedback seriously, and perform a personal “post mortem” on each of my courses, where I inevitably change at least one element, aiming for greater success in achieving my goals. Most recently, I have been re-evaluating all of my material, especially my online classes, for its accessibility and its adherence to the principles of Universal Learning Design. I believe that, while there has been nothing redeeming about the global pandemic, I have grown as an educator as I have had to make accessibility the most important goal for my online classes.

Strom, K. J. (2015). Teaching as Assemblage: Negotiating Learning and Practice in the First Year of Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education 66(4), 321-333. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487115589990

Cobb, H. & Croucher, K. (2016). Personal, Political, Pedagogic: Challenging the Binary Bind in Archaeological Teaching, Learning and Fieldwork. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23(3), 949-969. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-016-9292-0