Teaching Philosophy
“Real education happens only by failing, changing, challenging, and adjusting. All of those gerunds apply to teachers as well as students. No person is an ‘educator,’ because education is not something one person does to another. Education is an imprecise process, a dance, and a collaborative experience.”
― Siva Vaidhyanathan
I started to learn how to be a teacher in France one summer. When I started my job as a sailing instructor on a rainy day in June, I was still struggling to form my sentences in French, knew nothing about the weather on the English Channel, and knew even less about six-year-old children. Those children tolerated my broken French, slowed down their speed-of-light sentences, and taught me that a language is not learned through grammar worksheets and vocabulary memorization but through genuine communication.
For me, being a teacher is not about lecturing or about imparting knowledge upon students, but about opening up a dialogue with them—a dialogue in which both student and teacher expand their knowledge and grow as individuals. As a teacher of French language, it’s my job to teach my students how to communicate. My end goal is not to teach my students perfect French grammar but to spark in them an ardent desire to communicate in the French language.
To use a brief example to illustrate how I foster dialogue in my classroom, one of my favorite exercises to start off the class is what I call “le speed-date”: students are paired up for 2-3 minutes with one partner, then asked to find another partner. Sometimes I give them a specific topic to talk about, like what they did over the weekend, or what they thought about last night’s reading, or the role of sports in their lives, but mostly I let them talk about whatever they like.
I like this exercise because it encourages my students to speak (they are not intimidated by the thought of “messing up” in front of the whole class, and they are paired with new partners who they may not have spoken with a lot before), and to listen (as opposed to call/response drills where they may easily parrot back the answer to a teacher’s question without truly understanding, here they are engaging in a genuine conversation where they must first comprehend their partner in order to respond). I allow—no, encourage—my students to use this time to communicate however they like, so long as verbally they only use French words. Their grammar may not be perfect. They may use hand motions. They can even draw on the white board if the opportunity presents itself. Much like if they ever go to France and ask a passerby for directions on the street, or want to order a hot chocolate but forget how to say “chocolat chaud”, they stumble through the conversation through active listening and by making an active effort to understand each other.
Watching my students communicate, and participating in the exercise with them, I am always struck by the simple fact that sometimes the best teacher is the one who speaks the least. Like my six-year-olds all those years ago who could never offer me any formal instruction or real answers to my grammatical blunders or floundering vocabulary, I watch my students help each other and communicate with each other through a genuine desire not to memorize grammatical forms but to understand and to be understood. It is, like the quote at the beginning of this statement, truly a dance in which I am privileged to take part.
Teaching literature is in many ways a very separate endeavor from the study of language. In the first place, whereas students study French language as a goal in and of itself, many students in the literature classroom are not looking to learn specifically about Marguerite de Navarre or Chrétien de Troyes but rather to gain certain skills, namely, the ability to read a text critically, to synthesize multiple texts, and to construct written arguments from these primary sources. As such, my job as a literature teacher is not to merely make them communicate but to help them do so in specific ways. On the other hand, the same principles with regards to collaboration apply. As a teacher of literature, I strive to collaborate with my students as much as possible, because I myself am never done learning, and because collaboration allows students to take an active role in their education. Asking students to participate in class, whether through worksheets, digital activities, or discussion also keeps them engaged and interested.
For example, studying the ideas of translatio and mouvance in the framework of the Tristan story, I assigned manuscript versions available online in small groups, and asked students to present the main theme portrayed by their manuscript’s illuminations, and how this emphasis guides the reading experience. In a discussion session centered around the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, I asked students to create an online video using animoto.com to visually portray the Biblical narrative. Students’ evaluations of the activity speak for themselves: “Visualizing the passage helped me better understand the story and allowed me to interpret the text a lot more thoroughly.”; “I learned that visual depictions do not always match exactly what the text says. Different artists have their own interpretations which can be seen in the visuals.”; “It forced me to really engage with the text and it allowed me to be creative which made me enjoy the text.”; “It allowed me to be able to interact with other students and hear their ideas and opinions.” This activity, in short, is reflective of my overall approach to teaching literature, and my pedagogical goals: to encourage textual interpretation and engagement with the text, to achieve targeted learning objectives (in this case, the difference between visual and textual depictions of the story, and a deeper understanding of the text itself), and to foster discussion, creativity, and written production.
Although every class session cannot be a sort of interactive lab, even in a more lecture-like setting I encourage students to participate by asking questions and asking them to reflect upon the materials I’ve shown them. I often distribute reading questions the day before we’ll discuss a text in class, and encourage students to fill out a worksheet during class answering some of these questions. This guides students towards my desired learning outcomes for the day, and also requires them not only to take notes on the day’s class but also to reflect on the class and to construct written arguments, combining the material they read the night before with the subjects discussed in class.
Ultimately, my goal as a teacher of literature is to foster active and reflective dialogue in the classroom, to get students to read texts critically, and to help them develop written arguments surrounding the texts they’ve read. These skills go beyond whether or not they will remember the concept of mouvance in medieval French literature, but I find that they usually do: because they learned concepts in an interactive and often visual manner, their retention of this knowledge is likely consistent. More importantly, however, they learned to synthesize this knowledge and construct convincing arguments—skills that will serve them well wherever their education may eventually lead.
“Real education happens only by failing, changing, challenging, and adjusting. All of those gerunds apply to teachers as well as students. No person is an ‘educator,’ because education is not something one person does to another. Education is an imprecise process, a dance, and a collaborative experience.”
― Siva Vaidhyanathan
I started to learn how to be a teacher in France one summer. When I started my job as a sailing instructor on a rainy day in June, I was still struggling to form my sentences in French, knew nothing about the weather on the English Channel, and knew even less about six-year-old children. Those children tolerated my broken French, slowed down their speed-of-light sentences, and taught me that a language is not learned through grammar worksheets and vocabulary memorization but through genuine communication.
For me, being a teacher is not about lecturing or about imparting knowledge upon students, but about opening up a dialogue with them—a dialogue in which both student and teacher expand their knowledge and grow as individuals. As a teacher of French language, it’s my job to teach my students how to communicate. My end goal is not to teach my students perfect French grammar but to spark in them an ardent desire to communicate in the French language.
To use a brief example to illustrate how I foster dialogue in my classroom, one of my favorite exercises to start off the class is what I call “le speed-date”: students are paired up for 2-3 minutes with one partner, then asked to find another partner. Sometimes I give them a specific topic to talk about, like what they did over the weekend, or what they thought about last night’s reading, or the role of sports in their lives, but mostly I let them talk about whatever they like.
I like this exercise because it encourages my students to speak (they are not intimidated by the thought of “messing up” in front of the whole class, and they are paired with new partners who they may not have spoken with a lot before), and to listen (as opposed to call/response drills where they may easily parrot back the answer to a teacher’s question without truly understanding, here they are engaging in a genuine conversation where they must first comprehend their partner in order to respond). I allow—no, encourage—my students to use this time to communicate however they like, so long as verbally they only use French words. Their grammar may not be perfect. They may use hand motions. They can even draw on the white board if the opportunity presents itself. Much like if they ever go to France and ask a passerby for directions on the street, or want to order a hot chocolate but forget how to say “chocolat chaud”, they stumble through the conversation through active listening and by making an active effort to understand each other.
Watching my students communicate, and participating in the exercise with them, I am always struck by the simple fact that sometimes the best teacher is the one who speaks the least. Like my six-year-olds all those years ago who could never offer me any formal instruction or real answers to my grammatical blunders or floundering vocabulary, I watch my students help each other and communicate with each other through a genuine desire not to memorize grammatical forms but to understand and to be understood. It is, like the quote at the beginning of this statement, truly a dance in which I am privileged to take part.
Teaching literature is in many ways a very separate endeavor from the study of language. In the first place, whereas students study French language as a goal in and of itself, many students in the literature classroom are not looking to learn specifically about Marguerite de Navarre or Chrétien de Troyes but rather to gain certain skills, namely, the ability to read a text critically, to synthesize multiple texts, and to construct written arguments from these primary sources. As such, my job as a literature teacher is not to merely make them communicate but to help them do so in specific ways. On the other hand, the same principles with regards to collaboration apply. As a teacher of literature, I strive to collaborate with my students as much as possible, because I myself am never done learning, and because collaboration allows students to take an active role in their education. Asking students to participate in class, whether through worksheets, digital activities, or discussion also keeps them engaged and interested.
For example, studying the ideas of translatio and mouvance in the framework of the Tristan story, I assigned manuscript versions available online in small groups, and asked students to present the main theme portrayed by their manuscript’s illuminations, and how this emphasis guides the reading experience. In a discussion session centered around the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, I asked students to create an online video using animoto.com to visually portray the Biblical narrative. Students’ evaluations of the activity speak for themselves: “Visualizing the passage helped me better understand the story and allowed me to interpret the text a lot more thoroughly.”; “I learned that visual depictions do not always match exactly what the text says. Different artists have their own interpretations which can be seen in the visuals.”; “It forced me to really engage with the text and it allowed me to be creative which made me enjoy the text.”; “It allowed me to be able to interact with other students and hear their ideas and opinions.” This activity, in short, is reflective of my overall approach to teaching literature, and my pedagogical goals: to encourage textual interpretation and engagement with the text, to achieve targeted learning objectives (in this case, the difference between visual and textual depictions of the story, and a deeper understanding of the text itself), and to foster discussion, creativity, and written production.
Although every class session cannot be a sort of interactive lab, even in a more lecture-like setting I encourage students to participate by asking questions and asking them to reflect upon the materials I’ve shown them. I often distribute reading questions the day before we’ll discuss a text in class, and encourage students to fill out a worksheet during class answering some of these questions. This guides students towards my desired learning outcomes for the day, and also requires them not only to take notes on the day’s class but also to reflect on the class and to construct written arguments, combining the material they read the night before with the subjects discussed in class.
Ultimately, my goal as a teacher of literature is to foster active and reflective dialogue in the classroom, to get students to read texts critically, and to help them develop written arguments surrounding the texts they’ve read. These skills go beyond whether or not they will remember the concept of mouvance in medieval French literature, but I find that they usually do: because they learned concepts in an interactive and often visual manner, their retention of this knowledge is likely consistent. More importantly, however, they learned to synthesize this knowledge and construct convincing arguments—skills that will serve them well wherever their education may eventually lead.