teaching philosophy statement

The Teaching Philosophy Statement is a document that doctoral students are often asked to iterate throughout their graduate study in order to prepare them for the job market. This is my first crack at it, written at the conclusion of my first term in Ph.D school. 

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All my life, my education has been greatly informed by an exposure to critical, ethical people, who have been generous with their time and resources as they helped me ascend from various scaffolds to the person I am today. In my classroom, I work to provide those same opportunities that are often afforded to me, but in a context that is always relevant to each individual student. Students, I believe, are their own best teachers; me—I’m at best a facilitator, a classroom-designer. I work diligently to model the praxis of my teachers, but I also demand from my students the time and commitment they need to explore and understand the various facets that define different modes of problem-solving. In my classroom, I value a diverse and broad subset of knowledges, and it is in that space that I simply ask students to relate what they know (or what they think the know) to what I know and what their peers know.

artifactual

eventually i’ll be too tired to fend off the maggots; they cannot eat me yet!

to be a victim

what does
it mean to
be the victim—the
corpse, the
strangled, the
hidden, the
silenced.

what does the
victim know,
what does the
victim know;
how is the
victim, the
opaque cellophane, the
object a
knowing thing.

to be

knowledge is not power.

ethics;

therein lies power,

the exemplar of understanding, exercising, and comprehending.

interdisciplinary study

obligatory pedagogical reflection

This term I spent a lot of time reconfiguring one of the broadest facets of my teaching: the epistemological framework that I use to justify my pedagogical practice. This framework relates how people “produce” knowledge and experience learning; it’s what I use to both predict and design appropriate contexts that facilitate specific learning outcomes. As a tool, I use this framework to make assumptions about the most appropriate course of action when I’m performing as a teacher/facilitator/instructor/etc.—in other words, this framework constitutes a facet of my subjectivity. In working with the course material for P155: Public Oral Communication, I’ve come to appreciate an understanding of how students should embody an ethic and model a literacy in the workshop environment. I have yet, though, to refine the techniques I use to specifically shape a subjectivity for my students that provides them with ethical strategies for both answering self-inspired questions and motivating independent learning. Put another way, I would like to develop strategies for strategies because at the moment, it feels as though I have conditioned my students into utilizing me as their primary tool, rather than as a reference to refine their engagement with course texts and other tools.

in 500 words

Received this email today.

Dear IU Student,

Earlier this month Provost Robel sent you a survey link you can use to share your perspective on how sexual assault affects our campus. As the Dean of Students at Indiana University, Bloomington, I wrote a week later to encourage your participation. I write now with a final request, to encourage you to help us eliminate the serious issue of sexual assault from our campus by clicking on the link below and completing this confidential survey. This survey will close on Tuesday, December 2.

The more input that we have from students, the better informed that we will be about creating a safe and caring environment on campus.   We need everyone’s response.  It all starts with you. …

….

Question 50:

In your own words, please tell us what you perceive to be the challenges in eliminating sexual misconduct at Indiana University: (Maximum of 500 words)

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There are a broad range of bureaucratic systems in place that make the University a timely, efficient machine. Strict schedules & deadlines, separate & specialized departments, al a cart course offerings, to name a few. Students move through the system by paying for access and accruing grades for various courses. Many people within the University rationalize these mechanics—used to organize and represent what students are and are capable of—as “levelers,” as in, they level the playing field for students. They provide faculty and administrators with verifiable insight into the capabilities of every student. Herein, then, manifests the problem: The University is systematically designed to participate in an economic industry that would normally *discard defective products;* the University is designed neither to account for sexually active students, nor support traumatized students in the event of sexual misconduct.

knowledge is not an object

Knowledge is not an object;
knowledge is a relationship
we imagine between our
memories of phenomena, that which
we call “information.”

“Relationship” describes a
dimension of information that
explains the behavior or
appearance of
phenomena that
we process into
understanding.