My philosophy for teaching is based on a belief that the writing classroom is equally capable of nurturing and undermining a writer’s sense of self, their past, and their futures. My goal as a writing instructor, and as a reader of my students’ work, is to acknowledge my student’s relationship with both the writing process and with the content of their writing. In my classroom, understanding the usefulness of speaking through writing means continuously recognizing why students are asked to write in an academic context. The classroom brings about a unique rhetorical situation, with students writing for their intended audience but also for a grade—a grade that in many cases impacts their future goals. The rhetorical situation produced in these occasions’ challenges writer’s authority over their own voice—namely whose voice can appear on a page when it’s influenced by a hyper-awareness of a “grade” and an instructor’s judgmental eye? My experience as a first-generation college student directly informs my practices in the classroom and reinforces my understanding of the ways authority can influence what students write, how they write it, and ultimately what they learn. I believe that the writing classroom best serves student-writers if it works to aid them in recognizing writing as a conscious, engaged act. The writing classroom, then, can be an arena for navigating practice what it means to navigate struggles between voice and judgement, authenticity and criticism.

Especially in an academic context, it is crucial that student-writers realize the decision of risk and allocation of reward built-in to the classroom writing assignment. Avoiding the misconception that any classroom can be altogether free from the influence of an instructor’s authority over a student’s work and success, my classroom navigates that terrain and prepares students to read and maneuver through future contexts where they will be asked to perform the role of writer. In part, this is achieved by analyzing the dynamics surrounding other writers and their impetuses to write. By reading political writing, for instance, or writing that disrupts the status quo, we can discuss what it means to write to a potentially hostile audience, or an audience readied for critique and judgement; we can unpack the implications of that choice to write, and the decision-making processes therein. In tandem with this analysis, though, is an ever-evolving consideration of what writing can do–what it can create, facilitate, reveal. In my class, we actively work to pause the burdens of judgement to rediscover what brings a writer to write and what makes them willing to face their audience. Auto-fictional texts like Tim O’Brien’s “On A Rainy River” or essays attempting to influence public policy, like Zadie Smith’s “The North West London Blues” facilitate conversations about perspectives and the expression of ideas that rely upon writing for effecting change and communication. These conversations and analyses give student-writers a realistic sense of the terrains that writing broaches. It can not only prepare them to understand what it means to write in my class, but what it means to be writers and produce writing in their own disciplines as they navigate college and their future pursuits.

In keeping with my goal to appreciate the capabilities of the writing classroom as a site of identity formation and future building, I evaluate student work through scaffolded, process-based activities that emphasize the intention behind writing and the writing process. Students submit work at numerous stages, de-emphasizing the weight of the perfected final draft by breaking that grade down into bite-sized chunks. I utilize what I call “live” outlines, or outlines that are continuously submitted at various stages of the student’s process. These outlines are changed and grow and focus student’s attention on the goals of each formal component of their writing and its effectiveness. When students do submit a final draft, the feedback they receive is not singularly interested in fixing the writing they’ve put forward but instead focuses on understanding how they arrived at this final draft and what changes in process can be implemented to achieve further clarity and better communication of their ideas in future writing.

Ultimately, I see my classroom as a steppingstone for students as they come into their role as writers at a research university. I recognize that there is not one universalizing criterion that decides what that role should look like, or how success in that role can be realized. Rather, it is my goal to allow students to conceive of that role and build it from their own personal and academic experiences, fears or insecurities, and visions of their goals or futures.