The Core of a Teaching Philosophy

I wrote one in 2008 as an undergraduate, and it seemed pretty good at the time: two single-spaced pages neatly divided into philosophy and methods. It was dedicated to writing and mainly aimed at a community college student population. It doesn’t help a lot with this current task. I have so much more to say now. Writing a teaching philosophy for adult ESL is much harder. I find myself getting bogged down in the practical skills involved, which only include writing—and not just composition, but phonemic and morphological awareness and even the alphabet and the English system of spelling. So far I have left out grammar and pronunciation—two big issues in the ESL world.

Last night, after I had finally put together one more draft, I asked my partner to take a look at it. I rarely ask her to read my writing because she reads fine print all day at work and, to be honest, doesn’t seem particularly interested in reading my stuff. I was surprised when she agreed to do it. I explained the parameters and gave her Dr. Cauthen’s informational handout, my paper, and a pencil. She’s a contracts attorney, so I knew I’d get some practical organizational notes like, “What do you mean here?” and “Why don’t you put this there?”—the sort of feedback you’d expect from someone who analyzes contracts for a living. (Do you know that people have philosophies about contracts? Yes. And they can get pretty emotional about them too.)

She generously spent an hour and penciling questions and suggestions—mostly about making sure I had discrete sections for objectives, methodology, etc. Until I read her notes, I was feeling pretty happy. Maybe with a few nips and tucks, I could put this baby to bed. Unfortunately, her comments left me in an even bigger quandary: Does this bit go under objectives or methods or something else? How do I connect the two? It still wasn’t coming together. My paper’s problems were even bigger than I had thought.

Back at the computer, I was muttering over the keyboard when she came in and said [I paraphrase], “Do you know how we judge people’s singing on the technical stuff but what it really boils down to is heart? Well, I think that applies to your teaching philosophy. I’ve heard you talk with such passion about teaching ESL, and I’d like to see that in your paper. That’s what people want to know about because it tells them who you are.”

Well, I was grateful for this piece of wisdom, and it helped—especially for the opening. It meant adding an introductory “Background” section, which is starting to shape up like a hook that I’m kind of pleased with. Now the hard work starts: how to talk about objectives and tie it in with methods without sounding too clinical? So this is where I am on the teaching philosophy. Anybody else having issues?