Vision of Teaching Philosophy
“Literacy makes sense only …, as the consequence of men’s beginning to reflect about their capacity for reflection, about the world, about their position in the world, about the encounter of consciousness” (Friere, 2001, p.106)
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Writing is an evitable skill that everyone has to use no matter how good or bad they are in writing, whether they love it or not; they need it! Similar to any skill, writing needs to be taught, nourished, and practiced to be mastered. In addition, it is a great tool through which students can reflect on their identity and their understanding of the world. My writing classes aim to achieve two main goals: students should be able to write rhetorically and critically.
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People write in order to have a specific effect on their readers; writing rhetorically is a skill that students need to practice because they need it in their lives when they write a cover letter for a job application, an email requesting something from their managers, even a PowerPoint Presentation and a paper for a class. Students learn about the rhetorical square: Pathos, Logos, Ethos, and Kairos. They also need to be aware of the importance of addressing the audience with the language the audience understand to achieve the writing goal. One of the assignments I use is to ask students choose three or four TV advertisements from different categories (e.g. technology, food, credit cards, medicine). After that, they write a response a) discussing how the language is used purposefully to persuade a certain audience in relation to the rhetorical square; b) critically analyzing the vocabulary, images, and tone used in each ad; c) reflect on their life experience by choosing a different ad that influenced their behavior and why.
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I believe that critical digital literacy is important and should be given attention in my composition classroom. Students spend most of their times online using different social media platforms and technology. It is part of their lives and in order to build consciousness of themselves and the world around them, they need to be aware of the instruments they use every day. One of the assignments I use is “Social Media Critical Reflection” in which I ask students to use their phone on the weekend like they normally do but they jot down anything comes to their mind while browsing social media platforms. For example, if they see a picture, read a post, etc., they write down what in their head. At the end of the day, they write a reflection on how many hours they spent, how these posts, pictures, etc. have affected negatively or positively their day, and how was their productivity level. Then, they turn it in and then they have group discussions.
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I use critical pedagogy to design activities and assignments. For example, students are assigned to watch documentary movies and read texts that shows how media and novels portray race, identity, social justice, etc. Then, they write reflections about how language is used to construct knowledge and achieve a rhetorical move. Final assignment is that students choose a social issue and write a research paper on how a social issue of their choice is presented in the society, and what actions can be done to change this social issue.