In the pursuit of my dreams and turning on my hustle mode, I’ve dedicated the past couple of days to working on my teaching dossier. After writing a successful draft of my teaching philosophy, I felt the need to share something on this blog.
(This will not be a post about how to write your Statement of Teaching Philosophy)
I have to say that before writing out my own teaching philosophy, I don’t think that I ever realized how much this profession means to me. I know that I love to teach, but by actually describing the feeling of teaching, taking the time to say why I love to teach, it makes me feel all the more committed than ever to improving my teaching strategies and my approaches to constructing a class. I feel more alive in front of a classroom, because it embodies and multiplies that feeling you get when you read a really insightful, thought-provoking book. My students have had this effect on me, surprising me with moments of brilliance that fill me with wonder and inspire me to become a professor that will reciprocate their thoughts in turn. It is humbling to be a teacher, because being there means that I contribute something, if at least for that time in the classroom, to the circulation and free exchange of ideas.
If you are working on becoming a teacher, in any field, take the time to write out this statement of teaching philosophy. It may be that we live our whole lives with feelings that we were not aware made up part of our being, and it is for this reason that I believe in the power of literature. But perhaps, by taking the time to reflect upon these feelings and writing it out, words give feelings, to borrow from a title by Marta L. Werner, an itinerary to escape. To quote one of Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems:
One note from
One Bird
Is better than
A scabbard
needs
has – holds
but one
sword
– Feature image: “A bird in flight” by Hamid Naderi Yeganeh
Anthologize this . . . 