Statement of Teaching Philosophy - PAWS - Western Carolina ...

Teaching Portfolio
Catherine Carter
ccarter@wcu.edu December, 2001
Office Home
English Department PO Box xxx
Western Carolina University Webster, NC 28788
Cullowhee, NC 28788 http://www3.wcu.edu/~ccarter
(office) 828-227-3267 828-586-xxxx
(fax) 828-227-7266
Table Of Contents |Introduction.................................................|iii |
|......................................... | |
|Statement of Teaching |1-2 |
|Philosophy...................................................| |
|............ | |
|Syllabi | |
|Modern |4 |
|Poetry...............................................| |
|............................ | |
|Poetry |7 |
|Writing..............................................| |
|............................ | |
|Survey of American Literature |10 |
|II...................................................| |
|. | |
|Composition |13 |
|I....................................................| |
|..................... | |
|Assignments | |
|Exercise in Word |17 |
|Choice...............................................| |
|.............. | |
|Research Paper |18 |
|Assignment...........................................| |
|............... | |
|Advertisement Analysis Essay Assignment |19 |
|........................................ | |
|Peer Revision Assignment |20 |
|.....................................................| |
|....... | |
|Student Evaluations | |
|Freshman Composition I (Fall 2000) |22 |
|............................................. | |
|Major American Writers (Fall 2000) section 06 |24 |
|.................................. | |
|Major American Writers (Fall 2000) section |27 |
|15.................................. | |
|American Survey II (Fall |29 |
|2000)................................................| |
|...... | |
|Freshman Composition II (Spring 2000) section |31 |
|01............................... | |
|Freshman Composition II (Spring 2000) section |33 |
|23............................... | |
|Freshman Composition II (Spring 2000) section |35 |
|13.............................. | |
|Major American Writers (Spring |37 |
|2000)............................................. | |
|Freshman Composition I (Fall 1999) section 29 |40 |
|.................................. | |
|Major American Writers (Fall 1999) section 02 & |43 |
|08............................. | |
|Approaches to Literature (Spring |47 |
|1998)............................................. | |
Teaching Portfolio
Catherine Carter Introduction The teaching portfolio is divided into four sections: statement of teaching
philosophy, syllabi, assignments, and evaluations. The syllabi are recent ones for Modern Poetry, Creative Writing, American
Survey II, and Freshman Composition. Syllabi for other courses (Major
American Authors, Business and Technical Writing, Biblical and Classical
Literature in translation, Introduction to Literature, Environmental
Literature, or Mythology) are available upon request. The assignments are
sample assignments from composition, though I include one from a creative
writing workshop. Assignments in literature sections are limited mostly to
analytic papers. The evaluations comprise the most difficult section to read. I have been
in the classroom for ten years, teaching for several institutions, and the
evaluation forms vary between institutions. Thus, my collated data are not
always on the same scale nor are the questions always posed in the same
terms, necessitating the presentation of each class's data individually. I
have endeavored to explain the terms and the scale anew on each class's
summary. At Western Carolina, I have had to supplement the institutional
evaluation with one of my own (Western asks only for comments, providing no
numbers which can be readily summed up to provide empirical evidence of
student approval.) In most but not all of my classes at Western Carolina,
I have asked students to fill out such a numerical evaluation in addition
to providing their commentary on Western's forms. All sections of the
evaluations are always anonymous, and are submitted directly to the English
department at each institution; I do not see them until well after the end
of the semester, and no names are ever attached. The evaluations are arranged in order from most recent to least recent;
they first offer collated summaries of the numerical data for each class,
and then reproduce all student comments from that class in their entirety.
Unfortunately, my evaluations from Spring 2001 have not yet been released
to me, but while this does deprive you of evaluations from some very
relevant courses, my teaching practices have not changed very much in the
past year. The evaluations, then, cover the 1999-2000 school year, plus
one class' evaluations from my last year at the University of Delaware
(1998.) You have, of course, only my word that I have included all
comments and represented the numbers accurately, but if you have the
hardihood to look through the raw evaluations from three years' worth of
classes--onerous even from my point of view and even in the interests of
self-aggrandizement--I will be glad to provide them.
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
I tend to consider teaching in terms of three endeavors: conveying
information (and attempting to make it stick), developing skills (and
attempting to see them applied on other fields), and creating a
relationship under circumstances which are on the one hand ideal for
building at least temporary bridges and on the other highly artificial. Conveying information is no doubt the easiest of the three. We can lecture
and perform, produce handouts, create exercises, encourage (or browbeat)
students into reading the material, run through all the many tricks of our
trade, and with most students the information will, if not stick, at least
leave behind some (slightly tacky) residue. We can gauge as best we can
the state of student preparedness for the information we want to give, and
adjust our techniques accordingly, repeating more or less and performing
more or less as seems necessary. At this stage, dress it up as we will, we
are presenting material as a fly fisherman might a black gnat, and hoping
very much that the trout will find it appealing enough to snap (and, in the
best case, be hooked.) Developing skills is a different story, the one told in most writing
classes. Here we are at least as much concerned (in the now-popular
phrase) with process as with product; we are no longer offering gnats, but
asking our fish to find and evaluate their own sources of sustenance, often
after they have been hand-fed in their hatcheries and see no real reason to
seek more fearsome grasshoppers. There are tricks for this too, but they
are more fallible; moreover, the students sometimes resent the necessity to
feed for themselves. To develop writing skills, I like to present a
process broken down into the least threatening and smallest possible steps.
I want them to remember the only promise we can make: "You don't have to
use this process, and there may be easier ways, and it will take more time
than you want to spend on it; but if you use it, it will work, every single
time." When students have a process to fall back on, reinforced by
encouragement and repetition, I find that most of them are at least able to
produce an adequate product, and out of knowledge rather than out of luck.
I use portfolio grading for this reason, to evaluate their understanding of
the process and their effort to practice the skills. The creation of relationship may be what makes it possible to convey
information or develop skills, but it is the most nebulous endeavor of the
three. In many ways students present the perfect relationship: we have a
purpose in being together, so that small talk is not necessary; we can be
as personal or as impersonal as they choose or as I choose, within broad
limits; we meet regularly and know what we expect of one another; we put
time into our relationship. Nonetheless, one must work as hard for
connection in this artificially perfect environment as in any other. When
I was an undergraduate, for instance, one of my professors told me that
anything would work with a "good" class and nothing would work with a "bad"
one; at the time I didn't believe her. Nor did I understand, as I have
since come to do, that twenty or thirty perfectly normal people may have a
disastrous group dynamic or an inspiring one, apparently purely