As a writing teacher, I am committed to helping students see composition as a craft that has the potential to positively transform writers and their audiences. My passion for this vocation is largely attributable to the long line of English instructors in my life who presented opportunities for me to practice writing and offered thoughtful feedback that pushed my thinking in generative directions. I am indebted to teachers such as Raúl Sánchez and Terry Harpold, who encouraged me to adopt courageous stances in my writing that engender new understandings of the world for myself and readers of my work. I am grateful to Eli Goldblatt and Beverly Moss, who showed me the radical service and learning possibilities inspired by community-engaged writing projects. And I hold deep respect for my mentors Scott DeWitt and Cynthia Selfe, who challenged me to explore the teaching and learning opportunities accessible through audio and video composition. Put simply, these instructors taught me that composition can help students better understand the world and build connections with the people in it.

Inspired by the example of remarkable teachers in my life, I have developed a teaching philosophy that emphasizes writing as a tool for civic engagement. I believe that writing courses are most effective when instructors encourage students to build personal connections with the ideas they weave in their written work and put that work into public action. I have enacted these civic engagement principles in a variety of ways during my sixteen years as a writing instructor.

One way that my courses foster civic engagement is by facilitating connections between students and community members. In addition to understanding how their written work can shape other people’s thinking, I want my students to remain open to changing their own ideas based on the feedback they receive from others. I built my ENG 102 course with this commitment to public exchange in mind. This research-writing course, which I organize around the theme “Literacy Narratives of Chicago,” asks students to consider issues related to the literacy practices of community members in Chicago – how these community members define literacy and use literacy in their day-to-day lives. Class discussions and assignments depend on students going out into the community to gather stories and insights from community members through interviews. Students then post the interviews they collect to a public archive known as the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives for students in future writing courses to browse and study. Unlike more traditional writing courses, where students are often asked to examine and apply only “academic sources,” this course foregrounds the expertise of community members to make room for conceptions of literacy that transcend university boundaries and attend to regional literacy practices.

Moreover, my ENG 102 course asks students to apply their own areas of expertise to guide research topics and interview questions. In previous offerings of my course, performing arts students constructed multimodal presentations about the literacy practices of songwriters. Creative writing students interviewed playwrights about the authors and works that inspired them. Students interested in childhood learning researched the role literacy plays in primary school by interviewing special education teachers. Throughout the process of collecting and analyzing interviews, students in my ENG 102 course learn about the communal basis of knowledge making. I believe that student research should not happen in isolation; it should be the product of collaboration among many participants. My central goals in this course are for students to see themselves as part of this collaboration and to facilitate future research and inquiry by posting the interviews they collect to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.

In addition to promoting connections between students and community members, my courses also create opportunities for students to experiment with multiple composing technologies. I believe that composition can take many forms besides the traditional research essay, and thus composition instructors should help students understand how different technologies can be used to craft rhetorically powerful messages that resonate with audiences. My pedagogy follows the philosophy of my mentors Scott Lloyd DeWitt and Cynthia Selfe, dedicated instructors who see the teaching of digital media technologies as essential to giving students a wider set of tools to communicate with people in the world. Perhaps the best representation of my digital media instruction is my “Digital Storytelling” course. Because I believe that honing analytical skills makes students better producers of media and building production skills makes students better analyzers of media, this course maintains a balance of both analysis and production assignments. At the beginning of the course, students select a podcast episode on a topic they care about and analyze that episode using concepts that the students will likely be familiar with after having taken first-year writing courses – purpose, audience, context, and appeals. After that first analysis assignment, I ask students to apply those same rhetorical concepts to their own podcast media in our “Podcast Production” assignment. The second half of our semester follows a similar pattern with students first analyzing video essays and then using that analytical knowledge to create their own video essay projects. Whenever I teach “Digital Storytelling,” many of my students enter the class without experience using these technologies. By the end of the semester, even novice media creators are successful in using the software that I teach to create persuasive arguments and stories.

If my “Literacy Narratives of Chicago” course represents my dedication to facilitating connections between students and community members and my “Digital Storytelling” course represents my commitment to the instruction of digital media technologies, then my “Writing for Nonprofits” course is a synthesis of these two pedagogical commitments. This course asks students to consider the needs of community organizations and create design projects that respond to those needs. With Roosevelt’s social justice mission in mind, I make sure to partner with local organizations whose work promotes public good throughout the city of Chicago. Our current partners include Midwest Books to Prisoners, a volunteer-run organization that provides books and other reading materials to inmates in and around Chicago, and Southeast Environmental Task Force, a climate justice organization that serves Southeast Chicago. Working on behalf of these organizations, students construct social media campaigns, online infographics, print flyers, and much more. To effectively compose these assets, I believe it is crucial for students to carefully consider their target audience as well as the rhetorical and design choices they should make to best reach this audience. By the end of the semester, students produce marketing plans that showcase a wide range of rhetorical skills and an ability to compose work for professional organizations using a variety of digital technologies.

I have been fortunate to work with caring teachers who inspired me to pursue a career as a writing instructor. The generosity, empathy, and patience demonstrated by these exceptional teachers has honed me into the writing instructor I am today. For over a decade, I have followed the example of outstanding teachers in my life to help students see the communicative power of writing. Teachers taught me that writing can engage people and transform lives. I am now in the privileged position to share this lesson with others, a responsibility that I embrace with purpose and enthusiasm.