Bronaugh 1

Teaching Philosophy: As an instructor of First Year Composition (FYC), an introductory class focusing on rhetoric, I seek, first, to encourage students to engage in conversations that extend beyond the comfortable boundaries constructed by the discourse communities from which they left to pursue higher education; to break free of their comfort zones to facilitate real intellectual growth. For many students this exploration toward new, more effective communication requires a level of critical thinking and diction that can make English suddenly feel strange and unidentifiable as their native tongue, and likewise affect a feeling of outsider looking in; a mere passenger on the path to enlightenment. It is my aim to inspire students to understand the true benefits of knowledge and discourse, and how, through the process of construction and use of persuasionor rhetorical practice, they might take command of the vehicle of edification, and subsequently gain a better appreciation for their full academic potential as well as overall efficacy. To furnish this goal I employ working and flexible pedagogical strategies that divulge how critical thinking, discourse, and rhetorical strategies are plaited and work together in both the cognitive and metacognitive processes of learning and effective communication. If you were to take my class you would hear the term critical thinking regularly, and possibly at some point in every class meeting. I do this to secure my pedagogy in the primary principle that we should all seek to be life-long learners; more importantlyand perhaps more accurately, the student-teacher relationship is a dynamic liaison where the roles continuously ebb and flow in a, sort of, fluid mosaic model of shared knowledge anchored on recursive communication. For me, this principle centers on the idea of

Bronaugh 2 knowledge as a communal, and often global, communication that has spanned thousands of years and dates back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. Socrates alludes we lose touch with our knowledge from the past at the moment of every birth, and we are therefore forced to relearn what we already know. Taking this, not literally but, in a metaphorical context we can view the conversation we enter into during the course of our academic lives as one we have long been a part of already; one where, even the newest pledge has a perspective and baseline wisdom which grants them the right to engage in any part of the conversation with a finite but significant sense of authority. I see writing as practice that is not fixed in the present, past or future; or by any rigid rules implemented by a particular discipline. While formatting and writing for genre is important, it is constructed after the ideas that make up the argument have already been articulated in some form. Because student efficacy is a primary focus of my pedagogy I try and emphasize how the formulation and articulation of complex ideas are a continual process that never achieve perfection. Plato divides reality into two: the ontosideal, or idea; and the phenomenaa manifestation of the idea. The concept of the triangle, the math that defines it and the essence of it, as constructed in our minds is near perfect, any physical creation of a triangle, however, will be flawed; the angles never flawless, the lines never perfectly straight. The language that defines our understanding of the world and concepts of reality and knowledge can never be perfect; however, we must always strive to use to the language and the discourses laid out for us come as close to perfection as our abilities permit. My methodology entails a lot of class discussion on topics that affect our everyday lives, heavy reading in and out of class (upwards of 50 pages per class period), and lectures that

Bronaugh 3 lead to instructional practice in critical thinking and the transfer of knowledge to clear and effective communicationoften graded as quizzes. Each quiz grade/brief writing assignment, done in or out of class, is followed up with a discussion in order to spur interest and allow students to negotiate with me on the relative nature and legitimacy of their answers. This is done to further demonstrate how critical thinking and rhetorical practices are used in every day settings, and that communication is never an exact science. All told, it is my passion for teaching as the defining strength in my pedagogy. Without it my lesson plans cannot be effective, and I will fail to gain the trust of the students needed to truly have the desired impact on their education and ability to navigate their own complex concepts for effective expression and application. It is this passion that serves me well as I seek to learn from other instructors, as it has been the teachers I myself have been a student of that have influenced how I compose and implement my own pedagogy. I have become a student of all teachers, my mentors, my peers, and even my students who never fail to provide the context and real-world experience from which some of the most powerful lessons for teaching are birthed.