In the past three years, I have become increasingly convinced that teaching is a collaborative effort, and much more than simply delivering information to students.  The relationship
between teacher and student, as I’ve come to realize, is by no means hierarchical, and might best be conceptualized as dialogical.  As a teacher, I encourage my students to think of
themselves as members of a learning community, not simply empty vessels to be filled with information.  Teachers should learn from their students just as much as students are expected
to learn from teachers.

The goal of such a philosophy is to challenge students’ beliefs and practices so they may critique their own work as well as that of others.  Focusing the classroom around the students
allows them to become active learners, a process that will help students to become both better readers and writers, the primary goal of English education.

A classroom that shifts the focus from teacher to student can generate some degree of confusion, but this can be an advantage.  In this context, my role as teacher is not only to organize
and teach the lesson plan, but to step in as a moderator, providing the students with guidance and ultimately placing the learning process in their hands.  My experience has shown me
that students learn from their own struggles in communicating their stories and insights to their audience more than from any other way of learning.  That is to say, asking students to
articulate their thoughts also demands a heightened awareness of their own ethos as well as the audience’s expectations.

This methodology has proven useful to me in the classroom, while I feel that it is much more valuable to emphasize process over product, eventually, written work must be evaluated as
a product of the communication process.  To this end, I require my students not only to write, revise, and actively engage in the process of peer review for each of their essays, but I
have them present their final product to the class in a formal oral presentation.  Ultimately, my goal is to teach students to communicate more effectively, and I feel that by having them
read their essays to the class they are not only working on written communication skills, but also focusing on their ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas verbally.

In a student oriented classroom, students should be given ample opportunity to view and hear each other’s written works and, likewise, receive responses to their own.  Students can
improve their written work not only through the recommendations of their peers, but also through the process of viewing and listening to others work in order to compare it to their
own.  Students may or may not be aware of it, but I believe simply looking at others’ written work helps improve their own, by reinforcing their own techniques and by challenging
them to improve their work to the level of their peers.

Another important aspect of my teaching process, allows for my own scholarly interests and my role as the teacher to intersect.  Rather than seeing "teaching" and "research" as two
separate entities, I find it beneficial to both students and myself to capitalize on the many ways in which these activities overlap.  My students are made aware of my own methodology of
reading a text, and I encourage them to challenge me and defend their own interpretations.  When we do this in class, students seem to feel more comfortable with the text, as they feel
that my insights are somehow more valid then theirs.  However, because I engage in a broad spectrum of various types of criticism, I ask them to create their own critical methodology in
which they need to support their ideas with direct analysis of the text.

To this end, I use homework and in-class assignments to reinforce these methods, and I emphasize that any interpretation that they make must be supported by the text itself.
Encouraging them to cite direct passages in order to support their assertions is, I feel, imperative to the critical thinking process, and thus it is a main point of emphasis in my classroom.
Once students begin to recognize their own ability to interpret works, they can better formulate what they feel is the most appropriate way of understanding their own writing process and
further engage in a scholarly community.

Once students begin to understand their own critical apparatus, writing becomes more natural and more enjoyable.  My role as a teacher is not so much to provide that apparatus, as it is
to offer an effective environment for learning the tools and techniques necessary for them to create their own writing ideology.  Furthermore, once students have discovered their own
apparatus, they seem to have a greater love of writing and an enhanced enjoyment of their working process.  This also provides me the greatest pleasure as a teacher; something I hope I
can pass along to my students throughout my career.