My Teaching Philosophy
For creative writing students to become lifelong writers, they need to develop habits of mind that will follow them far beyond the confines of a single term. At the introductory levels, creative writing teachers plant seeds by helping student writers to recognize their own creative processes. I embrace a teaching philosophy that encourages students to take control of their learning and writing.
Inquiry
For students to learn, they must ask questions. This assumption undergirds all of my courses, from low-level composition to upper-division creative writing and literature courses. While the workshop model is tried and tested in creative writing, it works well in other classes, too, often appearing various forms, such as the Philip Exeter Academy-developed Harkness Model, a pedagogy I’ve adopted in many classes. A pedagogy of inquiry also gives students the language they need to ask important questions. For my introduction to creative writing course, my students reading Heather Sellers’ The Practice of Creative Writing. The textbook’s focus on strategies like pattern, tension, and image provide students with a vocabulary for exploring and defining their own creative processes. This self-knowledge serves them as they develop as writers by providing students a working and practical knowledge of their own strengths and weaknesses as writers, an important distinction needed as they prepare to write in more advanced genres.
Experiential Learning
An experiential, immersive learning pedagogy requires students to explore the ways that classroom learning intersects with the world beyond the classroom and the campus. When I taught in Ireland, my classes not only read Linda Lappin’s The Soul of a Place (a creative nonfiction workbook about writing abroad), but we also visited and toured Dublin, allowing students to write in the city, thus composing the city for themselves—writing as an avenue not only to creation, but also to learning. In a similar way, in my creative nonfiction workshop, students are required not only to attend campus literary events; they also must complete a semester-long apprenticeship assignment in which they read and study a single author. This assignment culminates in a class-wide research poster session to which I invite the campus community. This kind of hands-on experience exposes students to a wide range of different kinds of thinking and writing, allowing them to broaden their conceptions of the world and challenging the construction of their own identities, both of which lay the seeds to advanced thinking and working in multiple genres.
Reading as Writers
At the introductory level, students must read often and read widely, in their chosen genres and outside of their chosen genres. As a multi-genre writer, I model methods of reading. For example, the class might read a piece of flash nonfiction and a short lyric poem on the same subject. From this reading, we can discuss how certain strategies of writing work better in different situations. Reading in multiple genres also exposes student writers to ideas and aesthetics often far outside of their comfort zone. As such, student writers should read works by writers from traditionally oppressed backgrounds. Reading Erica Dawson’s dazzling formalism or the sharp straightforwardness of Roxane Gay’s prose asks students to interrogate their assumptions about aesthetics, genre, and voice. This kind of focused reading prepares students to read challenging and diverse texts in upper division courses.
Ultimately, a creative writing class should give students two things: 1) the seeds of understanding their own creative processes and 2) the strategies needed to work effectively in multiple genres. A student-focused pedagogy of experience and experiential learning provides avenues for self-awareness and sustained growth as writers.