My pedagogy is driven by rhetorical and feminist approaches, focused on establishing a student-centered approach to teaching writing that helps students respond to texts and situations by taking action in the form of writing. As I engage with students in different modalities from traditional face-to-face classes to online instruction, my classes focus on activities and discussions that encourage students to prioritize questioning, to explore their own ideas and writing processes, and to value their own responses to and interpretations of texts.
As a teacher, I am in a position of power and my voice should not always be the loudest or the one that speaks the most. Students need opportunities to talk to one another and think together and collectively in order to teach me about their experiences and what they’ve learned. My approaches to feminist pedagogical practices include using writing as a tool for self- reflection and critique, creating collaborative work opportunities to distribute agency in the class, and focusing on content centered on minority experiences (Micciche, 128). I create classroom environments where students work in small groups for discussions and presentations creating more opportunity to flip the way that information and knowledge about writing is shared with the class, distributing agency throughout the members of the classroom community. I focus my class on discussion and group work, rather than lecture. I also allow students to write their ideas and classroom contributions, rather than forcing them to speak out in class. I use “writing as a tool for self-revelation” when I ask students to reflect on assigned readings, their writing processes, or experiences with class assignments (Micciche, 128). Writing gives everyone in class a chance to share ideas and be heard and connects directly to my practice of rhetorical pedagogy because it gives students examples of instances when they might want or need to write in order to convey messages.
Where the teaching of rhetoric, particularly in antiquity, traditionally centered around masculine and patriarchal forms of and approaches to argument, I use rhetorical pedagogy that encourages all students to consider how they might take action in response to viewing or reading texts. I center my classes around the idea that texts occur in a particular time, place, language, and convey particular messages. As students analyze these factors in others’ writing, they also explore them in their own writing in the form of formal essays and informal reflections. My pedagogy is rhetorical, also, because students are writing, exploring different genres of writing and different kinds of texts, taking action through writing, and identifying rhetorical situations inherent in all pieces of writing, including the writing that they produce for social media platforms. My rhetorical pedagogy strives to bridge a gap between teaching students to speak and write well and the texts used to help reach those goals.
Sources
Glenn, Cheryl and Martin Carcasson. “Rhetoric as Pedagogy.” The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. Edited by Andrea A. Lunsford, Kirt Wilson, and Rosa A. Eberly. Sage Publications. 2009.
Micciche, Laura R. “Feminist.” A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Edited by Gary Tate, et al. Oxford University Press. 2014.
Alexandra Sladky 