teaching philosophy

Joshua Korenblat
in the Renaissance and Victorian models of education, where students learn to think and work in an interdisciplinary way. In Florence, Renaissance humanists convened meetings to discuss the relationship between science, poetry, and art; a Victorianera artist, meanwhile, had to study and understand aspects of science, music, and literature.

I believe

A unifying world-view informed the practice of thinkers who could excel at a single craft, from Leonardo and Michelangelo to George Eliot and Charles Darwin. Such transferable critical thinking skills have become increasingly relevant today, given advances in technology that have made the abundant world accessible from home, and which have blurred the borders between two storytelling languages, verbal and visual. Creativity, the process of arriving at a solution when multiple solutions exist, is crucial for students to practice today. Students can copy-and-paste expository responses to any question from the internet. At key moments, teachers must challenge their students to give creative responses, which access personal memories and activate the imagination. With keen scaffolding, guidance, and assessment methods, students can learn to communicate persuasively about all domains of knowledge. At any level, an effective teacher must not merely master subject area knowledge. A teacher must also see the world through the eyes of each student, and then communicate and compose lessons that maximize individual learning potential. Voice is one key to effective writing. I ask students to think about how they express themselves, and to think about the voice of the storyteller in our core text. Who is the assumed audience? What is the storytellers education level, age, life experience, and world view? What is the diction of the text, and what is the order and complexity level of the sentences? How do these elements contribute to the mood of the story and change how we see the narrated events? How can students become writers and think critically about their work? I structure my classes in a thematic way, first by asking an essential question. Then, I plan backwards by determining the cumulative project, student learning objectives, and how I will assess student growth in their revisions and portfolios. I select a core text and related material relevant to the essential question, and supplement that text with readings and related works of art to provoke discussion and inquiry. During this process, I scaffold my lessons so that they build skills and insight directly applicable toward the cumulative project. As a teacher of writing and affiliated arts, I ascribe to the constructivist philosophy of educational psychologist Jean Piaget, who advocates learning by invention. Students exist at the center of the learning process, guided by a mentor. Here, students learn by failure because outcomes do not match their expectations; for their next task, students make accommodations and change their mental model so that they realize their expectations. By freeing failure from its negative associations, students begin to feel less inhibited, a key part of creative flow. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the psychological term flow, a timeless place unmoored from self-consciousness where ones skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand. I measure student outcomes through detailed, written critiques. All writing must be judged by its intent, and all criticism must be framed in specific, observational terms to motivate the student; vague judgments such as success and failure inhibit creative thinking. I ensure intrinsic motivation by including incremental assignments calibrated to match skill level to the task at hand. Here, students feel prepared for the challenges they face and then work with flow, poised and curious between the opposing, detrimental poles of boredom and anxiety. For most work, I request revisions and allow students to consider possibilities. Students engage in creative workshops that prepare them for the final cumulative assessment, which could be a final revision or a new piece. For essays, I encourage students to summarize the reviewed work in one or two sentences before engaging in a detailed critique. This summary conveys the single powerful effect of the work, its intent and lasting mood. In this way, students structure their critiques just as I structure my curriculum: they begin at the end. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau from his essay Walking, my students do not simply acquire knowledge; they learn to understand the world, and all of its inhabitants, with a sympathy and intelligence cultivated by a humanities education. Once the reader is affected emotionally by a work, then he or she is ready to apprehend it intellectually. Artful communication transforms concepts once considered mundane into wondrous new forms, and presents this body of knowledge with a lucid light. In my classes, students learn from literature and affiliated arts, find their voice and hone their craft, and ultimately see their role in society with more clarity and humanity.