Department of

English

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

J. Michael Rifenburg

The past ten years Ive had the privilege to teach a wide variety of learners (high school
students, honors undergraduates, at risk college students, adult learners, elementary
students, specially admitted student-athletes) in a number of institutional settings
(private high school, four large state universities in three different states). Despite these
experiences, I was not prepared for the class I faced several years ago. This class, an
introductory writing class in a diverse southeastern public university, was full of students
who were institutionally labeled as underprepared. As the semester progressed, I learned
that many had a defeatist attitude toward academic writing because they were repeatedly
told they couldnt write; they couldnt properly structure their paragraphs; they couldnt
fully articulate their conclusion. Together, we explored assumptions previous teachers
had made about them which led us to exploring the assumptions constituting curricular
writing, and, in a broader sense, academic literacy. I asked students to develop a list of
writing they did out of schoolfor example, song lyrics, text-messages, and graffiti.
Through expanding traditional understanding of writing to account for these forms of
expressions, students critiqued the social, cultural, and political assumptions which
undergird common understandings of curricular writing. Moreover, students explored
synergies and conflicts between their curricular and extracurricular writing and how these
synergies and conflicts collide, resulting in students own unique literate selves. Agreeing
with McComiskeys formulation of social-process composition pedagogies as that which
treat critical writing as rhetorical inquiry and political intervention into the cultural
forces that construct our subjectivities (Teaching Composition, 3), I believe the
composition classroom is the ideal space for this inquiry and intervention. As such,
teaching people to write, is as much teaching people to examine these conflicts and
synergies and shifting the writings focus depending on audience expectations and
rhetorical inquiry.
As I attempt to foster these examinations and ask students for expansive notions and
actions of writing, I remind myself to teach writing as a reflective practice. According to
Hillocks, reflective practice not only encourages students to view writing as a recursive
process but also invites teachers to revisit and possibly revise classroom assignments to fit
more fully with the fluid interactions of the class. Although I enter the classroom with a
set of activities for the day, I find students bring with them unexpected and beneficial
additions to the class. Adapting writing assignments to fit with these additions leads to
student-research in the library, multiple drafts, and revision workshops. Believing
audience has a large role in the construction of a text, I ask my students to read and
comment on each others drafts as well as sit down one-on-one with me. After receiving
feedback from multipleand sometimes disparatereaders, students are faced with the
challenging rhetorical task of incorporating multiple layers of feedback into their draft.
While I agree with many post-process theorists who argue against a systematic
description of writing, I strive to create an environment in which students receive

frequent feedback through small-stake writing assignments, which ultimately lead to

peer-review drafts and a final draft.
Such a method of writing instruction has formed the foundation of the pedagogy I am now
enacting at the University of North Georgia. I strive to illumine for my students how all
the forms of literate activity in which they engage impact and inform their academic
writing and that writing for the academy, like writing a text message, requires attention to
audience, rhetorical inquiry, and the understanding of one as a literate self.

Blue Ridge Cumming Dahlonega

Gainesville Oconee
82 College Circle | Dahlonega, GA 30597 | ung.edu