CLASS 12 | MAY 01 | YOUR TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

 

 

 

CLASS FOCUS

What does education mean? What are your personal beliefs about what's important, relevant, meaningful in teaching and in particular teaching design? What constitutes a teaching philosophy and what's expected?

 

RECOMMENDED READING:

Excerpts from Corita Kent and Jan Stewart, Learning by Heart (Allworth Press: New York) 2008

 

IN CLASS:

Review Final Project

Set up personal meetings for next Tuesday

Discussion with Jan Stewart and Juliette Bellocq on the teaching philosophy of reknowned pedagog, Sister Corita Kent, which you can view here:

 

Some Rules and Hints for Teachers and Students

By Corita Kent

 

cf. The Next Whole Earth Catalog, ed. by Stewart Brand (Point/Random House, 1980), p. 540

 

Rule 1: Find a place you trust and then, try trusting it for a while.

 

Rule 2: General duties of a student---pull everything out of your teachers; pull everything out of your fellow students.

 

Rule 3: General duties of a teacher---pull everything out of your students.

 

Rule 4: Consider everything an experiment.

 

Rule 5: Be self-disciplined---this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them.  To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

 

Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.

 

Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

 

Rule 8: Don't try to create and analyze at the same time.  They're different processes. 

 

Rule 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself.  It's lighter than you think.

 

Rule 10: "We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules.  And how do we do that?  By leaving plenty of room for X quantities."  -- John Cage

 

Hints:  Always be around.  Come or go to everything.  Always go to classes.  Read anything you can get your hands on.  Look at movies carefully, often.  Save everything---it might come in handy later.

 

 

 

 

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

MAY 15: FINAL PROJECT: TEACHING POSITION APPLICATION PACKAGE: A WORK IN PROGRESS

 

 

What are you going to do?

During the semester you have been building critical awareness and the practical skills of an informed professional design educator. For the final outcome of the class, you will create a job application package for an ideal teaching position. Although the package won’t be perfectly completed and will need to get elaborated into a Teaching Portfolio, the package will provide solid bones on which you can build.

 

What should you be thinking about?

Consider what you have discovered about yourself through the “who I am as an educator” drafts and through identifying your area of research/interests. These insights should guide your choice of suitable position, program, and institution.

 

What are the tasks to be accomplished?

1. Identify an ideal program in which you can see yourself. This can be a real program or one you imagine. Write a job description (including name of institution; name of program; position title; description of the position; and short program description)

2. Draft a cover letter for your application package that introduces you and discusses your area of research and specific interests (without duplicating your Philosophy of Teaching)

3. Refine your CV as needed

4. Transform the “You as an educator” drafts into a final Philosophy of Teaching. (If to you want to look at some examples of Teaching Philosophies, you can find them here.)

5. Refine your sample course (Parts A and B) as needed

6. Design the letter, CV, Philosophy, and sample course to reflect your design values (sensitivity to type; interest in info design; experimental formats; user-center design, etc.)

7. Submit the package as a PDF binder (several documents combined into a single document) to Canvas

 

What is the project outcome?

Although described above, here’s a checklist of what your designed Application Package should include:

1. Job description  

2. Cover Letter

3. CV

4. Philosophy of Teaching

5. Sample Course

 

Why why why???

Some practical prep towards the real deal; to make tangible and bring together everything you’ve learned in this class; and to instigate reflection on how you see your future.

 

Project deadline:

Tuesday, May 15

Submit via Canvas