Teaching Through: An Approach to Writing Program Administration

My teaching philosophy drives my administrative philosophy, which is characterized by an asset-based approach to faculty development, leading through teaching, and encouraging experimentation. Essential to all of the above is a commitment to providing support and guidance for the many challenges and complications that arise on the path to true pedagogical innovation.

Writing programs of necessity must constantly evolve and adapt to new and unexpected constraints and affordances, particularly with regard to the role technology plays in both compositional practices and writers’ individual mindsets. As a writing teacher, I embrace multimodality and peer collaboration through internet-based (synchronous and asynchronous) computing. As a writing program director, I run workshops with faculty in order to share my successes (and failures) and provide space for sharing and troubleshooting collected concerns; I encourage faculty to try new things, to experiment, to take risks—and, as a result, we enter into a near-constant exchange of teaching and learning.

A successful writing classroom fosters growth through commitment to an inclusive writing community with common goals and realistic outcomes. A successful writing program balances the diversity of its faculty with program-defined objectives, and it serves the needs of its students within the framework of its institutional mission. Good administrators are good teachers; they also need to be good communicators who can navigate and negotiate institutional and departmental directives while maintaining (and securing support for) program initiatives. As a writing program director, I value, respect, and cultivate the myriad relationships my role requires me to maintain among administrators, faculty, and students. 

One of the most important roles of a writing program administrator is to support and actively participate in teaching and learning. I model my administrative practices on my own commitment to writing and the writing classroom. Just as writers need to write, teachers need to teach. We must strive to adapt, evolve, and create. Teaching is an act of discovery and the complex nature of writing provides endless opportunity for learning and praxis. By centering experiential learning, both students and teachers can become better writers, better thinkers, better teachers, and more active citizens.