Renée Waverly

Teaching

Courses Taught

Northern Illinois University

Teaching Tools I’ve Made

A “Work in Progress” Teaching Philosophy

Vikki Reynolds (2019), writing about the ethics of working as a clinical counsellor, stresses that “our work is not innocent, and as counsellors we do not suffer the largest consequences for our incompetence or lack of experience: our clients do” (Chapter 2). The same is true for us as educators. We must learn how to walk the thin line of preparing our students for the world they are entering while avoiding perpetuating the status-quo of injustice against linguistic minorities.

Dryer (2015) notes that writing is not “natural in the way that speech is” (TODO, track down the page number), and MacDonald (2025) points out that written language “uses very different vocabulary and grammar than spoken language” (p. 123). Students who can eloquently express themselves in front of their peers in a TikTok or a podcast or a YouTube video might suddenly find themselves unable to put their thoughts to words in a way that they think is acceptable to their professor. This is one of the many side effects of the historically enforced requirement for “Formal Academic English” from students. Under that standard, students raised with a different variety of English as their home dialect see unfair challenges compared to their peers. We as educators acknowledge that the essays we ask our students to write are not, themselves, the end goal.

Rebecca Solnit posits that “writing is not typing,” and that writing is comprised of steps like “thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing with revisions as you go and then more revisions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh” (Watson, 2019, p. 124). We seek to teach students how to form arguments, effectively research topics, and understand audiences in writing contexts. So why do we still follow the old models? We need to find a way to fundamentally transform the way we talk about and teach the act of writing. We need to be able to show them that what we are teaching is important and relevant to them beyond the essays and term papers; we need to teach for transfer across domains.

MacDonald (2019) finds that adding reflection assignments from day one of the course, particularly reflections that encourage thinking about how the content of the course can connect to their life and goals, can lead to better grades and increased student engagement (pp. 102-103). {reflection component}

As a part of moving beyond the essay, active learning - group problem solving and partner discussion - becomes an incredibly important component of the classroom. However, “students dislike active learning because they [are] convinced that they learn more in the traditional lecture-plus-homework arrangement” (MacDonald, 2019, p. 117). So how can we get buy-in from students? {direct transfer by comparison to real-world industry and business practices; potential working in of MacDonald 2025 p. 136 to supplement industry reason.} MacDonald (2025) found that “students who gave explanations gained more knowledge,” despite the fact that “everyone had the same information about how to solve these prolems” (p. 132). “The process of developing the explanation is itself a valuable learning engine and shouldn’t be truncated in favor of a quick answer” (MacDonald, 2025, p. 134) {sending key questions to the audience instead of directly answering them, allowing students to put in the intellectual work and therefore remember it better}.