“Aristotle he admired at the first, and loved him, as he himself used to say, more than he did his father, for that the one had given him life, but the other had taught him a noble life…”

– Plutarch (on Alexander The Great)

     Since time immemorial, we as a species have been learning from one another. Someone provides the knowledge and someone is there to acquire it. Being a high school English teacher has its own form of knowledge transaction. Since high school is a landmark time in a student’s life with great growth and intense emotion, the English teacher’s ability to navigate those hills and valleys relies solely on the experience of said teacher. 

     That’s where I come in.

     My educational experience is condensed into three chunks. The first chunk was my own journey through K-12 schools. The second chunk was my nine-year journey through college. And the last chunk is the chunk I am currently on, my teaching journey.

     The first chunk, there is not much good to say about it. I grew up in Hollywood, California. My life was not one of privilege for the area that I inhabited. Surrounded by the glitz and glamor of the movie and entertainment industry, my family and I were on welfare and very very poor. My mother and father were addicted to heroin and were ultimately taken from my brothers and me by AIDS when we were teenagers. After their deaths, we were placed in several foster homes in several different cities with several different racial and economic demographics. I ended up in San Diego by way of my extended family who came out of the woodwork after finding out that foster care was not a hospitable place for three teenage boys. While I did relatively well in elementary and middle school compared to the grand majority of my peers, I did not do well in high school. I do not and will not blame my circumstances for that. It was 100% my own doing. Even still, English was my forte. I have my mother to thank for that. She taught me to read at an incredibly young age and demanded that I stay vigilant about my reading and writing. An example of this was her insistence that I read the front page of the Los Angeles Times every morning before school so that I may practice the skill of reading while also being informed about the latest news of the world.

     I waited ten years before I finally decided to take the plunge into higher education. Part of that decision was based on my previous experience in high school. I was afraid that I would fail. I had also seen a lot of friends who had gone through college fall hard into debt with no real way out through gainful employment. I had gone into a plethora of different career fields before I took my first class at San Diego Mesa College. Then I watched the fourth season of the HBO series, The Wire. The season had segments that focused on an ex-police officer becoming a high school English teacher. I was inspired to walk that same path. So I began taking classes in order to achieve that same goal. I blazed through Mesa and decided to stay in San Diego. I then transferred to San Diego State University. At SDSU I was able to hone my love for both writing and reading while also taking classes that prepared me for my future in teaching. The greatest joy in my time at college was using literary theory to guide my reading in the several English Literature classes I took. The musings of John Milton in his epic poem Paradise Lost are the biggest highlight. I graduated with a B.A. in English with an emphasis in English Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Fiction.

     The third and final chunk is the one that has brought me the most joy. It is, of course, my teaching career thus far. It began at San Diego State University. I started working as a writing tutor for the EOP (Educational Opportunity Program) Center where I helped students, like myself, from poverty-stricken and other diverse backgrounds and cultures. It was immensely rewarding and further solidified my desire to teach. A few years later, I did some TAing in an Introduction to Creative Writing class that gave me my very first whole class to teach. The professor saw my passion for writing, specifically plot structure and design, and let me teach the class on that topic during the semester I worked for her. The students were the most receptive to exercises where I had them connect the pop culture of Star Wars and Harry Potter to one another. They soon learned that those two stories had extremely similar plots and structures. Having the privilege of seeing the students get those “eureka” moments during my lesson was something that I often compare to sparking an addiction in me. After that, I got to teach Rhetoric and Writing Studies before finally being given two English classes (Introduction to Literature and Introduction to Creative Writing) in my short tenure at San Diego State. My next goal after teaching college was to teach at all the other grade levels. So I took a position in the San Diego Unified School District as a Resident Substitute, which led to my teaching Pre-K all the way to 12th grade. I had taught every grade level and I found that my initial need to teach high school was the right choice. It is the true “middle” between elementary school and an advanced college degree.

     I have now been working on my Single Subject English Credential with the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. Their program is accelerated in that I have worked a full school year on a High Tech High campus and taken all of my regular coursework with the best and brightest in the world of project-based learning. During my takeover, I was able to teach my class (which is 11th grade) the ins and outs of creative writing. The students wrote and created amazing short stories, poetry, and even comics. This allowed me and continues to allow me the opportunity to use my experience teaching every grade level to hone the craft of teaching alongside the craft of creativity and writing. I wanted to help these 11th graders harness their creativity while also showing them that literacy is an important part of life after high school. I did this by connecting their stories, poetry, and comics to current events and philosophical issues regarding bioethics.

     In combining my college-level lecturing experience, my traditional teaching experience, my experience with every grade level, and now my experience at the forefront of project-based teaching, as far as teaching is concerned, I am a jack of all trades. 

     With that experience and the experience of the rest of my life, I have established a few core beliefs when it comes to teaching. Students should and must engage with the real world. A young adult’s ability to discern reality from a watered-down version of it will help with their development of empathy and understanding with the world outside. And so they can feel competent and like they belong in their future professional lives. Also, a teacher should and must help students find an authentic voice, both creatively and professionally. This ability will pay dividends in the student's life as they navigate the business and collegiate worlds. Giving them the tools to successfully meet the demands and expectations of modern life. I have found that the most direct ways of implementing these beliefs in the classroom are establishing a classroom culture where students feel safe to take risks with their creativity and to let the students lead discussions about readings and writing mechanics so that a healthy artistic debate can transpire between their peers.

     My classroom will be one of almost constant rigor in the realms of reading and writing. I expect to hold my students to the highest standards in their ability to use literary theory to read and understand the texts that I assign. For example, when reading a canonical text, the class will look at different questions that line up certain lenses for the students to look through while exploring the many facets of the work. Along with my assigned books, I will also expect my students to read books of their own choosing independently during and outside of class. These can include any variety of text like comic books or technical manuals. In writing to show myself and themselves that they grasp the minute details of the texts, I want my students to study nonfiction areas that connect with whatever book they are reading. This includes news articles and historical documents that link to the stories or text being read. Understanding what possible research the author did to create the books and stories will push their connection to the words far more than just trusting the author created a genuine reflection of whatever subject is being expressed. This practice connects with my first belief about students’ ability to engage with the real world. Young adults who inundate themselves with fantasy will not be able to interface with the realities outside of high school. It is my hope that my class will ready every student for those realities. Connecting my second belief with student writing will be expected with the foundation of their reading regiment. Again, pushing the students to use an authentic voice and vision when applying themselves to the reading material will make life in college and future employment far easier than if they were given busy work to do and given standardized reading materials.

     This leads to my third belief: it is a teacher’s job to ensure the students leaving high school have their own unique beliefs and feelings. School is not a factory, and it should not be producing carbon copies and worker bees with each passing year. That means the material should and must evolve with the changing societal landscape and with the changing psychology of the student as an individual. With that, I will continue to ensure that my lessons are adaptable to a large range of learners by being available and checking in with students as their needs adjust. Fostering relationships with families will be a top priority so that their support network can provide them with the highest quality of attention and care. Teaching and being taught is not a one-size-fits-all process. It should be treated as a malleable skill in both realms of its practice.

Philosophy Academic Paper