Maria's Teachnology Statement

As a teacher of writing, I understand part of my task is to debunk this myth that a writing class serves no other purpose than to fulfill a basic requirement. In actuality, I believe that to know how to write, to write well, and the ability to teach others how to write are skills that will travel with all students throughout their professional and non-professional lives.

Yet, to teach such skills, I require more than just writing essays from my students. In fact, I believe before I teach students how to write well, I must make the case for why writing matters. To answer the question why, students must engage in activities that involve more than just writing. Students must recognize the impact that writing has upon the world. To write is more than just writing a five-page paper. To write is to have a purpose, to tell a story, to make meaning, and to share that and attempt to convince a larger audience of your purpose.  

So why does writing matter? Writing matters because writing occurs everywhere, across cultures and across continents. As such, writing impacts our world. And it impacts our world because, for the most part, writing can be shared across the world. Today information travels at the speed of light, meaning the thoughts, voices, opinions – the writing of citizens - travel just as fast. Technology affords the opportunity for anyone who has technology access or freedom to post, upload, share, tweet any thought, response, outrage or enthusiasm they may have about nearly any topic. Thus, while I want my students to become good writers, I want them to understand the transformative and influential power of writing.

Therefore, I assign writing topics that ask my students to write about real-world issues and ask for critical reflections and responses to these issues in their writing. By adopting a critical pedagogy and applying decolonial theory into my classroom, students are asked to reflect and write on topics that expand beyond their own understanding and perspective. Doing so, students are encouraged to bring in real-life issues, question them, struggle with them, and attempt to make sense of them beyond their own understanding. While not always an easy task, it is a task that attempts to connect critical thinking, writing, and ethics into one – all skills needed to succeed in life. Thus, my goal is thus to build student agency in their writing by broadening their audience and sharing their writing via technological posts and uploads. The writing that happens in classroom does not stay in the classroom, but is shared with the world.

Technology thus allows the ability to expand upon traditional and limited understandings of writing. In fact, coupling writing with technology enhances the powerful skills that students receive when studying writing via our world. No longer is writing found only within classroom walls. Technology allows teachers like me to break down those walls and better incorporate the “extracurriculum” (Gere, 1994) into the writing classroom. It affords the opportunities to teach how writing works, how writing creates change, and what makes good writing. Thus, writing with technology allows students to expand their typical classroom audience to a larger audience – expanding their voice and thoughts to the world. Therefore, for me, it is imperative to not only teach with technology in order to introduce technological skills to my students but to teach how technology can be used to make agency and create a space for voices to be heard. 

Want to see a remixed version of this statement? Check it out: