Seth D.

Long Teaching Statement 1

Because no two courses or students are alike, teachers need different tools and practices to help them
adapt to the varied pedagogical contexts in which they might find themselves.
Tools for the Text
At its most basic, writing is playing with the components of language. Im always looking for new tools
and practices to help students tap into the copious possibilities of language. Copia exercises are a
mainstay of my first and second year writing classestaking an individual sentence or paragraph from a
text and having a class re-write it in different ways, first by re-arranging words, then by using new words
altogether. I also get students tracking their word use by asking them to highlight key terms in a
composition with different colors, to discover whether or not themes are developed consistently and
cohesively. This exercise consciously develops what Christina Haas calls text sense, the ability to hold
in memory the text composed so far, an important ability for young writers.
Devoting attention to student writing in this way shows students that I take their texts seriously as
objects worthy of study. I also show that I take their texts seriously by devoting ample time to
commenting on student work during class, in one-on-one meetings, and via email. Personal, ongoing
conversations about an unfinished text are often more valuable than notes attached to a final draft.
Tools for Research
Teaching students about research means teaching dialogue. It means teaching students to bring
multiple voices, including the students own, into a generative conversation. I use Kenneth Burkes
parlor metaphor to illustrate the point. New media tools are also valuable for teaching research. In
Research and Writing, I teach students to use citation management tools such as Zotero and Mendeley. I
also use network metaphors to conceptualize the research process as a series of connections and
clusterings of ideas and sources. Networks enable students to see, at any point in the research process,
how their ideas have emerged and developed.
Tools for Civic Discourse
When I teach writing, I am also teaching civic discourse, which means encouraging a respect for open
deliberation among diverse perspectives. Having spent much of my teaching career on minority-majority
campuses in Southern California, I see diversityof perspective, of race, of classnot as a goal to meet
but as a fact of life. Working with diverse students, to me, is just as natural as working with a
homogenous group, if not more so.
Some of the best tools and practices for fostering civic discourse among diverse perspectives come from
the traditions of classical rhetoric. In my first year writing courses, I use Aristotles enthymeme and
Chaim Perelmans development of that idea to teach students the importance of uncovering starting
points of arguments. Students read op-eds and fill in the enthymemes that undergird each statement,
eventually realizing an important point: most sides in a public moral debate speak past one another
because they start from different prior assumptions. This realization is a vital step toward learning to
value and practice civic discourse in an increasingly diverse society.
Seth D. Long Teaching Statement 2



Tools for Creating Audience and Context
As with teaching research, new media tools are valuable for engaging audiences. Students take
ownership of their writing when I ask them to publish their work on blogs, on discussion forums, or
when I ask them to Tweet their ideas and theses. The internet makes it easy to create situations wherein
students classmates, if no one else, will read their work.
Creating context is also a vital practice in the classroom. It helps students answer the vital why? of their
writing. To that end, I encourage students to create texts that address some exigency in their personal,
professional, or civic lives. For example, when students in my Professional Writing courses create
feasibility reports to address a workplace issue, the first week of the project is devoted entirely to
finding a real-world site where the students can meaningfully propose a project. That way, students
know their work has the potential to benefit an organization in real life.
As a teacher, I am only as valuable as the practices and tools I bring to the classroom. For that reason, I
am continually in search of new pedagogical ideas that encourage students to think about their texts,
their research, and their responsibilities as citizens and writers whose texts will potentially affect the
world around them.