Ideal Teaching in a Working World: A Short Essay by Alan Wheeler Any discussion of teaching philosophy or pedagogy must address

how extremes should be balanced in the classroom. While every movement or school of thought in education will have an emphasis or extreme, experienced teachers may tend to trade radical zeal for more integrated approaches. Teachers must draw the line between theoretical ideals and what will really work in practice, must consider how much emphasis to place on content while maintaining skills training, and must contemplate how to give students responsibility for their learning without neglecting their duties and role as the teacher. The first balance that successful teachers must reach is between theory and practice, the ideal and the real. In the case of writing, for example, the ideal or best way to develop is by extensive and intensive reading. By reading dozens of essays each day and hundreds of books each year, students can naturally and organically develop styled and sophisticated writing. In reality, studentsespecially nontraditional and diverse populations in technical or community collegesdo not have the time or inclination to do such great reading. While some reading must be encouraged in the college English classroom, the students may require heuristics, formulaic short cuts to style, such as writing to classic models or drilling correct grammar patterns. The danger is that students may write without understanding underlying reasons for style choices or may produce texts that might seem to have popped out of a pocket calculator; however, the opposite danger is that they may not learn to produce any kind of writing that would be acceptable in the real world. The theoretical ideal must be tempered by what works. The second parallel but distinct balance that successful teachers must achieve is between content and skills training. The great danger is for the teacher to perform 80 percent of the work in the classroom. Even lectures about how to write and diatribes on style or grammar, in the end, amount to content teaching. All content is best integrated with language learning and skills training. For example, any work that students perform with contentwhether in pairs, group work, or class discussioncan be considered prewriting because students may certainly adapt their critical thinking as well as their development of examples and support and apply all to their composition writing. While good content does lead to good thoughts and good writing, the environment to nurture in the English classroom is that of the laboratory or workshop, not that of the lecture hall. Related to these first two, the third balance successful teachers maintain is between the studentcentered classroom and the teacher-centered classroom. In the East, the responsibility of education lies with the teacher, sometimes to a fault, while in the West the responsibility lies with the students, sometimes to a fault. There is a balance. In the college writing classroom, students should indeed have freedom and authority to express themselves; the more ownership they feel in their writing, the more likely they will improve. On the other hand, the teacher has the responsibility of explaining why rhetoric and composition is important in real life, a motivating and inspirational idea. The teacher also has the duty of making the rhetorical situation clear, explaining such rules as the level of formality expected. Giving freedom and authority within clear parameters can both encourage and comfort students. These three examples show how an integrated approach works best in a balance: theory and practice, content and skills, teacher and student. In the end, extremist enthusiasm for various teaching philosophies and pedagogy must be tempered with experience.