Warren's Teaching Philosophy
	I believe that enhancing what students take out of a classroom begins with acknowledging what they bring into it. For a class to succeed, students must feel comfortable enough to voice their real reactions instead of what they feel is expected of them. This kind of openness depends on a sense of security I can foster in several ways: by demonstrating my command of the material, by structuring the semester logically, by ensuring that discussions are respectful and productive, and by clearly establishing what I expect of my students. But the most important thing is that I recognize the students' insights and experiences as valid starting points for their inquiry into the subject matter at hand. "College is not for sponges," one of my undergraduate professors used to remark, his point being that habits of mind stay with you long after facts and figures fade from memory. My aim in a class is not only to teach students to appreciate specific texts, but to encourage a hunger to read and reflect upon other texts, and to inculcate careful interpretation as a habit of mind. As a junior, I took an architecture class that literally changed the way I see. Whether on a pilgrimage to a Louis Sullivan building or sitting quietly in a Dairy Queen, I now have the intellectual tools to notice how form sculpts space, and to reflect on the particulars of my aesthetic environment. My goal in every class is that students become familiar with similar tools for interpreting their historical and cultural environment. Students should leave my courses with at least these things: an enhanced appreciation of literature and a desire to read more of it, an increased awareness of the complex cultural histories of the literature and traditions we study, and new interpretive skills to help them to navigate the bewildering array of information they encounter daily. I do not so much want to change the way they see the world as to give them intellectual tools to read it with more depth, discrimination, and power.