Teaching, I believe, is a vocation that should be pursued by those who can help students to not just master required subject matter but develop skills for critical thinking, so that, they in turn, will be able to contribute to and further build on the accumulated body of knowledge in their chosen fields. To successfully achieve the aforesaid objective requires personal commitment; mastery of the subject being taught; originality and creativity; and the ability to make students relate to the subject matter. Given my own views on 'teaching,' I was naturally pleased to find that the objectives of my course had been carefully structured and defined to meet precisely the above-mentioned requisites. This has been particularly meaningful for me as both a student today, and hopefully, as a teacher of high schools students tomorrow.

The personal importance of successfully achieving the stated goals of the English program led to my reviewing my portfolio with a view to finding examples of work that would demonstrate a wide, but knowledgeable application of the content and skills learnt from the course. From all the pieces reviewed, I found that my work on Moby Dick and The Awakening were best equipped to showcase my abilities.

My work on Moby Dick, I believe, demonstrates an understanding of literary content as well as the development of literary...

The assimilation of literary knowledge shows through in the identification of Melville's use of symbols and allegories as a literary technique in order to espouse a more meaningful sub-text of man's search for his true place in the universe and his relationship with God. The piece also identifies Melville's masterpiece as having been canonized in American and world literature as a great classic given that Moby Dick strikes a perennial chord in the collective human consciousness, dealing as it does, with the theme of man's relationship with God and his fate.
The work on Moby Dick further reveals the recognition and use of critical approaches, as evidenced in the comment on Melville's use of imagery in depicting the divine power of the whale, including the color white to signify a special sanctity. Blended in both the essay and Melville's writing, one sees the delineation of the philosophical context as well. Take, for example, the exploration of the significance of the color white down the ages and across cultures or the allusions to the Bible and the Old Testament.

In Moby Dick, I also found a real effort to research the body of critical literature available on the classic and the use of the same to form, develop and defend the thesis that Melville intended Moby Dick to study man's relationship…