Early on in my academic career, one of my history professors opened our first seminar with this governing principle: “In this classroom, we begin from the assumption that everyone in the room knows both more and less than they think they do.” As we engaged in discussions, we would be asked to both honor and share the knowledge and experience we brought to the room and, simultaneously, to question our own assumptions, listening for the contributions of those around us so we might learn together.

 

Now, years later, as a teacher of rhetoric and writing, the most common refrain from students I hear is, “I’m just a bad writer,” or even “I’m sorry you have to read my papers.” One of the joys of teaching for me has been in interrupting students’ negative self-concept, in helping them to (re)discover curiosity, patience, and purpose in their writing practice, and in creating the conditions that might develop their confidence as they come to know that their knowledge and experience is and should always be valued.

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With this in mind, I have three primary objectives in mind as I design my courses; I seek to support students in:

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1) crafting their own writing identity;

2) developing a lifelong curiosity about and engagement with the social, political, and rhetorical problems and possibilities occurring around them; and

3) building a repository of research and craft strategies and tools to make their writing process smoother, more collaborative, and more pleasurable.