updated 4.21.08
- Students need time to practice new skills and express existing ones. I give plenty of low-stakes writing assignments that offer students ample time to practice academic writing. I also shape assignments in a way that allows students to practice writing in areas in which they are already knowledgeable because of my belief that students come to my classroom with useful knowledge from their life experiences, not as blank slates.
- Students deserve respect from their teachers. I communicate this respect through the way I structure deadlines, the speed and nature of my e-mail responses, the tone of voice I use in the classroom, the amount of eye contact I give, and various other ways. One corollary of this point is the honor and privilege I try to give diverse points of view in the assignments and activities I choose.
- Teachers should teach and model ethical behavior. It would be foolish to pretend that I could teach writing from some sort of an ethical void, in which only crisp skills are taught instead of fluid values. Therefore, I teach in a way that brings ethical dimensions of various projects to the forefront. In writing classrooms, this means discussing plagiarism in its wider societal context of historical notions of sampling, sharing, and copyright law. It also means that all projects and activities offer an opportunity for teaching thoughtful living, in which students increasingly begin to ask themselves about the ethics of their choices in writing and out of class.
- Teachers should teach students to be thoughtful users of technology. On the practical side, classes and workspaces increasingly demand sophisticated skill with various software systems—beyond basic word-processing skills. But on another level, I find that students (like the rest of us!) often immerse themselves uncritically in new technologies. To that end, I strive to design activities that ask students to interrogate the ethics, usefulness, and practice of technologies like cell phones, social networking websites, blogging software, presentation software, web design, and so on.
