Undergraduate

Writing Program

A Passion for the Teaching of Writing

Laura Aull
—Graduate Student Instructor

Two things about teaching I look most forward to are getting to know students and working with them to see more deeply into the (often hidden) expectations that shape writing and literature. Part of that endeavor includes exploring how our cultures—academic, national, social, global— influence the production and consumption of texts. I see my courses as a collective endeavor to greater critical consciousness of such processes that we then bring to bear on all we read and write and witness.

Paul Barron
—Lecturer, Sweetland Writing Center

I try to help students make connections to what they have already accomplished as writers and to prepare them for the way forward. I want them to develop a collection of skills and strategies they can adapt to any writing situation, whether academic, professional, or creative. But more than this, I want my courses to offer a way for students to improve themselves in a deeper way. We have the right to speak, but since we don?t have the right to be heard, we have to take responsibility for how we communicate. As writers, our job is to interest readers, but also to develop our knowledge of and faith in ourselves and, always, to remain open to discovery.

Mike Bunn
—Graduate Student Instructor

Sometimes I’m questioned by students about the utility of what we do in writing class.  How will the critical and rhetorical reading skills we develop in class assist students in the "real world"?  How does writing an academic argument prepare them for the job market?  I respond by making the case that learning to read and write is fundamentally about communication.  Learning to interpret another’s ideas or present your own beliefs in a way that is meaningful to a given audience has utility in every area of life.  The semester plays out as an opportunity for students to experiment with reading and writing as a way to test my assertion.

Jeremiah Chamberlin
—Lecturer

My primary goal in the classroom is to foster a desire for questioning and inquisitiveness in each of my students. Intellectual curiosity is a lifelong endeavor, one that enriches our lives long after we leave the University. And regardless of an individual’s career path, creativity and critical thinking are invaluable skills to possess. This is why I teach my students that the very act of writing is a process of learning and exploration. As Don DeLillo says: "Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them."

However, intellectual curiosity alone does not guarantee successful writing. Writing needs to matter beyond the personal. In each of my courses—whether I’m teaching creative writing, essay writing, or argumentative writing—I ask my students to interrogate how their work speaks to broader social and cultural issues. In short, why it matters.

This is what I love most about teaching: showing students that writing is a dynamic and individual process. It is not about saying the right thing or finding the right answer. Rather, it is about asking questions and finding new ways of seeing the world. By doing so my students not only develop academic skills crucial to success in our University community, but they also find ways to better express and understand themselves. 

Staci Shultz
—Graduate Student Instructor

In every writing class I teach, my goal is to foster a sense of community. I try to accomplish this goal by creating a safe and productive space for students to develop their skills, by emphasizing the importance of audience, and by helping students recognize that they are members of various communities and that their writing should be connected to those communities if it is going to be meaningful. Every activity I assign, from peer conferencing to class field trips to reading responses, attempts to reinforce the connections between community and writing. This attention to community is characteristic of place-based pedagogy, which encourages students to be aware of the places and communities they inhabit— their hometowns, their dorms, their online social networks, the physics lab, the homeless shelter where they volunteer, the law firm where they hope to someday practice—and to write about them. The assignments that emerge out of this pedagogy give students a sense that their writing has purpose and thus lead to more meaningful teaching, learning, and writing.