Hello, All—
I have been so nervous to take this class with you all. I think I am afraid of being a “bad online student.” I think I worry that I will put the work for this class last on my interminable weekly to-do list because it’s not piled on my desk, my bed or my kitchen sink (can you tell I’ve been in a cleaning mood this weekend?).
But as I started admitting these nerves to myself, I thought–as I often do when I face a new challenge at MiraCosta–of my students. Some of them begin a term with apprehension or begin a semester saying they are “bad writers” or “bad at English.” Perhaps these nerves can serve me well if I am to teach in an online classroom. Empathy is not a bad place to start this Writing with Machines adventure, right?
This leads me to one of the first of three ideas I want to share about my teaching: the importance of acknowledging our Humanity in the classroom. On the first day of classes, when students have introduced themselves in pairs and they introduce one another to the entire class, I also introduce myself. After I briefly outline my educational background, I tell them what I really want them to know about me: I share with them where I was born and raised and tell them about the people who mean the most to me. I tell students that I share this with them as a reminder that I am a human being, with a life that goes beyond the classroom walls…in the same way that I remember that THEY are human beings with lives, concerns, and passions outside our classroom walls. The sharing that we do through these icebreakers or during check-ins throughout the semester help us see one another as whole persons, which makes the reading and writing work we do engaging and thoughtful.
Another core principle in my classroom is my belief that all students are holders and creators of knowledge. When I first read Dolores Delgado Bernal’s work, I knew I had found the language to express some of my experiences in the classroom as an English Language Learner and as a student of color. Here was this Latina academic—and she wasn’t alone—validating my invalidation (if that makes any sense). Due to my own experiences in the U.S. classroom in secondary and higher education, I take great care to express to all of my students, especially students of color (because their espitemologies or ways of knowing are often invalidated in educational institutions), that they can hold and create knowledge. This is one of the reasons I theme my ENGL 100 class around the ideology of the American Dream. When the semester begins, and I ask students to journal what the American Dream means to them, they already have a lot to say (and write).
Finally, I want to add that as I was reading Teaching Writing Online, what made me hopeful and less nervous about the course was thinking of how to demystify the writing process in an online or hybrid course. Because there is so much writing involved in the online classroom, I got excited about the many ways to remind our students that they are writers, and that they indeed are writing and rewriting all the time in their everyday lives. In my classroom, I also highlight that writing can be messy and collaborative, rather than the solitary and painful task that we can make it out to be. Currently, one of my favorite things about my face to face experience is when I have one-on-one conferences with students while the remainder of the class is engaged in a peer-to-peer writing workshop. I see tremendous growth in my students as their questions get more specific and thoughtful with each assignment. I am looking forward to learning of the ways I can create a similar rapport with my students in an online or hybrid setting.
Here is my video: