Let's wax philosophic.

Since I spent my last post lamenting about leaving KMart, I thought I'd continue my melodramatic theme into this one.

If you're someone who likes to teach (and I think I am) then you're someone who likes to see others succeed, rather than needing all of the success for yourself. If your students are successful, then you are too. I'm not someone who necessarily defines success as a high-status job with a heavy paycheck. I didn't go to grad school to get a Master's degree to be able to do anything with it. Mostly, I was in the right place at the right time, and quite frankly, I just love being in school. I love learning. And teaching freshmen composition? I've been guaranteed I'll never stop learning new things. But what do I hope to teach? I'm not naive enough to think that most of my students don't have a predisposition to hate my class. It's English. Mostly, they hate it. They find it boring, irksome, and tedious. And a good portion of them wouldn't know what those last 2 descriptors even mean.

So, do I hope to teach them something? Even through that prejudice? Of course I do. When I stop losing hope that I can teach my students anything, then I'll stop pursuing teaching. I just don't necessarily hope to teach them the kinds of things they expect to learn.

If I have to choose what they learn (and even though I design what I want to teach, it doesn't necessarily directly reflect what they will learn), these would fall somewhere on that list:

Good writers are not born. Good writers develop. They teach themselves. They write all the time. And that's truly the only way to become a better writer. Every skill requires practice. Even singers born with amazing voices have to train them. Even athletes born with significant abilities practice and condition to become better. Writing is the same way. You can't improve if all you do it sit around and bemoan that you're a terrible writer.

Related to that, good writing never happens on a first draft. NEVER. You may think that you're first draft is pretty phenomenal, and it may be good, but it will always benefit from revision. Writing is never truly "finished." There's just a deadline to turn it in. You shouldn't expect to produce a perfect paper on a first try, and expecting that from yourself is one of the worst causes of writer's block. Start somewhere, anywhere. Get something on paper. Then build on it.

You are not a "bad" writer. You're not "bad" at English. If you truly believe that you're just always going to be bad at English, someone, somewhere failed you.

Good writers are good readers. The two are inseparable. If you want to become a better writer, then become a better reader. It's a fact that we best learn and understand language through immersion. So immerse yourself in the English language. Yes you've been speaking it your whole life, but spoken language differs from written language on many levels. To be a better writer, you have to read good writing.

Good grammar does not equivocate to good writing. The end. Every great writer has had a great editor, too.

We read and write every single day. Any student who tells me that they're "never going to use this stuff again" after a composition course better be prepared to be laughed at. We do it all the time. What is Facebook? Twitter? MySpace (does anyone actually use MySpace anymore)? Texting? It's all social networking. Networking that requires communication. It's amazing to me that students today can type 140 characters, click a button, and reach millions of people around the world. And they tell me they're never going to use the things they learn in my class? Sure, facebooking and tweeting does not require MLA or APA documentation. But it is a form of writing. A form of writing that has it's own form, rules, and even language. That's what I teach in my class: How to determine the type of writing needed, the audience you're trying to reach, the methods to go about communicating what you want to say, and the language needed to be clear and concise. Never going to need the skills I'm trying to show you? BALDERDASH.