Empoword

How to Use This Book xxx How to Use This Book – Instructors First, I’d like to thank you for adopting this book (or at least considering it) for your class. I know the nightmare that textbook adoption can be, and I hope this serves your students’ needs as a primary textbook or a supplementary material. This text was inspired by my first year as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Portland State University. I walked into a classroom of first-year students, transfer students, international students, and returning students, all of whom had shelled out $70 for textbooks required by the department. As I planned each lesson, I had this figure in my mind: sure, it wasn’t the most expensive part of college, but my students would feel ripped off if I didn’t use the anthology and instructional handbook that they had been required to purchase. Both of those books fell quite short. As with any anthology, the selected texts were great, but the scope left a lot to be desired. As with any textbook, the instruction was solid but had different priorities than I had. Nevertheless, I still felt obliged to teach them. In contrast, this text is free. On the student side, this is great news, but it’s also great for us as teachers. You can use this book in its entirety, or use none of it. You can pick and choose model texts, or you can teach exclusively from one section. Because there is no cost associated with this book, you should feel no obligation to use it in a way that students “get their money’s worth.” In addition to this advantage, this text afforded me a handful of other opportunities. First, as a digital product, it increases accessibility for students with disabilities. Additionally, because you can use it anywhere with an Internet connection, it is more readily available to non-traditional or distance learning students. Next, because it is zero-cost, it reduces the barrier to access for students entering college, especially from low-income backgrounds. These characteristics are representative of broader trends in Open Educational Resources (OER), but I’d like to think that other things set this textbook apart: predominantly, I envision this book as a space to advocate for a student-centered writing pedagogy that at once embraces expressivist and social constructivist paradigms of rhetoric. This isn’t the first time a book has pursued this goal, but I consider my approach a valuable contribution to buoying the perception of value in student writing. Student-Centered Writing and Learning Communities Before going any further, I want to acknowledge one major goal of this text: to advocate for student-centered pedagogy that fosters learning communities. Most of the texts that make this a reader -rhetoric are actual student work that I’ve encountered over my career as a teacher.