Empoword

How to Use This Book xxxviii As I see it, the best educational experiences happen in what I call learning community . No matter how much support one teacher can provide for their students, your opportunities for growth multiply exponentially with the support of your classmates and college resources (like a Writing Center or research librarian). It’s important to consider your writing class as one very particular learning community. Doing so acknowledges that: • Writing doesn’t exist in a vacuum . Almost all writing involves an exchange between a writer and a reader. Even on the professional level, the best writing is produced collaboratively, using feedback from a cohort of trusted peers. You may have been trained to believe that your schoolwork is your business and no one else’s. This text emphasizes collaboration instead: we can be more successful, confident writers with the support of the readers around us. • Writing is hard . Learning, and especially learning to write, demands a certain amount of vulnerability. By working from a place of shared vulnerability, you will discover ways to ensure that vulnerability is productive and maintain a certain degree of safety and support through a challenging process. My students are often pleasantly surprised by how much more meaningful their learning experience is when approached with an investment in shared vulnerability. • Communities are, to some extent, horizontal . The vertical power dynamic that plagues many classrooms, where the all-knowing teacher deposits knowledge into their ignorant students, must be dismantled for true learning to take place. You need to be able to claim the knowledge and skills you build in the classroom, and you can only do so if you feel you have a stake in the mission of the class. • Communities have shared goals and values, but also diversity within them . Each member might have a different path to that goal, might have different needs along the way, might have additional individual goals—but there’s value in acknowledging the destinations we pursue together. • Learning communities are not just communities of learners, but also communities that learn . No matter your expectations for your writing course, our communities will have unanticipated strengths, needs, successes, and failures. Communities that learn adapt to their unique makeup in order to make shared goals more accessible to everyone. Why does this matter to you? Because building and sustaining a learning community is a valuable experience which will serve you as a writer, a student, and a citizen. Furthermore, living writers have more to offer one another than any textbook could. Writers write best among other writers. Learners learn best among other learners. Although you will learn writing skills from this book, engaging in a learning community will allow you test and sharpen those skills. Teacher Takeaways Reactions from actual college professors are included in boxes like these.