"When I first began teaching, I was very concerned with
returning papers the next day. One evening I forgot to grade a
set of essays, and I was frightfully nervous about arriving to
campus the next morning without papers to return. The entire
day, not one student asked, “Where’s my essay?” That weekend,
while grading the essays, I found myself to be more relaxed and
more in tune with my students’ writing voice, rather than the
fact that there were homonym errors and that the students forgot
to insert a comma or two. I actually got to immerse myself in
their prose." "Now when I conference with students about their
writing, in addition to discussing the grammatical and
structural errors, we discuss their varied life experiences. Now
my students know that I’m interested in them, as individual
human beings, and because of that I’ve seen their writing
improve." --Ureka Williams, Tulsa Community College, Oklahoma
7.5 years teaching Related NCTE Resources . . . ReadWriteThink
Lesson plans. ReadWriteThink offers hund