WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

In the autumn of 1974, I taught my first college writing class. According to my rough calculations, well over 1,500 students have stepped into and out of my writing classrooms over the past twenty years, including, in the past twelve, around 800 Stanford students. Although my most fundamental teaching philosophies have remained fairly consistent, I have gathered over time both the experience and the tools I have needed to hone my teaching practice &endash; or to keep honing it. My teaching is a work in progress and always will be, and there are very few endeavors in my life that mean more to me.

My fundamental goal as a teacher is to provide you -- my students -- with opportunities and instruction that will allow you to become flexible writers and speakers, whatever academic disciplines and work in life you choose. To this end, I want you to understand the context in which rhetoric &endash; your own and others' &endash; is produced and functions. I believe that it is crucial that you, as engaged writers, readers, speakers, and listeners, be taught to assess each communication scenario in light of the audiences and purposes that provide its exigence.

Yet, as much as I want you to be able to write and speak for particular audiences and purposes, I want you also to develop a strong sense of who you are and what you have to say it. Just as each student's experiences, insights, and voice are unique, so are each student's aptitudes and skills. I respect and teach my students as individuals, but always within the context of a community of writers. In order to train you to be active writers and readers, I will provide you with structured opportunities to practice and reflect upon the process behind the written product, both your own and others'.

I think that we learn best when we are engaged in learning on multiple levels -- personal, social, and rhetorical. It is important that you make personal connections with what you are asked to write about and that you understand that you are members of many concentric and overlapping communities, including the classroom community, the university community, your "home" communities, the global community, and so on. We learn something essential, something that fuels understanding and communication, when we are able to locate and apply the personal relevance of large ideas, principles, or issues, and when we are able to articulate our life experiences, beliefs, and values within larger rhetorical and social frameworks.

I also think that we learn best to write by writing, by being read, and then by writing some more. Although the writing process is recursive, and it varies with each writer and with the rhetorical demands of each writing task, approaching writing in stages will not only allow you deeper insight but will also ensure a better written product. When we are free to explore our ideas and to experiment with language and style before being asked to refine and to perfect our writing with a particular set of reader expectations in mind, we are better able to work up to our potential. At many stages of the writing process -- from brainstorming to researching, from organizing to drafting, from revising to editing &endash; interception by and feedback from active listeners and readers is crucial to a writer's development. With reader-based feedback from peers and more specialized feedback from me, you will be able to build most productively on your skills, reinforcing and retaining them. Furthermore, when audience is extended even more widely than your instructor and peers -- to include local community members in community-based writing, for example &endash; you are likely to become optimally invested in a productive writing process, a written product of high quality, and a fruitful learning experience.

I see my role as a teacher as a balancing act between implementing my authority and allocating it to others. It is perhaps ironic that as my confidence as a teacher has grown, my classroom has become increasingly decentralized. I feel comfortable in giving over to students themselves much of the responsibility for their own learning, and I have seen the great benefits in doing so. For example, in asking atudents to take on roles as discussion leaders, as opposed to my being the one posing all of the questions, I have seen all class members become more involved in more interesting and productive dialogues. Similarly, when I "butt out" of my students' online discussions, they generally speak to each other more honestly and productively about their roles and identities as writers and readers in various rhetorical and personal contexts. In insisting that students develop their own writing topics rather than my assigning them, I have seen most students invest more in what and how they learn and what and how they write. In encouraging collaborative writing, I have seen students rise to the highest denominator rather than settle for the mediocre as they learn how to meet the challenges of collaboration. In peer review and with the dynamics of the peer review conference, I have seen astute student feedback, as well as resistance to "lame" feedback, translate into optimally effective revisions.

My most radical experience in decentralizing my classroom has been with service-learning. In integrating community-based writing and academic writing in many of my classes, not only do I authorize my students as active learners, but I also extend authority to community mentors. Since Community Writing placements are essentially internships with area non-profit organizations, students research and write according to agencies' needs. The primacy of audience and purpose hits home in Community Writing. With these particular assignments, it is the community mentor, not I, who has the last word on content and writing. Although my students and I both struggle at times to find our places in the decentralized classroom, this dynamic process instructs us.

Perhaps the best way I can express my goals as a teacher is to say what I think you can expect of me, and what I expect from you in return. I will challenge you, both individually and collectively, to work to your full potential, and I expect you to rise to these challenges. I will take you seriously &endash; your experiences and thoughts, and the writing that comes from them. I am an expert in writing and rhetoric, and you can expect me to teach you in concrete ways to be a better writer, if you invest in your own learning. You can expect from me more than passing comment on your work. At the draft stage of each major writing assignment, you will receive both written and spoken comments, in individual or peer review conferences with me, and at the revision stage you will receive running comments and narrative evaluations. In return, I expect of you concrete improvement from one assignment to the next, culminating in overall improvement of your writing. When I reach the limits of my resources, in terms of time or expertise, you can expect me to be able to refer you to campus resources that can further help you in appropriate ways, ranging from the Stanford Writing Center to The Bridge. I will respect and instruct you as an individual, but I will also expect you, especially in peer review, to participate actively as a member of a writing community, to be both giver and receiver. You can expect me to guide and, when necessary, to mediate fairly interactions within this community. I will strive to provide you with a dynamic classroom environment, relevant and provocative readings, and compelling writing and speaking assignments, and I expect you to engage these opportunities wholeheartedly.