For my students · Eric Shay Howard

What kind of writing course you're in

There are as many approaches to teaching first-year writing as there are professors in the world. I feel that students should know a little more about the kinds of curriculums there are and what they are getting into. In other fields, students have a pretty good idea of what their professors know about. Those things are not that apparent in composition courses.

The two main types of curriculums I use:

Writing About Writing, based on the textbook of the same title by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. You read real academic articles about the field of Composition Studies and write about the histories, skills, and academic theories of learning literacy, including your own history and identity as a writer and reader. You come away understanding not just writing as a student, but the field of study itself.
Literature-based, with personal essays for weekly readings. The personal essay is a great form to help you see how research begins: with questions. I will often ask: what do you think the question or "try" was for this author with this essay? What "research" might the author have done to write it?

The truth is that most of the time different components of many different pedagogies are used within our writing courses. If you're interested in knowing more, A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (Tate et al.), while meant for composition professors and graduate students, does a great job of overviewing many of them and is a fairly accessible read.

How my courses work

Semester to semester, I pick major assignments that are different forms of three things: one that emphasizes personal history, one that emphasizes multimodal writing, and one that emphasizes primary data. Each includes a rough draft, at least one revision, and a half-page to one-page reflection.

Due dates are check-ins. They give you the opportunity to engage in workshop and peer-review feedback. If drafts and revisions are not turned in on time, I cannot guarantee that I can give you full credit for your portfolio at the end of the semester, as the writing process is a large focus of our course.
Revision stays open. You are encouraged to revise further if needed; you will turn in all final materials in a portfolio at the end of the semester. I encourage you to take risks in your revisions and experiment with different ideas. I will regrade your papers throughout the semester. Writing is recursive; no writing is ever truly finished.
My feedback grows. It will be minimal on your first papers and will increase throughout the semester as you get more comfortable with the workshop process yourselves. People work with others to get things done with writing (Wardle and Downs 16).
Workshop is required. Group work is an expectation and therefore a requirement for full credit. Skipping peer review days and workshop time will result in a lower grade in the course. To get the most out of these sessions, I recommend reading Richard Straub's article, "Responding—Really Responding—to Other Students' Writing."
Workshop comes from creative writing. I really latched onto workshop as a student. My workshop group was the best thing that came out of my MFA in Creative Writing program. I like to do a "survey" of different workshop methods: Peter Elbow's teacherless writing class, the Iowa model, Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process, and "peer review" as done traditionally in composition courses.
Use the Writing Center. I do not "check up" on the Writing Center to try to "find out" anything about anyone's writing, so feel free to use the space and services. I may occasionally refer students there if I feel they may need the support, but everyone needs to remember one of the key threshold concepts from our reading: "writing is a process, and all writers have more to learn" (Wardle and Downs 10).

Habits worth keeping

Read. Reading and writing are interconnected. We can't write without reading, and we almost always begin the writing process when we read. Reading is how we get ideas, one of the ways we learn, and it's still a skill necessary to succeed in your academic career.
Freewrite. You write for a specified length of time without thinking about what you are going to write. You do not stop and edit, you do not go back and edit, and you do not filter your thoughts. Often, we do not know what we want to say before we say it. The same is true for writing. (Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers.)
Get a first draft down. Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" encourages you to not worry so much about perfection in the first draft. When we spend too much time writing a first draft, we can become too attached to our work because of the time we've spent working with the words. You can't edit a draft without a draft to edit.
Know how you revise. Lamott suggests we get a draft and revise and get another draft, even one in a different form, and revise again and again until we get it the way we want it. Nancy Sommers found that experienced writers revise more globally and begin much earlier, revising the entire paper as it's being written, while student writers focus on word choice and sentence-level changes. Who is right? It's important to remember that some of us are more experienced than others.

So you're done with my course

If there's one thing I hope you take away from my courses, it's that attention to audience and purpose are expectations in all writing going forward. There is no writing in the real world without a purpose behind it. Audience, content, and the writer all play a part in how that writing will be received. Once you understand this, you can ask useful questions about your particular writing situation.

The cognitive load will increase in the courses beyond mine, but the essential building blocks are similar for just about any writing requirement, situation, or project:

What genres are you being asked to produce?
What are the conventions of the genre?
Are there any common methods to start off with to develop them?
What are your preferred methods, and how can you use your own writing process, which you have spent multiple courses discovering, growing, and tweaking?

I was a non-traditional student. I started college when I was 25 years old and was a first-generation graduate. It took me five years to finish my bachelor's degree. I still write fiction and creative nonfiction and serve as an editor of literary and academic journals in my spare time. There's more on the About page.

When you finish your undergraduate degree, unless you're continuing on to grad school, you'll need to shift your thinking from "what to write for professors who are paid to read my work" to "how do I convince others to pay me to read my work?"

By the end of the semester, you'll have your own workshop preferences. Keep a writing group going, in your own preferred styles using your preferred methods. I'm always available as a resource to discuss workshop group problems and solutions throughout your academic and professional careers.

My hope is that you're more confident in your writing choices, that you're comfortable continuing to learn in unfamiliar situations, and that you keep taking risks in your writing based more and more on well-informed decisions throughout your courses and career. I continue to learn just as much as my students, semester to semester.

Recommendation letters

For recommendation letters, I need at least 60 days' notice. If it's been a while since I've had you in class, you'll probably have to give me a rundown of who you were and what class I had you in, and maybe some highlights of some of the things you wrote in my class. It would also be helpful if you had information about the program you are applying for and trying to get a recommendation for.

A few more things

AI. As a professor, I have a responsibility to teach my college students how to use AI ethically and effectively, and I can't teach what I haven't practiced. How I use AI explains how I use it in my own writing. The policy for your class is on your syllabus.
YouTube. My YouTube channel isn't part of any course. You don't need to watch it or subscribe, and it won't help you in any academic way.
Paid services. I can't offer writing workshops or consulting to anyone enrolled in a course I teach, or until a full calendar year has passed since you were a student at a university where I teach. The details are on the Policies page.