I am what Kathleen Blake Yancey identifies, in Reflection in the Writing Classroom, as an “expressivist.” In short, I’m inclined to focus first on student interaction with his or her writing. To achieve this, I start each semester by emphasizing that every student, no matter their background, brings something valuable to the classroom. I work to establish a culture of learning, in which I both express and demonstrate that everyone can contribute something positive to the class dynamic.

I believe that learning happens best through a lens of self-understanding, and I want my students to trust me as their instructor and each other as colleagues, rather than simply classmates. I’m particular about this verbiage because I believe it both establishes a higher level of respect among my students as well as sets up a dynamic that naturally inspires collaboration. My intent is that they carry life skills with them from college to career, where it is standard practice to collaborate with colleagues.

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To nurture both trust and self-understanding I assign writing tasks throughout the semester that encourage reflective expression. Alfred Lord Tennyson expresses this so beautifully in Ulysses: “I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' / Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades / For ever and forever when I move.”

We are all parts of all that we have met, and as humans we’re always striving to be part of even more. Reflective assignments that ask students to look into their past for deeper personal meaning nurtures growth and engagement in part because students gain deeper understanding and feel that their experiences are valid. It lends confidence to young writers, many of whom feel silenced by self-doubt.

Reflection also supports the culture of learning that I work to build by emphasizing the importance of thinking as inseparable from writing. The in-class free write exercises I design are intended to get students comfortable with what I call the “messy process” of writing. “Allow yourself to put words on the page,” I tell them, “even if the only words you can think of, in the beginning, are ‘I don’t know what to write…I don’t know what to write.’” This helps them break the pattern of trying to think everything through before putting pen to page, or worse rejecting ideas outright without capturing them first. My goal for them in this is for them to be comfortable with a process that is, at all times, a combination of thinking and writing. The free writes are remarkably helpful with this. As one student wrote on a feedback form I made and distributed early in my first semester of teaching: “I enjoy being able to just let things flow.”

In addition to helping my students find freedom in the writing process, reading their reflections is an effective way for me as their instructor to identify new teaching opportunities, or design lessons that reinforce and expand on material already introduced.

Branching off from all of this messy initial process writing, of course, is the ever-important task of composing polished, clear writing that is tailored to a selected audience. Yancey addresses this as well, contrasting it in relation to the subjective approach of expressivism as “the ability of the writer to create text for a reader.” She goes on to explain that the subjectivity of expressive instructional focus is not actually distinct from that of audience-centered writing in that they both strive toward a common goal: “They resemble each other in their point of departure, a presumed ideal text, which determines the view of both process and product.”
           

I value both approaches, scaffolding from self to other; from the personal to the global. Writing is by nature a very personal endeavor but it is also a way that people connect with each other to share ideas and influence behavior. Writing as process engages with the messy, non-linear self; as product, with a selection of rules and guidelines that speak to the linear. Together, they make a whole but the beauty is in the idea that we can come to all of it from wherever we are in life. As a teacher I find it’s imperative to support my students’ diverse, non-linear learning processes, reflect evidence of their strengths back to them, and provide them a safe space from which to begin their structured engagement with the greater world.