Fantasy Writer

So it's the end of the term and we have learned about several pedagogies for teaching writing.  Strange enough (or is it?) every one we have read can be applied to our program and how we teach.  However, aren't we supposed to have favorites so that when we are interviewed for other collegiate teaching positions we can sound smart and hopefully have ones that our employers follow too?  But how to choose?

First we have process pedagogy, which I guess I could pick as a favorite only because it's common sense: writing IS a process, so why not teach it that way?  I am a great supporter of drafting and peer review, and in our program we sometimes peer review so much the students think it is overkill at times.  Then there's expressivism, where the writer is the focus of teaching writing, that students have a "voice" in their assignments and their purpose for writing is personal.  Blogging and memoir could be categorized with this pedagogy, and besides that I try to give my students as much choice as possible in their purpose for writing (though in informative papers they may not present so much "voice").  Collaborative pedagogy could be another favorite pick because it is a field that is fast growing and can have so many benefits.  Of course, peer review can be a form of collaboration, but more specifically our projects can be really geared toward class writing: for example my students created a class web site on public writing, in which each student had a part of the whole, and it all had to fit together.  Our practicum collaborative essay, while not finished by any means, actually starts to sound pretty terrific when you take into account that not one person set the idea for the whole, and we've kind of meshed it all together.

There are many more pedagogies that we have learned that I have taken something away from, that are all in some way used in our writing program.  I can only hope that when it comes time for me to "talk the talk" of pedagogy in an interview that I can represent myself well and what our program does and has accomplished.  My last question would have to be can I mention many, or do I have to choose one or two?

I haven't had such a problem with blogs through the semester in terms of students doing them, most of them do.  However, I have had several complaints from students that they don't enjoy them.  I have put it to survey and though greatly about this assignment:  I think the biggest problem is that they are blogging, but then they don't necessarily get read or responded to.  Yes, we instructors respond, but this is actually one assignment that the students would rather have STUDENT feeback rather then instructor feedback.  I think that if the students see that their blogs are read and responded to by more than one person that they will perhaps enjoy it more.  In fact, those students I have that blog and get responded to most often respond back, and vice versa so on, so that the students are generating online conversations with eachother.  I'm going to try, next semester, to have them do one topic blog (alternating between free and one that I come up with) and then instead of a second topic blog I will have them respond to at least two people (instead of just one).  I hope to see, and I think it will work, my students interacting more with eachother and feeling good about blogging, or at least more interested.

The essay on datagogy suggests that this pedagogy is empowered by “the wisdom of crowds”--the creative power of individuals working collaboratively in a climate that respects difference and dissensus, and that one way our program is supporting this is through blogging, or even class discussions.  The power of the blog is that a person's ideas can be stated, and that others will reply in agreement, sympathy, or disagreement, with a sliding scale of extremes. It is empowerment when a singular idea or expression is posted to the black void on the web and grasped and reviewed by an unconnected audience of varying geographies and backgrounds; the idea and readers are now connected and used, strangers and aliens coming together to "speak".  You respond, I respond, and you respond, and perhaps I will respond.  The key to datagogy and blogging is really in the response: it is one thing to post an idea, but it is altogether another level when one or hundreds respond to it - "it" is now a global thing.  There is no true value to an idea that floats in the void indefinately, without reading. 

Our blogging requirements should reflect this datagogy empowerment, the empowerment of responding and knowing you've been responded to.  What is the point of two blogs that may not be read, what is the point on giving your view if now one has an opinion on it?  Let's focus our datagogy on response as much as critical thinking and analysis, let's give our students the power of the  mob by having them speak up.  Instead of two blogs and one response, why not one blog and two responses?  Require students to reflect more on what others have said and what their analysis and thoughts are on it.  Empower not only the respondant but the originator of the idea.

Right now I am writing this idea, but I am completely unsure that it will be viewed: extraneous matter to float in space.

Fiona Paton's essay "Approaches to Productive Peer Review" was very helpful and full of great advice, and like she said in her introduction, it would have been nice to have this introduction to Peer Review at the beginning of the semester!  Her essay is split into three parts: Introducing Peer Review, Setting Up Peer Review, and Maintaining Peer Review.  The first section summarizes how instructors should introduce peer review to their students, and gives some few guidlelines on what to say, but it would have been more helpful if she had given an example of the diagolgue an instructor would use.  This section was a little vague on application; it was more a statement of why introduction is needed, rather than how to do it.

The second and third sections give great application tips on implementing peer review.  Some of it is good common sense, but it's always good to see it written down and have it to read to reinforce our teaching skills.  One good tip is to explain what is expected for each peer review session: not every session is the same, nor is every project, so it is important that each session be tailored to what the students need in regards to feedback and revision.  I do this with every peer review session, giving students a different guideline every time, and guiding questions tailored for the project and what I want my students to focus on for that session.  This practice also helps in maintaining peer review throughout the semester, so the students don't get stuck in giving the same types of comments.

A good guideline Fiona gives is to "share some good responses (feedback) in class, and explain why they're good" (300).  This is something I have not done in my class, but I will start doing: it only makes sense since students learn by good example, and also enjoy praise in the classroom.

For my Studies in Composition course, I am presenting on a chapter in Joseph Harris' A Teaching Subject.  One tiny passage in Chapter 5 struck me greatly, reminding me of our (the new instructors in FYC) first week in training to teach at USF.  Here's the passage:

      "One result of this has been a view of "normal discourse" in the university that is oddly lacking in conflict or change. 
       Recent social views of writing have also often presented university discourse as almost wholly foreign to many of our
       students, raising questions not only about their chances of ever learning to use such an alien tongue, but of why they
       should want to do so in the first place." (99)

To put this in context, Harris is discussing "discourse" in writing, specifically how "community" is used in the world of writing.  Most of the new instructors that started this year in FYC at USF, had little experience in teaching at the university level, and ourselves are just entering the world of graduate studies.  There were those who are in the midst of their graduate studies and had already taught university composition, so this doesn't really apply to them, though it possibly does to a small degree.  From the first minute of our training we were immersed in the university discourse, especially that of composition, which for the past 60 or more years has really developed as its own separate field from "English", and has branched so many times and ways that there are possibilities within possibilities of how to teach and "scholarize" yourself in it.  Our immersion was rocky, and remained that way for quite awhile - we nodded our heads as if we understood what our colleagues and bosses were saying, trying not to look as stupid as we felt.  As my personality is to understand and question everything, after a few weeks I was able to raise my hand and start getting clarification and definition of these alien terms, but even then comprehension was slow going because other alien terms were used to describe the original alien terms.  Now after a few months of reading and writing the discourse, most of us are starting to get the hang of it, but still hold back from becoming complete speakers of the language because in the back of our minds we remember how it was when we first were introduced to it, and feel that to perpetuate that gross misunderstanding and uncomprehension would do the next generation of colleagues and students a disservice.

We (the instructors) have also had many heated conversations on what type of discourse to use with our students who are freshman, and most of us agree that we should use comprehensable language when speaking and writing with them.  We disagree that this is "dumbing down the language" - above 90% of our freshman will never use or encounter our composition discourse again - or ever want to - and those who will or want to because they are in the English field will learn the language when they become more specialized in the field (just as a doctor or engineer does in their field).  I feel we do our students a disservice by speaking our alien discourse in our composition classes: I don't ever want them to not understand me and my instruction, and I know most of them are too afraid to raise their hand as I did and do.

When reading Susan Jarratt's essay "Feminist Pedagogy," I was struck by her passage on the effects of this pedagogy on the writing process in composition teaching.  Jarratt discusses the old mode of patriarchical teaching in composition as that of "making assignments, waiting for a product, and then judging its value" (118).  Indeed this has been the experience of many freshman in composition, before and current, including myself as a freshman seven years earlier.  I think it may be the struggle of any composition instructor to get away from this type of teaching, as we know from experience and reading the research that this is not an effective way of teaching composition and writing.  Jarrett explores how some within this pedagogy feel that the nurturing, motherly attitude of the female is compatible with the shift in teaching composition from the dominating role to the "position of encouraging, supportive guide" (119).  However, the downside to having females in this new instructive role is that it may reinforce "gendered stereotypes dividing intellect from emotion, authority from caring, the public from the personal" (119).  This supposes that feminism was a direct link in changing the way composition is taught, but could it not just be from a greater awareness of the writing process and how writers learn?  As a composition teacher myself, I am constantly thinking of ways of how to teach writing to my students so that they are learning writing, and not writing to what I expect them to.  I take the role of a guide through the semester, coaching and supporting, even nurturing their endeavors in writing.  Is this because I am a female, or is it because that is how we write?  Has the influence of gender and feminism influenced how we teach the writing process, or is it an overall realization of the academic community and education research that the mode of the writing teacher has changed?

We have a wonderful portfolio tool in Blackboard, which makes it very simple to create; your finished product looks pretty professional.  But we also have this wonderful tool of wikis, which seems to me to be a limitless way to do portfolios.  The Blackboard tool has limits in the way you design your portfolio, and design can really reflect your personality and enhance your writing style.  In wiki (Writingwiki, Teachingwiki) you can design the format of your "home" page with different types of headings and font formatting, and upload pictures.  Even simple things like boxes around text and menus can really enhance the cover or navigation page of your portfolio.  While Blackboard allows you to upload documents and projects, once they are finished that is the end of it.  In wiki, you can copy and past your papers, and then change the formatting and more.  You can also edit your writings easily in wiki, whereas in Blackboard you would have to have the original copy of the work, change it in the program you originally wrote it in, then reupload into Blackboard and your portfolio.  Wikis also allow you endless pages that you can link together. 

Wikis is just another source our students can use for portfolios.  Blackboard is a good source to use, especially since we usually only give our students a week or two to work on them.  But think of the endless possibilities that pop up with the option of the wiki for portfolio creation.  Not to mention the fact that your portfolio is now public for everyone to see, which as long as the contents of the portfolio are not harmful to a career, might be very inviting to those who would consider you for a position in the workplace.

In Erika Lindemann's book, A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, portfolios are discuss in Chapter 14: Responding to Student Writing.  She devotes only two full pages to portfolios, but gives some great advice and reasoning behind the use of portfolios.  Portfolios are discussed under the heading of "Handling the Paper Load," and this is one of the author's main reasons for having students develop portfolios, the secondary important reason being giving feedback to the students.    Portfolios are defined as "collections of students' work assembled over time" (249).  Lindemann discusses how portfolios allow the instructor to assign a "great deal of writing" for the student, meeting one of our own standards in FYC of student writing not just projects but everyday in and out of class.  While allowing for a great amount of writing, portfolios also allow for less work by the instructor in that we do not necessarily grade every single piece of writing as they are written, but in a wholistic manner when grading portfolios and evaluating student writing over a period of time.  In our program we have the students create their portfolios after the fact, at the end of each semester, but Lindemann poses that students should begin developing their portfolios right away to make it immediate for them and not just another "project" grade.  This way students can bring their portfolios with them to conferences with the instructor, and when the instructor brings up issues in the student's writing the student and/or instructor can identify throughout the portfolio where the issue is seen.  Through this method students can identify their personal writing traits and style throughout "all" of their writing, and not just for the immediate project the instructor is grading at that time.

The contents of the portfolio should include what the instructor would like to assess at the end of the term, but also allow the students to choose anything else they feel will enhance a reader's view of the author's style and voice in their writing.  This is another way for the students to identify with the use of the portfolio, and not that it is just another project grade.  The main purpose of the portfolio is for both the instructor and the student to be able to evaluate the student's writing over a period of time.  At the end of the chapter Lindemann discusses how the portfolio can become a departmental collaboration, where the goals of the writing courses are set by the instructors through the use of the portfolio, and then the portfolios are graded collaboratively so that we are not just assessing our own students but students across the composition department.  This allows us as instructors and as a program to see where our courses are going as a whole.  I think that this is an interesting idea in implementing the uses of portfolios, that we set the goals of the portfolios as a program and then grade them together.  This could generate great discussion of the types of writing we see with our students as a whole.

In reading the section on Cultural Studies and Composition, one thought kept reoccuring to me: to have a truly cultural composition pedagogy, how would we execute it or incorporate it into our program?  Here's the problem: we have a very large population of students, all of different backgrounds and in different fields; the extremes between the fields at our school pose the largest problem.  The biggest question that comes up in my classroom is How does this apply to me?  My students wonder how writing a memoir will help them to become a cosmetic dentist.

One could ask why we would want to have only a cultural pedagogy in our composition program - which employs many pedagogies - but I would like to examine hypothetically what we could do with this pedagogy.  Cultural pedagogy, which really became strong after World War II because of demands from the adult working class, sees itself as the pedagogy that makes it "real" for the students, that instead of examining literary texts that may have no meaning, we examine what's "under our noses" in popular culture and mass communications.  I would like to narrow it a little: instead of the broader sense of popular culture and communication, what about specialized culture and communication?  It would answer the nagging questions of my students and how does this help them?  The purpose of examining popular and a wider culture in cultural pedagogy is to form global and aware students.  Instructors of composition may envision their students becoming immersed in rhetorical thoughts on culture and becoming better citizens, but I can guarantee their students will still ask "How does this help me when I'm a ____?"  It would take some work on the part of the university and our department, but we could do this: have specialized classes where all the students are part of a major or field at the university, so we would have composition for business, medical fields, engineering, and so on.  Now we might argue that this would take away collaboration and interaction between the different fields and we would be detrimenting that "good citizen" formation, but there are many differences within each field, the genders, and the backgrounds and culture of the students that diversity would not be a problem.

Now what do we do with these classes where the specialty is narrowed?  We have these students think and write to the culture of their fields, to develop a community where individual differences can collaborate.  The students get a sense of how things will work when they are finally in the job market and out in the world.  As instructors we would not need to specialize in the fields of our students; as always we are the facilitators of the writing process, and for cultural pedagogy we are examining things that concern us also (like bioethics if our class is of the medical field, or consumerism if they are business majors).  This is the environment where we can "globalize" and "culturalize" our students while answering their question: "How does this help me when I'm a _____."  Our students can learn and practice the writing process while they explore the concerns of their fields and how they fit into the bigger picture of society.

(This, of course, is a broad view of the situation, and further exploration would have to be made, and closer examination of how a classroom like this could work is needed!)

In Rebecca Moore Howard's essay on Collaborative pedagogy, she discusses the importance and benefits of collaboration in writing, and how this pedagogy is "an accurate mirroring of the true nature of writing" (55).  One of the methods of collaborative pedagogy is collaborative learning, more specifically peer response in peer review groups.  This is the situation in which students give collaborative contributions to a solo-authored text, or students giving feedback as a group to a single writer.  Howard makes a strong distinction in how a collaborative group should truly be conducted, that there is the teacherly method in which teachers assume the role of the instructor, and then there is the truly collaborative role where the peers become "the reader and give the writer a heightened sense of audience" (60).  The first method, that of a student as "teacher", is seen as detrimental to collaboration, that students focus on what's "good" and "bad" about the paper, and play the "doubting game".  This method is not a true collaboration.  However, I feel differently based on my own experiences in the classroom with peer groups.

Howard makes a distinction between how students should collaborate or not, that peers should be purely readers and give their "feelings" on a student's writing as apposed to becoming a "teacher" and giving specific advice, that the first way is the true collaborative way.  I have combined both of these methods into my peer reviews and have found that once the students are familiar with it they get into the true collaborative spirit.  Howard's groups listen while the writer reads their work, and then the peers respond with how certain parts made them feel, and the writer takes this reader feedback to improve? their writing, based on if a certain part made the reader bored?  (I put question marks because I'm not really sure what the writer does with the feedback, it wasn't clearly explained).  While I could have my students do this - listen to the writer read - and I will eventually try it as I try many different methods, currently my students read eachothers papers with a hardcopy, for two reasons: the first is attention span - they tend to focus more when they are the active reader; and secondly, they are emplolying the writing process while they are reading and reviewing - my students make marks (like stars for parts they had strong feelings, or underlining parts they were confused with the thought or wording of a sentence) as they read to help form their commentary to the writer at the end.

I see great benefits in the way I conduct my own peer reviewing because it gets them more in mind with the natural writing process, which collaborative pedagogy is defined with.  It may seem that my students are more in a "teacherly" role because they might mark on a paper and answer more narrow questions like What is the writer's focus and do they follow it and fully develop this focus until the end? or What are the parts that really grabbed your attention? or What are the main points of revision the writer should focus on?  It is true that the students are getting into organization and reasoning with my questions, but it gets them focused on good writing and the writing process.  If they are able to give good advice (which they do) on the writing process for others, it will help them to be able to do it for themselves, which I see as the biggest struggle with students: they can't read and revise their own writing.  The discussions I hear when the groups are done with their individual reading and marking is incredible; they remark on feelings and senses of the writing, and at the same time are able to point out to eachother where they may have had faulty thought or reasoning because it was "confusing" to them, or that this particular part doesn't fit and isn't necessary to the focus.  It is known from the start in my class that advice should always be listened to, but it is finally up to the writer whether they use it or not.  I see my peer review, which I see combines a little of the "teacherly" and the "reader based" role that Howard advocates, as a true working model of collaboration in my classroom.

Lina annotated the journal article "Study of Teaching Error: Misreading Resistance in the Basic Writing Classroom" by Sarah Biggs Chaney.  Lina describes how the author wrote about her experience with a student who, for an assignment, wrote to her instructor why learning writing and essays is not applicable for majors like "dentistry" where you do not need to write essays.  The instructor, Chaney, wanted to turn it into a learning experience for the student and prove her point why writing is necessary by having the student turn her argument into a real paper with supportive arguments, to show her how writing can be used in any situation.  Chaney wanted to use it as a learning experience for the student, but soon felt betrayed by the student when they plagiarised in a final exam.

In my first class I assigned an in class essay where the students talked about writing and their experience with writing.  As I read them I came across an essay very much like Chaney's student: my student didn't think it was necessary to take writing classes when his career would not really require him to write "essays".  Of course, this student made many claims and generalizations of why his position was true, and had very faulty logic and reasoning to support it.  One of my comments on his paper, after saying I will enjoy having him in class and working with him, was to point out some faults in his argument, and then stated that THIS was why he was in my class along with everyone else: so that when you have strong opinions like these, you are well able to support them to make others believe.  Being able to write a good argument with logic and support shows how well you are able to think that way, so if you can write an essay like that you can also think and speak that way.  I hope that my student was able to take that away from my comment, and so far I have heard no further arguments from him this semester, in fact he has improved in his writing.  I hope that I can get him to rewrite this first essay for me and prove to me why students don't need my course!

Lina's annotation and comment, though written well and everyone's entitled to their own opinion, almost immediately brought my hackles up.  The article, "Paradigm Clashes Among Basic Writing Teachers: Sources of Conflict and a Call for Change" by Anne Del Principe, makes two positions that (1) writing teachers are holding their students back by teaching in a linear progression of narrative form to analysis and (2)  if we treat students as intelligent beings and have high expectations they will perform beyond them.  Del Principe wants us to do away with the former and move towards the latter.  What about doing both?

When training for this position at USF, I was warned repeatedly by more "experienced" assistants here to expect the worst from these incoming students, that their writing is atrocious, they have no grammar skills, they can't develop ideas properly, etc and on and on.  I had also come here with a bias against students and writing as a middle school teacher, where I continually struggled just to get students to write, let alone do it with any intelligence.  However, my first day of class and their in-class essays blew me away.  Yes, there were things that some students needed to improve on, as any writer has room for improvement no matter what their level, but in all I have a set of wonderful thinkers and somewhat proficient writers.  After my illusions were shattered and my expectations rose tremendously, I was able to think more clearly about our writing curriculum here and what is possible with it.  You could say that our projects throughout 1101 and 1102 follow a certain progression as Del Principe states: we start with a narrative memoir, go to informative and research, then analysis, then persuasion and argument, and at the last put it all together for a wonderful finale, but what is so wrong with this?  Shouldn't we start somewhere with our students, to guide them from simple to complex, scaffold their learning in writing so that they have a background knowledge to be supported with?  And along with our process, is it not possible to treat them intelligently and expect the best so that they are able to perform that way?   I care about my students and their writing, and they know it.  They understand that I am not just a "professor" of rhetoric and writing strictures, but that I am their guide out of the dessert to water, to shatter their own self-imposed views that they "can't write".  As I praise them and expect the best of them, they have exponentially grown within only the first few weeks of 1101, are exploring different ways of writing.

Until I see otherwise, I see nothing wrong with my high expectations within the paramaters of our program's curriculum, that I as a writing teacher here am taking the most practical path to my teaching.

My first comment on this annotation of Richard Miller's "A Writing Program's Assets Reconsidered: Getting Beyond Impassioned Teachers and Enslaved Workers" is where is the analysis?  I would really like to know Nancy's opinion on this article, which I read after reading her summary of it.  As much as a summary gives us a synopsis of an article's contents, it is really the analysis that makes it relevant to me and gives me guidance whether I should consult this particular source.

To expand upon the summary, this article (which everyone could benefit from reading) gives Miller's opinion as the Writing Department Head for Rutgers on how to reform administrative views of general education and the workers that are the force behind first year composition.  He was asked to comment on Levine's idea that this teaching force - us- are enslaved workers that do not earn the respect that the "other" working force, those who are scholarly and publish, get.  Levine wants to impose radical change to university programs, but has no real hope that it will ever happen.  Miller agrees that it will never happen because Levine is taking too much of a utopian view of first-year composition.  Instead of having a force of caring and impassioned teachers of writing, Miller says we need to have a force of good teachers who do the job and bring notice as a program to administrations.  It is not through the actions of a single writing teacher that will bring change, but what we can do as a Writing Program.  As a Program we can bring ourselves to attention so that we may be better payed, given better teaching conditions (like phones, offices, etc), health and other benefits, and non-tenured contracts that will give us some sense of stability in our positions.

This puts me in mind of our own program here; though not without its faults, we band together as a community to improve our own situations and the education of our first-year writing students.  Yes, some of us are very passionate about teaching and sometimes resent the university "scholarly" attitude that gets in the way of what we love to do: teach.  However, as Miller says, it is not necessarily passion that gets the job done, that a good teacher does not need to be passionate.  It is our collaboration and wholeness as a program that improve the writing in general education at USF, our freedom within uniformity that, seemingly to me, make our Writing Program wonderful here.  Maybe we should model ourselves after the Rutgers program and unite for improvements in our treatment here (in terms of benefits, stability, etc.), so that we will be a program to be reckoned with, a program that effects change and improvement to the student population.

  While reading "Expressive Pedagogy: Practice/Theory, Theory/Pracrice" by Christopher Burnham, one clear critique of expressivism sticks out in my mind.  It is a critique by Lester Faigley, that "epressivism's concern witht the individual and authentic voice directs students away from social and political problems in the material world" (28).  This concern of expressivism by others is that by focusing on developing the writer personally, that the pedagogy is self-centering the writer, leading them away from becoming citizens that are able to use their knowledge and writing to shape the outside world.  Expressivists like Sherrie Gradin and Thomas O'Donnell provide counterarguments that explain well how expressivism leads to social awareness.  Gradin posits that "the expressive concern to potentiate self-aware individuals as agents and the epistemic concern with social context and ideology, create social expressivism" (29).  Indeed, it is through self-development and self-awareness as a writer and thinker that expressivists are able to use their awareness "to act against oppressive material and psychological conditions" (29).  O'Donnell's argument is that "expressivism's strength is its insistence that all concerns, whether individual, social, or political, must originate in personal experience and be documented in the student's own language" (31).  It is through developing individual voice and experience that writing teachers can raise a social consciousness in their writing students.

  I found this section of the essay to be very pertinent to my own teaching: one of my goals, other than developing good writers in my students, is to develope their individulaties in writing, their own voices.  It also appeals to me to raise social awareness, not by telling them what to think, but that they can think for themselves.  I can see how the expressivist pedagogy can help in these matters, though further readings on actual applications in the classroom will be necessary.

  I have joined this faculty as a previous teacher of middle school.  As a young teacher I had the problem of students wanting to be my "friend", and tended to misbehave because they didn't respect me as a teacher.  I tried to project a very professional and "older" persona to try to correct this, and while I was able to keep myself at a distance from them, it didn't work the other way around.  Doing this for two years has not really prepared me for what type of relationships should be affected with the freshman here.  First of all, with me at least, there is not as much of an age difference now, some of my students are not even "young" freshman, but almost twenty years old.  While I know that they should respect me as teacher because that is what I am to them NOW, I'm a little unsure of the complete relationship dynamic that should be held. 

 While I am a graduate assistant, I am also a student here at USF.  Outside of the classroom, if I would have met any of my students on my own time I would have been friends with them.  Also, when this semester is over and I am no longer their "instructor", we will be on equal terms, if not equal levels of education.  I'm not sure that this would be as much of a problem if I were much older than they, because I would have completely different interests, and maybe not able to relate as much that I would be "friends" with a freshman.  However, it was not so long ago I was an undergrad, and I benefitted from and enjoyed my friendly relationships with fellow students of any age.  I guess my main question is "What should I do?"  Currently I am acting as a teacher, and in little ways distanced myself like having them call me "Miss Webber", but the more I get to know them through conversing and blogging, I'm seeing them more and more as fellow students who I'm guiding in their writing.  There's not much more that I can explain, except that I find myself having a hard time with this issue.  If I act the teacher this semester, will I be able to initiate friendships when they are no longer my "students"?  I have a feeling though that no matter how much advice I get, that I will not find a definitive answer until I AM much older then my students.