As a faculty member in higher education, one of my central goals for students is to be a point of support. Not just support in terms of making sure that they are accomplishing my course’s academic goals, but a beacon for their growth individually. When students come into my classroom, they are often in their first or second semester of college—and if they are a traditional student, that means they can range from 17-19 years old. However, even when my students are decades past my age, they are in a point in their lives where they are seeking transformative learning. No matter the age or social location of my students, they are figuring out their passions, and that is something I want to always engage in my work.
As AJ Juliani (2020) stated in a podcast with George Couros, we have what education looks like in the moment but also what we, as educators, want it to look like. I’m lucky that I teach in a discipline that is open to including all different themes or topics as part of the class discussion and learning process. Because of this, I have the flexibility as an instructor to allow my students agency in determining what their passion is in this moment and how they can then express that passion in words or through other multimodal projects—all while keeping connection to the curriculum of first-year composition.
Fostering this sense of agency and autonomy is students can be overwhelming—so as Couros and Juliani stated in the podcast—it’s important to get students to a place of feeling “whelmed.” Creating specific assignments in small steps that lead to students being able to determine their paper topics is crucial; as an instructor, I cannot simply say “I need a five-page paper, any topic, GO!” Instead, I lead many inquiries, brainstorming activities, small group and class discussions, all catered to learning about what my students care about most. Not only does this help me learn more about them, but it helps me cater my own teaching to be more engaging for them. I know it may be rare for students to be excited about a required general education writing course, but at the very least, maybe they can be excited to be able to talk about something they care about for that time, at least before having to push that to the back of their minds for their next required courses. As AJ Juliani said, we want to get students from “required to desired” and that is a difficult task for an instructor, but it’s not an impossible one—all we need to do is be the support students need.