One day, in my first year of teaching high school, I made (as one does in their first year of teaching high school) a huge mistake. I told my students they could use the first person singular in their papers. “Really?” they said, going goggle-eyed and slack-jawed. “We can? We’ve always been told we can’t!” … Continue reading Just Because You Can…
Tag: the common wisdom is right
Active Voice Was Taught By Me
Back when I taught at Fancy Pants University, my writing courses were very popular (for reasons I have never completely figured out) with engineering students. I loved teaching the engineers: they were funny, geeky, and had a different, more concrete way of looking at literature than humanities-focused students did. Yet the engineers (and the pre-med … Continue reading Active Voice Was Taught By Me