In The Beginning

Writing, Writing, Writing....not necessarily in that order.

     Welcome, today Thursday (1/17/13) begins the first day of the spring semester at Guam Community College.  I am teaching EN100W-14 Fundamentals of English-Writing.  I have been teaching this class since the spring of 2000 and I finally decided to start blogging.  I have been reading other blogs, and have notice how enticing and most of all interesting others blogs are, so I decided to take a stab at it with keyboard and monitor.  (Interesting how we would have to describe writing today, it may or may not be described as taking a stab at it with paper and pen in hand, but another means of description, with laptop and fired up fingers.)
     With class list of all enrolled-20 students to be exact, in hand, and a pen of course, I took attendance.  I let the students introduce themselves, mention something interesting and put a check mark indicating they are present.  Their interesting thought to share with the class could range from the best hamburger they ate today for lunch from McDonald's, or what is their major, currently.  I was rather disappointed that I only had 12 students show up today.  It varies every semester, whether or not the whole class will show up, considering it is eight o'clock in the evening.  But in the past I've had at least 15 or more of my students show up on the first day.  I'm thinking maybe those students had the first day jitters, but I reassured my students that did show up that their professors are just as nervous as they are, so just relax.
     After attendance was through and done all were marked present, I passed out the syllabus.  I made it a point to tell my students I am not going to be going over everything in the syllabus in detail.  I will explain the syllabus further, next class, but take the syllabus review it, and questions/comments will be addressed, next class.  I just pointed out a few items they must take note of, to heed its warning, now if that didn't scare them...
     I explained to them, that we are going to write tonight.  I put two topics on the white board, and explained to them they must write me an essay.  They have until the end of the period to compose an essay.  The essay will show me how well they write, what I need to work on with them for the rest of the semester, and help me gauge their writing.
   
     The two topics:

• Excluding love, how do you define a healthy relationship? 
• This community college could really use...  

     Now, time to read the essays...12 to be exact.  
   

Images taken from: http://nancy777.com/i-am-a-writer/, http://thewritingwellus.blogspot.com/