welcome

to my blog. My name is Jen.

In the coming weeks, my students will be learning how to create and post to their own blogs. Rather than be the teacher who creates assignments for her students but won't try them herself, I'm going to take part in this exercise. After reading Jim Corder's 1979 essay "What I Learned in School," I think twice about asking my students to write or produce something that I wouldn't. So here it is: a blog for class.

(By the way, if you teach writing, or you plan on teaching writing, I highly recommend Corder's work.)

I have some serious reservations about participating in this assignment, though. I worry that I'll somehow stifle my students' creativity, purposes, or voices by entering what they might wish to be their own space (even as I acknowledge that my students have agency and can do whatever they please). I worry that I'll smudge the lines between teacher and student in such a way that we'll all feel awkward or uncomfortable.

I also worry a little that my nerdiness will horrify them, but not too much: after a semester I guess they've made up their minds on that score already.

And so it begins...

The title refers to two hobbies of mine: one lifelong (writing) and one current (knitting).