Today's beginning writer requires not only fundamental instruction in grammar and style, but also exposure to new technologies and diverse audiences. Writing education, especially that of the First-Year English (FYE) student, must engage student interest and provide a venue for collaboration that takes advantage of online tools and resources. A writing educator needs to be both technicial and instructor, with both the ability to wield computerized tools and the wisdom to choose which of those tools are effective.

With a software development, web development, and business collaboration background, I offer experience in producing effective groups with efficient supplemental technologies. I bring a collective sense of writing into my classroom, inspired by the work of leading compositional theorists. Rebecca Moore Howard, in her "collaborative pedagogy," recognizes that "to learn is to work collaboratively to establish and maintain knowledge among a community." Specifically, to learn in a classroom is to share experience with classmates and work towards the common goal of becoming better writers. This is especially important in diverse classrooms, where students may have no concept of the social and cultural experience of their classmates.

In my career as a software developer, I've engaged people of many cultures in the workplace; the environment demands collaboration. Cultural sensitivity -- including integration of student cultural experience into the classroom - is both required and productive. If students develop these integrative skills, they can easily transition to a global economy and writing space.

By extension, students in a classroom represent the larger reality of their community. By inspiring students to engage in action that is closely related to their daily life, a writing instructor can employ a "Community-Service Pedagogy," as explained by Laura Julier. She describes a major benefit of this practice: "Student writers" make "choices of phrasing and organization," driven not by the orders of a teacher, but rather by "the audience's needs and the agency's purposes."

I write best when I am passionate and motivated to right an injustice. Students, too, have opinions and can learn the power of rhetoric and composition to effect change in their world. As an instructor, if I can instill pride in finished product and an overarching purpose to developing that product in the minds and hearts of students, then I have succeeded.