So my challenge is really how to reach out to the maximum number of students present in a given class session. It is not my job to teach, but to help my students learn. I don't, and I suspect that very few people do. But whatever is written is a resource for future learning based on experience. It is Newton watching the apple fall, it is a mistake which need not be repeated.
Students have voices, things to say uniquely and powerfully if they are permitted free reign.
The teacher's job is to set up an atmosphere in which students feel safe to cut loose with their language, to set words down boldly. The result of such a classroom is that teachers and students are both learners, sharing the discovery process in a community that often includes a democratic sharing of authority. Tom Romano, for example, stresses collegial work and discourages competition between students in his creative writing classes. But sometimes, because of their social and sexual differences, students spur each other to creation in ways I could hardly plan. Even though we are not wholly peer with our students, we can still be peer in this crucial sense of being engaged in learning, seeking, and being incomplete.