Anyone who teaches first-year college students the skills and competencies of writing year after year knows that to teach
with passion, grace, and joy requires us to love our students and to love teaching. My teaching is informed by scholarship,
long years of teaching practice and collaboration with gifted teaching colleagues. But I also want to say here that when
I go every day into the composition classroom, that I also want to offer my heart to my students. I do this by teaching with
joy, conveying that I know they are capable of great progress in their critical thinking and writing as they move into the
tasks of academic writing and that they are capable of great writing.