Lauren Salisbury

Salisbury

Dr. Lauren Salisbury

  • Position: Teaching Faculty
  • Phone: 419-372-7685
  • Email: slauren@bgsu.edu
  • Address: 437 East Hall

Through the use of online discussions and student led activities, students become responsible for their own learning. Students in class spaces I facilitate learn to not just ask me for help, but also their books, online resources, and, most importantly, their peers. Most students enter first-year writing (FYW) believing they cannot write or are “just no good” at writing. My responsibility is not to confirm these beliefs by overcorrecting or criticizing, but rather to refute them. One of the most significant ways I can contest students’ lack of confidence is to allow them power to be authorities. Untapped knowledge and experience is the richest resource available in the FYW classroom for students and facilitators alike.

I allocate a minimal amount of time for in class lectures, and instead create more of a problem space, where students can come to ask questions, workshop their writing in progress, and discuss writing and thinking openly with fellow writers. I confess to my students at the beginning of the course that they are already writers, experts, and meaning makers, and we will not be inventing new identities for them but rather uncovering new facets of those identities throughout the semester. It is my highest hope that when students turn in their portfolios at the end of the semester they not only feel relief that they have passed, but also pride that they have found within themselves the already existing power and knowledge to write.

Updated: 04/09/2021 08:06PM