The students, in this late night class at a satellite campus of a community college, are working on an argument essay, keyboards clicking and printers ratcheting in the narrow computer classroom. It is a developmental writing class, and the essay on which we’ve spent two weeks is due in an hour. Scanning faces for frustration, anxiety, surprise, any look or flick of an eye that might mean I am needed, I pace the room. This is my first year of adjunct teaching, and in between wondering if my skirt is too short and whether I have white board marker somewhere on my face, I am trying to figure out the student codes for needing the teacher’s help. I have a theory that it is something like baseball signs, a tap of the thigh for conjunctions, a pull of the ear for comma questions. Joe, a white, twenty-ish young man interrupts my pacing with a request for help; he is one of the students I’ve been watching particularly tonight.

I thought she was going to cry.

"But what's wrong with it? Don't you think it's poetic?"

"Read it again."

"As I struggled to regain my footing on the mountainside, I felt the eternal footman reaching out his grim hand."

"Um," I said, looking around the room, hoping to shift the blame. "Would someone like to explain to Rebecca why I thought that line was, um, less successful than it could have been?"

Silence.

Sensing a Teachable Moment, I said, "Perhaps now is a good time to talk about something called purple prose."

"You hate it don't you."

"I don't hate it. I just thought the rest of the paragraph was so perfectly well-written that the line stood out as merely adequate."

Am I good or what?

Four years ago Becki strolled into my office, two weeks into the first course I ever taught. I wasn’t surprised to see her; she was driven, self-confident, and engaged in the course, a person who would naturally take advantage of office hours.

“Would you read this?” she plunked down a draft on my desk. “I need some feedback.”

Ah, yes, I exulted inwardly, this is the life. This is what teaching writing is all about. Even better, Becki was already something of a wordsmith, so we spent half an hour basically playing with the narrative piece. She seemed to find my reading helpful, and her revision showed the effects of our work. But Becki never came to my office again that semester, and neither did any of my other students—at least, not unbidden.

I've struggled with this topic. Describe a representative moment in my life as a writing teacher. Just one? Do I even have such a moment? I always have trouble with such questions. For example, I hate it when people ask me to name my favorite book or movie. I either can't pick just one, or I can't think of any. My mind swims. So much to say or nothing at all—either way, I'm rendered mute. For me it seems it's mental feast or famine.

When we walk into a writing class for the first time, most of us, whether we're new or experienced teachers, feel at least some apprehension. Why? In part because teaching involves performance: both our successes and failures will be largely public. And as teachers of writing we want to be successful, not just for our own satisfaction or advancement, but because of the substantial responsibilities and challenges that we've undertaken.

Nowhere in a college curriculum are the responsibilities greater or more complex than in first-year writing courses, whether they be remedial, college-level, or mainstreamed. This is the curricular space where newly admitted students are introduced to college but also where institutional gatekeeping is expected of instructors. Moreover, despite their widespread presence in colleges and universities, the aims of first year writing courses are frequently controversial, both within college communities and within our profession.