"Rebecca or Ms. Peterson, but only those"

That's what I made sure to tell my students they could call me on the first day of class. They cannot call me "Teacher," "Sister Peterson," or "Professor Peterson." I told them that everyone embarrassingly calls their teacher "mom" at some point, and that if that does happen, we will all just laugh and move on.

So, it has been 2 weeks of teaching new BYU freshmen. On the first day of class, I definitely needed to establish my ethos and reassure my students that I am, in fact, a credible teacher and not some Catch Me If You Can impersonator.

"How old are you?"
"Are you a grad student?"
"How long have you been teaching?"
"You're young!"

I kid you not. Class has been going well, though. I have been experimenting with different approaches in class to see what is most effective for my students: video clips, group discussions, lectures, rush writes, power points, guest speakers, peer reviews, etc. Today, for example, our topic was simply, "The Writing Process." I invited a tutor from the BYU Writing Center to speak to my class for 10 minutes about this resource and how they can use it. Then I used a power point to talk about the idea of writing as a process rather than a product.

I first showed them the "Widely-Accepted Model," which is formulaic and non-descriptive:


Then I showed them the "Realistic Model," which is more accurate and entertaining:

I had fun making these, and my students had fun laughing and discussing them. The purpose for the lesson was to show students that writing is a process, a craft, and not just a product to be written the night before. I shared this quotation with them too:


So that's the teaching update if anyone was wondering. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or visit me during office hours.