When you come across an example of student writing that is particularly well-written, you can share it with other students. However, avoid using negative examples, as most students will hesitate to give permission if they know you plan to use student writing to exemplify poor writing–and not telling them of your intent would be unfair. Furthermore, students will learn as much from positive as from negative analysis. No piece of writing, your own included, is so perfect that constructive criticism cannot be aimed at it. It’s best to ask all students to sign a release form at the beginning of the semester granting permission to use their work for teaching purposes. Note that if you wish to quote their work in an article on teaching, you’ll need specific permission.

It’s not enough simply to show models. Students need to work with models and discuss them to be able to transfer their abstract understanding of the model’s features into their own writing. While you can lecture on the qualities you endorse or admire, it is far more effective to engage students actively in evaluation and analysis through class discussion and peer response groups.

If you do decide to use a student’s paper as a model, you should have him or her sign a Student Contract.

Twitter Does Not Always Work As A Class Requirement

Just recently, the French and Belgian authorities cooked up a massive bailout of the French bank Dexia, whose biggest trading partners included, surprise, surprise, Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Here's how the New York Times explained the bailout: To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer... When was the last time the government stepped into help you "avoid losses you might otherwise suffer?" But that's the reality we live in. When Joe Homeowner bought too much house, essentially betting that home prices would go up, and losing his bet when they dropped, he was an irresponsible putz who shouldn’t whine about being put on the street. But when banks bet billions on a firm like AIG that was heavily invested in mortgages, they were making the same bet that Joe Homeowner made, leaving themselves hugely exposed to a sudden drop in home prices. But instead of being asked to "suck it in and cope" when that bet failed, the banks instead went straight to Washington for a bailout -- and got it.

Like the slur "anchor baby" itself, each of these claims is a fallacy. Far from "anchoring" their parents to US soil, many children born to undocumented immigrants are seeing them be deported. And for all the rhetoric spewed by the right about the need for tough new legislation to combat the immigrant "invasion," laws governing immigration to the United States have gotten more restrictive in the past fifteen years. Today, a citizen must be 21 in order to sponsor the green card application of a parent or an immediate relative. The applicant must then show documentation proving that he or she has not been in the United States unlawfully for more than one year. Barring such proof—the primary obstacle most immigrants face—the parent must return to the country of origin for ten years before being allowed to lawfully re-enter the United States and resume the application process. This is commonly referred to as the "touchback rule," explains María Blanco, director of the Earl Warren Institute at the UC, Berkeley, School of Law, and it is among the most insurmountable restrictions placed on the legal naturalization process in the name of "immigration reform" passed in 1996.

He replied that his hope is that the second layer of conversation will disrupt the old classroom model and allow new kinds of teaching in which students play a greater role and information is pulled in from outside the classroom walls. “I’m not a full-time faculty member,” he said. “I use my classrooms as an applied-research lab to decide what to promote as new solutions for our campus.”