Welcome to My Classroom

Part I: Essays on Classroom Management  
1. Welcome to My Classroom 
A Philosophy of Teaching 
3. Defining The Relationship 
4. Day One of the Semester
5. “I’m Not Paying for Your Opinion” 
6. The Rules about Classroom Rules 
7. You Don’t Have to Be a Jerk
8. Libertarians vs. Authoritarians 
9. A Losing Battle 
10. Grades: What Are They Good For? 
11. Toward a Rational Response to Plagiarism
12. Fifty First Days
Part II: Essays on Teaching and Learning   69
 13. Our Students Need More Practice in Actual Thinking 
14. The Liberal Arts Are Workforce Development 
15. Cross-Training for the Brain
16. The Four Properties of Powerful Teachers 
17. Remembering My Best Teachers 
18. The Seven Fundamental Conditions of Learning 
19. Retention in the Trenches 
20. The Power of Positive Regard
iv Welcome to My Classroom: ESSAYS ON THE FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE
21. Conquering Mountains of Essays 
22. Literary Analysis as Scientific Method
23. How I (Finally) Got My Students to Read 
24. Of White Boards and PowerPoints
25. Resolving to Be Better (Rated)
26. Writing with a Heavy Teaching Load
Part III: Essays on Thinking and Writing   
 27. The Case for Conversational Writing 
28. Accordions, Frogs, and the Five-Paragraph Theme 
29. Teaching as Unteaching
30. Editing Lessons 
31. “Three Things You Need to Work On” 
32. Why I Don’t Edit Their Rough Drafts  
33. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
34. “To Be,” or Not “To Be”? 
35. Dear Apostrophe: C Ya 
36. Problem-Solving, Role-Playing, and the Rhetorical Situation 
37. What Is Critical Thinking, Anyway?
38. Why College Graduates Still Can’t Think 
39. Competing Facts Are a Fact of Life 
Part IV: Essays on Issues in Higher Education 
40. The Good That Community Colleges Do 
41. The Completion Conundrum
42. Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online? 
43. Online Classes and College Completion 
44. The New Traditional Student 
45. Serving Our Dual-Enrollment Students 
46. Of Corporations, Corporatization, and Corporatism 
47. Purging My Syllabus
48. Straight Talk about “Adjunctification” 
49. Why Not a Two-Tier System? 
50. We Have to Protect Ourselves