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Rowan First-Year Writing Program Guiding Principles

The following principles crystallize the spirit, beliefs, and values of our program and represent the philosophy through which we approach working with students, designing our curriculum, creating policies, and collaborating as a collective whole. These principles can serve as a reference point and lens for analyzing problems and making decisions as we continue to improve our program and support the success and well-being of both students and faculty. 

Note: These principles are not meant to supplant the teaching philosophies of individual faculty. Rather, they are meant to guide our collective decision-making as a program.
10 Guiding Principles

Practicing Compassion

1. Students are human beings: their safety and well-being always come before the course content and learning goals, and we work from a place of care and compassion. Our courses and classrooms should be welcoming environments that invite students into a community of reciprocal teaching and learning.

2. Our own well-being is crucial to our success in the classroom. As we are attentive to our students’ needs, we also recognize the importance of our own self-care practices. We respect the labor and expertise of writing teachers and believe that all faculty should be respected and cared for as members of our community. We support faculty setting appropriate boundaries and prioritizing self-care along with the care and instruction of their students. We also recognize that teaching is an evolving practice and that we need to support one another on our own journeys of growth. 


Eliminating Barriers  

3. Our students already are writers. We are all in different places in our journey and development as writers, and all writers have more to learn (including writing instructors!). 

4. We are not gate-keepers. We remove rather than create barriers to student success, and we have a role to play in closing achievement gaps. We look to help students succeed rather than looking for reasons to fail them.


5. Students are individuals: they each have their own background, identity, history as a writer, past experiences with education, and personal goals. We value student growth and assess that on an individual basis rather than comparing students and defending “standards.” We think in terms of strengths, not deficiencies. We make our courses accessible to meet the needs of diverse learners.


6. Students need to have agency in their writing and research, including asserting their right to their own language and challenging the historical demand for “standard written English” in a college setting.


7. We reflect on the ways that our own disciplines (Writing Studies and English), institutions of higher education, and historical practices and curriculum as a program have been shaped by systems of oppression, and we understand that we are responsible for unlearning these white supremacist, racist, sexist, ableist, Western, and other historically dominant ways of thinking. Our curriculum and policies need to be equitable, inclusive, and a better reflection of the diverse learners in our classrooms, serving both as a mirror and as a window for a variety of experiences and perspectives. 


Empowering Writers

8. We teach writing not strictly for academic purposes, but also public/civic, professional, and personal purposes. By focusing on how writers think as they move into new contexts or work in new genres, we make concepts and skills from our courses transferable. 

9. Course and assignment design are guided by the questions “What will students learn about communication from this? How does this align with the core values and learning outcomes?” While we want to choose compelling topics for courses and sometimes engage students with technology, both faculty and students need to put their energy and understanding into thinking critically about communication, rhetoric, writing, and composition, which includes the role that power plays in relation to these and the role that writing serves in the world.


​10. When we give feedback, the goal is to improve the writer rather than the piece of writing. In other words, feedback should promote critical thinking and mindful writing, and the value of feedback and revision lies in how students will transfer their writing knowledge in the future.
                                                  Rowan First-Year Writing Program, Victoria Hall, 260 Victoria Street, Glassboro, NJ 08028; (856) 256-4096