Welcome to English 1A - College Composition

picture of the earth from space

I am your instructor, Erin Crook.

 

we read to know we're not alone.
--c.s. lewis

 You can call me Erin.  It's not because I don't like the last name "Crook", which is a great name.  I prefer to be called Erin because before I taught English I was a preschool teacher for more than a decade in various schools around the Bay Area.  If my 2- year old students can call me by my first name, I reckon my adult students can do the same. 

My teaching style is influenced by the core belief that students are responsible for their own learning experiences.  I don't claim to have any pellets of wisdom to dispense to you, and I have no desire to hear my own ideas regurgitated back at me.  There are no right or wrong answers.  The only thing that matters is that you learn to express your own thoughts and ideas as efficiently as possible.  I act as a guide, showing you some of the various faces of written English, and helping you identify how to make that medium work for you. 
You don't have to love or even like English to succeed in this class.
I don't expect everyone to be as enthusiastic about reading and writing as I am.  It's a bonus if you already like to read and write, but if you, like so many of my students, view academic reading and writing as a task, a chore and as something to be dreaded, then this class is especially for you.  I have genuine empathy for you folks - academic writing is torture for me, too.  However, when you're writing, reading and discussing  a topic that interests you, building an essay about it suddenly becomes a lot more palatable, if not a joy.

In any case, you'll learn that writing is an invaluable tool for getting what you want in life.  It's quite a handy skill to have in almost any situation.  If you confront the work of 1A with good humor and openness, and a resolve to meet a few personal goals along the way, you'll find the time well spent.
English - it's not just grammar anymore.  
Grammar and organization are definitely elements of writing, but they are not the only things, nor even the most important.  Perfection of grammar and structure does not guarantee an engaging or well-written paper.  I have read many papers that are perfectly sound in form, but lack that elusive element that some call "soul". Likewise, I have read many papers that utterly delighted and amazed me despite the numerous mechanical errors.  Your writing should be a reflection of you, the individual.  Grammar and organization are mere tools to help you achieve your desired end result.  Yes, learn grammar by all means.  Learn to organize.  If all else fails, consult a reliable proofreader and learn to edit.  But don't be a slave to the lessons taught by grammar books.  Good writers break the rules all the time, and that's as it should be, as long as you know the rule and are breaking it with awareness and a purpose. Trust your intuition, and use language as a way to communicate your unique point of view, in your unique style.  If you write about ideas that move you, in a voice that is definitively yours, you will discover that you're already an accomplished writer.  All the rest is just fine-tuning.
I have deep faith in the power of language. 

I have been a writer since I learned to read.  I have been studying English as a literature and a language since I was a child, and appropriately, children's literature is my special area of interest.  My training as a preschool teacher has taught me the value of viewing language acquisition as a process rather than a product.  In the first five years of life, children learn the fundamentals of language at a spectacular rate.  We slow down a bit as we grow, but whether we do it consciously or not, we are constantly learning, adjusting and readjusting the way we use language to express ourselves. 

If nothing else, I hope to convert the haters of reading and writing to a new appreciation for these uniquely human skills.  It's a flawed medium in many ways, but writing allows us to communicate our private thoughts, thereby satisfying our primal need to communicate with each other.  It is through reading and writing that we share the lives of people separated from us by time and space.  We find that we're not alone in our experience, that we share our humanity with all people.  Bridging such distances also allows us to empathize with others who are not like us, providing us with a foundation for compassion, the greatest of human attributes.  Reading and writing don't just make us better students - they make us better friends, lovers, family members, community members and human beings. 
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