1206653937 8098 Dont Forget About Modeling: Its Money!I knew I would lure you in with that title, but I am not talk­ing about fash­ion week here. I am talk­ing about a tried and true teach­ing tech­nique that I some­times for­get — mod­el­ing. I had an expe­ri­ence this week that reminded me of its importance.

We have been study­ing and writ­ing var­i­ous forms of poetry in my cre­ative writ­ing class. Nor­mally this would elicit col­lec­tive groan­ing from stu­dents, but this is an elec­tive and stu­dents are gen­er­ally moti­vated to write. But this group was hav­ing a hard time becom­ing inspired and express­ing them­selves with their writ­ing. Remem­ber­ing how I adored my cre­ative writ­ing class as an under­grad I dug out my old mar­ble note­book and brought it into the class. I put the class in a cir­cle and began to read from the ancient tome, each angst filled verse was like a snap­shot of my past. The stu­dents gig­gled as I told them the story behind each one (if I could remem­ber it), but some of the poems were pretty good. What was more impor­tant though was that the stu­dents saw me as a writer and a learner in that moment, they saw the evo­lu­tion of my writ­ing over time, and they saw that I prac­ticed what I was preach­ing. Show your stu­dents a lit­tle bit of your­self, you will be sur­prised how far it will get you.