Why Virtual?

So if you love being a teacher so much… why are you transitioning out of the physical classroom and into the virtual classroom? 

…It’s quite simple. I’m not! 

I could not imagine spending the rest of my teaching career delivering lessons solely online or solely in the classroom and since I have yet to find a position that allows me to do both, I’ve created my own opportunity. 

The reality is, in the classroom we only have so much time and the time we have just simply is not enough to help students, particularly those about to embark into their post-secondary journey, master everything they need to be successful in that journey. Essay writing specifically, tends to fall to the wayside and is arguably the most important skill a student needs to have, to be successful in their first year of university or college. Although many undergraduate programs do require students to be enrolled in a rhetoric class to learn these skills, an all too common issue students face is not being able to get a spot in that class until second semester or worse, second year. By this time, they’re left to navigate the depths of the internet to try to figure things out on their own. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to create a works cited page in MLA on your own but it is no easy feat. Sure there are incredible resources out there, like Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab - shout out to them, because they definitely helped me throughout my university years - but every incorrect space, space, indent, improper capitalization, they all result in lost marks and those lost marks add up really quickly. 

Year after year, I have had students come back to visit me and the recurring feedback is always about how there is so much more to essay writing than they realized, or how they wish they took the essay writing units more seriously, or that we had more time to learn how to write essays. These grievances are what lead me to creating this learning platform; my aim is to bridge the learning gaps between the traditional classroom and post-secondary education to help students master the skills of essay writing BEFORE entering a class where much more is at stake. I’ve meticulously created a curriculum that hones in on the importance of understanding not just the how but also the why behind essay writing.