On Stealing

I freely admit that I am a huge fan of stealing when it comes to tutoring and teaching. Sometimes this makes people nervous, but it's important to remember that stealing, in this sense, is a tremendous compliment. If I hear about a good idea being deployed in a class, I will steal it and put it to use in my own classes (with attribution, of course).

When I was tutoring, we had the Golden Child on whom we'd all secretly eaves-drop when she was in a session. Watching her tutor was like watching magic. She had an incredible knack for getting right at the root of the problem--whatever it was. Paper seems to have weird word choice issues? It's actually an issue of the student trying to mimic what he/she thinks is appropriate "college language." Solution? "What are you trying to say?" Student has problems with organization? Nope. Transitional topic sentences making their way into paragraphs where they don't belong. Problems with sentence fragments? Nope. Stop writing like you talk. Pretend you're talking to your preacher.

And so I ask: what have you seen that you want to steal?