Excited to share that my article, “4 Inspired Reasons for Teaching an Online Class,” was published today at Women on Writing.
Read the article below.
4 Inspired Reasons for Teaching an Online Class
By: Melanie Faith
“When one teaches, two learn.” –Robert Heinlein
Like most of us, I’ve held many jobs and learned something about myself from all of them: choir-music librarian, research assistant, camp counselor, and journalist to name a few. By far the most creatively-enriching job I’ve ever had is teaching creative writing online. Let’s look at some motivating benefits for teaching an online class that might just inspire your own course in the near future.
Why teach an online writing class?
Online classes are flexible.
Online classes are wonderful for just about any schedule. Some courses operate over Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, and other platforms at particular times of the day like in-person classes, say 7-8 pm. Other classes are scheduled asynchronously, via message boards, discussion posts, and other posted content like PDFs which students can access at a time that suits their schedules.
As an online instructor, you have a lot more freedom to choose how you’ll present your class—such as through posted videos on an asynchronous class or a group meeting/lecture at 3-4 in the afternoon or a mixture of the two—than if you were assigned a brick-and-mortar classroom in a lecture hall.
Your home office and your students’ abodes are your classrooms. You’ll have no commute. You can invest that extra time into our lessons, student communications, handouts, or even your own writing.
Online classes are great fun.
Writing is a topic that’s endlessly fascinating. Each writer brings their own style, themes, characters, projects, and/or goals to the course. There will be a great variety of skill levels and native talents brought to your classroom.
Part of the marvel of teaching an online class is the opportunity to nurture the best skills writers have to offer while challenging and inspiring fellow writers to enhance their writing.
Writing students tend to be diverse, lively, and creative thinkers. They’re often widely-read, curious about life and others, and visionary thinkers. What’s not to love about any of these attributes?
Online classes are a wonderful way to build a writing community.
One of my favorite aspects of teaching writing online is when my students email me, even after our class has ended, to let me know that they continue to write, that they have submitted work to literary magazines or agents, that they have gotten acceptance letters.
During the weeks I spend with my students, our class becomes a community and a support network, and this network often continues in some form after our course. For example, several students have become friends and found writing critique partners in my classes, and they’ve continued to encourage each others’ novels, poetry, and/or memoirs long after the final day of class.
Group dynamics vary in any class, but creative writing students tend to be generous with their time and efforts.
Students have been some of the greatest supporters of the nonfiction craft books I’ve written for writers, and their interest in my past, current, and future projects continues to hearten and inspire me.
Online classes are a great way to evolve as a working writer.
Teaching creative writing provides the occasion to talk about a subject that I’m passionate about with a target-audience of people who actually care about the same topic.
Who else in my daily life would care about the latest interviews with my favorite authors who dish details on their writing process? Who else would want to take for a spin a writing prompt I just wrote? Who else understands the challenges of a third draft as compared to a first one and wants to bounce ideas for a better editing process? Or to share ideas about marketing out literary brainchildren?
There’s camaraderie and inspiration when teaching writing online. We may not be sitting in the same room, but we’re experiencing the same joys and struggles with our works in progress (WIP). Any frustrations my students are having with their protagonists or antagonists or scenes I can identify with because I’ve either had the same frustrations or may even currently be experiencing the same with my own WIP.
Interacting regularly with motivated writers supports my own growth as a writer. I can’t tell you the amount of times when, after having a great discussion with students about some aspect of the writing or editing process, I’ve suddenly known exactly the next step I should try in my draft.
