Question:
This summer my university offered a class for English department graduate students called "Teaching Technical Writing". It was taught by a professor who has not worked as a tech writer recently (and may have never in the past) to graduate students who have NO technical writing experience but who wanted to learn how to teach it to undergraduates! Talk about the blind leading the blind! From what I heard, this class offered outdated information that was of little practical use to those needing to know about technical writing as it is practiced. Now these grad students, who now see themselves as qualified to teach tech writing because they took the class, are out there teaching students this same useless information. I'm glad I passed on this class to work as a tech writer this summer and learned tech writing on-the-job. At least my experience is based on real world circumstances and not on outdated academic research!
Please, tech writers, get out there and tell universities, colleges, community colleges that you want to teach, then do it. It helps not only you , but also benefits the next generation of tech writers.
What do you think???
Answer:
My experience includes teaching business and tech writing classes to all college levels and to adult education classes. Teaching a writing course is not a trivial task. In most cases, you must design the course, teach it, and be constantly improving it. I only know about California schools. They require a teaching credential to teach college courses. Adult education requires a separate credential.
Here, adult education programs are eager for teachers to present ideas for new classes. New teachers can teach without a credential if they have work experience and are working on the credential requirements.
My students are about half ESL people, which presents new challenges.
What I'm trying to say is that teaching any writing course is a serious matter, takes lots of dedication, and should not be considered lightly.
