Sometimes when students will ask me questions, I feel like going, “Uhhh. I don’t know!” Because I don’t. It’s been quite an adjustment going from sitting in the classroom listening to someone, to tutoring students, to finally standing in the front of the room being known as the person who “knows all”. I feel out of my depth, but the thing I enjoy most about academia truly is learning. Tying this into Kira Dreher’s article, “Engaging Plain Language in the Technical Communication Classroom,” I find that learning can still be a two-way street. Plain language is a concept we may all be familiar with, but not have a ‘name’ for it. We need reminders of what it is, and to focus on not only teaching this concept to students to better help strengthen their writing skills, but also to learn more about it ourselves. This can also help strengthen their professional identity that expands outside of the classroom.

One line that stuck with me from Dreher’s article was as follows: “…technical communication scholars confront the complex system of language and power that surrounds access to information (54)”. The idea that students of all ages who are learning about technical communication must take a hands on approach to learning how language works is an easy way to make this seem like a sort of ‘monumental task’ that some people may panic at the thought of. I know that it personally helped me! The access to information, in terms of teaching, is so easily accessible to us, and I think that that can tend to slip ‘under the rug’ as some would say. I know that I didn’t consider putting some of the examples from the article into my classroom until I read it and we talked about doing so in class! The example that stood out to me the most was the third one. I took this idea and used it when students were researching their ideal dream jobs in class. Focusing on the key words, such as job expectations or skills, we created a word-cloud that then helped students focus on what words they needed to include and focus on building in their unit one assignment.

Dreher’s article focuses on the importance of plain language in the classroom as a tool to push new generations closer to understanding technical communication. The goal is not to just explain it to students, but to help them build foundation skills. Students benefit from this; it is a non-negotiable skill that must be taught to all.