In the midst of a particularly exhausting week in the middle of my very first semester teaching freshman writing, I shared my frustrations with two of my senior colleagues. If only I could teach my reluctant students how to write a coherent sentence, I opined, I'd consider the semester a success. My colleagues smiled wryly. "That's a pretty tall order," said the first. "Yes," agreed the other. "But perhaps the most important thing they could learn is not how to write a coherent sentence, but what it might mean to be able to do so. And you can teach that. You can embody that for them." Since that day I've thought a great deal about my colleagues' wise observations, and what they mean for my goals, expectations, and practices as a teacher.

Typically, when we talk about learning we mean the development of skills and knowledge. Knowledge includes the accumulation of facts, theories, and arguments that shape how we understand the world around us. Skills include the abilities, practices, habits, and methodologies, both physical and mental, which enable us to acquire knowledge and to apply it to the external world in purposeful ways. The teacher's role in the learning process is not only to facilitate the development of both knowledge and skills, but to mediate the sometimes obscure connection between what is learned and why it matters. However, the diversity of interests and backgrounds among students in a given class means that I cannot simply take for granted the meaning of what I teach: why writing matters for one student may be very different than for another. Thus, mediating meaning can best be done by inviting students to make connections and apply course material outside the confines of the classroom.

One way to help students make such connections is to encourage periodic class discussion of the purpose and value of course content, identifying core principles such as critical thinking and clarity of expression, and allowing students to express skepticism and determine for themselves how they will benefit from the class. Written assignments that invite students to apply course material in personally meaningful ways might include research papers that ask students to explore a problem within their own academic discipline or area of interest, or practicing "real world" writing such as requests, proposals, protests, and commendations written to businesses or organizations, editorials, and blogs. Critical thinking and rhetorical literacy can be made relevant through assignments that ask students to analyze their own and one another's texts, as well as popular texts.

Mediating meaning between course content and students' lives also involves changing attitudes about students' motives for achievement, and how academic success and failure are perceived. Extrinsic motivators (such as grades) are relatively poor incentives. Intrinsic motivators are better. As scholars, our intrinsic motivator is, ultimately, a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. Additional intrinsic motivators include, from a pragmatic perspective, increased aptitude and a greater likelihood of success in endeavors undertaken, and from a humanist perspective, an ennobled quality of life. But such intrinsic motivators are often less apparent to students than they are to teachers. Helping students see the significance of their work beyond the confines of the class, the semester, and the grade will also help them transform how they perceive and approach academic work.