Help is on the way?

The semester started last week.  Every year I forget how much time starting a new semester takes.  But, I did receive a very helpful e-mail.  It turns out that the Powers That Be at MHC have arranged a faculty seminar which I can attend to help me learn how to teach writing to my students.  That's nice of them to help me with that.  Here is the first paragraph explaining the seminar I can take:

"We aim to convene a cross-disciplinary, cross-division conversation
about effective ways to teach writing to diverse students at various
levels within the liberal arts curriculum. With an emphasis on praxis,
participants together will explore best practices through hands-on
workshops of their own teaching materials. Close readings of their own
assignments, lessons, feedback strategies, and pedagogical tactics will
be informed by a larger discussion of contemporary ideas in writing
pedagogy provided by facilitators and guest speakers."


Hmmm.  If some student turned in prose like that in a class of mine, I would mark it up and note, probably not very politely, that the whole paragraph is jargon masking a lack of substance.  In other words, students who write like that don't get good grades on papers I grade.  I can think of two explanations for this fact:

1) I am terrible at teaching writing because I cannot recognize good prose like that being sent out by the writers of this workshop;
2) The organizers of this workshop have no business teaching others how to teach writing but should themselves  learn something, anything, about how to write.

Determining which of those is the appropriate conclusion is left as an exercise for the Reader.