Passive voice.

The passive voice was used.

Or if you're Yoda and using the passive voice: "Used was the passive voice."

I definitely think it's okay to use an example if you do not name the student and are speaking objectively and not personally. Say "This {example} is not acceptable" as opposed to something like "The person who wrote this is an clearly an idiot." And you have to do it the FIRST time it happens or it will keep happening. I was told when I started teaching that it was good to over-enforce rules in the first few weeks, because that shows kids there ARE rules and once they know that they stop pushing as hard and you can relax more and I found that to be very true.

But with some behaviors, you have to make an example of the student in public--if a kid, for example, says something insulting about another kid, I think it's fine to call that kid out on it right that second in front of the class.

Passive voice.

Thank you!! I really need to take a nap--I've been walking around in a fog all day, after it took me several minutes to get out of my bed at 10:00 (very nearly came in to work past my very liberal flex starting time for the first time in years).

I ended a sentence in a preposition, didn't I? EAT IT, hard and fast rules!

I snorted Diet Coke.

Effing hate the passive voice rule. Sometimes, there's no choice BUT passive voice.

Sis has a BIG SIGN in her room with the classroom rules on it. It says, "USE ENGLISH".

Hmph. Sometimes the passive voice is called for.

and now I can go home feeling good about myself.

I guess I'd define good pedagogy as getting through to as many students as possible. When you're teaching to the group, it's sure as hell difficult to modify your teaching style for one student. Not that it shouldn't be done in some circumstances, but it's difficult.

I haven't taught to large classes, so I'm sure it's been easier for me, but sometimes it can be a simple as rephrasing an idea. The hardest part is to get kids to speak up if they don't understand.

Sometimes the passive voice is called for.

Like when you can't actually name your boss as the one who fucked up: "The tracking sheet for that manuscript was not filled out," when the only person who is supposed to fill the sheets out is your boss.

(Where "your" = "my.")

Passive voice lets you point the finger without actually saying your boss didn't do his job.

Sometimes the passive voice is the only choice, but in the example of that English paper, it really didn't work, just made the point I was trying to make very confusing.

He did love the title of the paper, though--that was the one that I wrote on Wordsworth's take on memory while musing on the River Wye, and called it "Misty Water Colored Memories of the Wye We Were."