Some kind of vague summation

We've covered a lot of ground in this course. Pulling everything together into one, grand unified theory of teaching seems kind of daunting to me. Thus far, everything I've come up with has been hopelessly vague or obvious.
But that won't stop me from writing about it!
At the moment, I keep coming back to something Zebroski wrote in "A Hero in the Classroom." He states "I cannot, and will not, treat students as a bundle of free-flowing textual shreds and threads, as a site of textual fragments, as a text-processing machine spewing forth voices, as merely one location of Intertext." (36)As simple as it may sound, I think it's important to keep in mind that our students are not text-processing machines, they are people. I know, that was pretty deep. It's a good thing you are sitting down while reading this.
Seriously though, I think that we can get a lot of guidance as teachers by just keeping in mind some basic facts about human nature. For example, people are lazy. Well, maybe lazy is a harsh word. But for the most part, people won't do any more work than they have to. This is why I'm becoming more and more a fan of the portfolio approach. It circumvents the natural tendency to calculate the path of least resistance while still making an acceptable grade. Portfolios also help students to keeps improving upon and learning from their own work.
Another fundamental human tendency is that people are emotional creatures (or in the case of our classrooms full of teenagers, very emotional creatures). We can't program our students. We can't re-tune or recalibrate them. I wish we could! Maybe that's my laziness speaking... If our students are going to learn anything they are going to have to want to do so. We have to keep in mind what motivates them. Making the grade is just part of the equation. Of everything we've read this year, I still think the words of Mem Fox are some of my favorite. If we are passionate about something, then we will excel. I've seen this proved in my own life over and over again. I won't lie, when I write a story or a chapter of a novel, I produce vastly better work than when I write an academic paper. Is this because I, as a person, am better suited to creative writing? Who knows. I rather doubt it. The more interested I am in an academic paper the better it will be as well. As teachers, it will behoove us to find writing material that captures our students imaginations.
Another key to motivation is audience. We're social creatures, and when our reputation is on the line, that's when we really start to care. Again, Mem Fox provides good examples of how this human characteristic can be put to good use, as does Pam with her experience with the Dreamers and their (potentially) judgmental German peers.
I know I'm pretty much rehashing stuff we've gone over in class time and again. I'm putting it down on paper (or online, as it were) to help clarify my own thoughts more than anything else--which is another interesting fact human nature. Sometimes we need to have our own ideas spelled out right in front of us before we know that they are there.