In a method of decentering used in a freshman composition course, collaborative workshopping is employed, beginning with the first meeting, pairing students with semester-long colleagues. Students critique each other's writing at the second class meeting. Differentiating this approach from others is a pedagogy that sees collaboration and workshopping not as activities collateral to the experience of learning how to improve as a writer, but as the sites where most of the learning occurs in a decentered classroom. Paired students team-teach grammar to a class and collaboratively write, present, and defend a model essay to their peers. The essays are critiqued in the public classroom setting and, in the final exam, each team's essay is evaluated by another team. Throughout the semester, collaborative workshop activity serves in an integral way to decenter the teacher and to empower the students. Being decentered is more of a practical, than theoretical, concern. In the decentered classroom, an instructor can be a static authority, a responsible dispenser of what is to be learned. (A syllabus and examples of student essays are appended. (CR)