This paper advises teachers of technical writing to "practice what they preach" by occasionally doing field work in technical communication. The possibilities for off-campus work include consultation, perhaps for an in-house manual of technical writing procedures and skills, editing assignments for businesses and public agencies, and freelance writing for technical rather than scholarly publications. Such nonacademic work enables technical-writing teachers to expose more people to the value of technical-writing skills, to put classroom theory into practice, and to modify theory with on-the-job experience. Technical-writing instructors, in effect, become better teachers by becoming better practitioners of their subject. (RL)