When I was deciding between PhD programs, I was interviewed by a composition program to determine whether or not I would receive a TA. The interview took place on the phone, not my best medium, and I was very aware of how much was riding on my success.
“So, what have you taught before?” the interviewer asked.
I responded with a brief overview of the 1004, 1010, and 1011 structure at UConn and my role as primary instructor in those courses.
“Sorry, what I meant was what have you taught within the class?”
Ah! Now I could demonstrate my creativity and thoughtfulness as an instructor. “Most recently, I’ve been teaching a course on dystopian societies. I started by having them read Michel Foucault’s [I emphasized the French] ‘Panopticism,’ then we looked at Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and we’ll end with Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. We’ve thought about issues like surveill…..”
I’m interrupted by static and a discrete cough “No, sorry. We don’t need to know what you read. How did you talk about writing?”
Right. Writing. I teach courses called “Seminar in Academic Writing” or “Writing through Literature.” Emphasis on the writing.
This interview revealed the ways that course texts are always uppermost in my mind. I plan what books my students will buy before I think about what kind of projects I’d like to generate in class. I think about reading first, writing second. This approach didn’t do me any favors during the semester I outlined in the interview: I LOVED The Hunger Games and when I assigned it, I didn’t manage to augment my inner fangirl with any kind of critical attention. Without thinking about what kinds of writing I’d like to catalyze, I ended up with a lot of projects that just echoed back my enthusiasm for the novel. While I’m glad they enjoyed the story (one senior said it was the first book he’d read since high school), I was disappointed that their papers didn’t try to take on the complicated ideas in the text.
Since that semester, I’ve tried to think about my courses differently. Rather than picking texts first and hoping for assignment ideas at some future date, I try to start with ideas or concepts I’d like to discuss in the class. What kinds of writing projects can I propose with these ideas? Are they broad enough to allow multiple angles of approach but specific enough to foster complex analysis? From there, I consider what texts could contribute to that discussion.
If I could start the interview over again, it might go something like this:
“So, what have you taught before?” the interviewer asks.
“In my most recent course, I designed three projects. In the first, I asked students to enter into conversation with texts, and to articulate their own argument in relation to the other authors’ views. In the second project, I asked students to derive a theory of spectacle from one text and then see how that theory functioned when applied to a cultural phenomenon of their choice. Finally, I asked that students consider how a text uses affective elements to connect to a reader and how their own work has used affective techniques.” I’d lead with what my students were writing, not just what they were writing about.