Every August, when I introduce the UConn’s First-Year Writing course to new instructors, I present the course—“the pedagogy”—as a fairly coherent set of approaches and practices coming out of a particular tradition, which we do our best to engage with, revise, and renew each year. I encourage new instructors, who may be best positioned to […]
Author: Scott Campbell
Zombie Clones and Other Time-Saving Tips
If I could offer you a zombie clone of yourself to either, A, teach your class, or, B, comment on, grade, and communicate by writing with students, which would you choose? I ask this because it can seem, at mid-semester, that you are in fact two people—the one conducting a traditional, familiar class (see: […]
Amazing, Brave, Consistent, Dull, and Fragmentary: On Grading
The conclusion of fall semester is near, and it will soon be time to submit final grades. What final grades are supposed to mean (and what they communicate) remains contested. We hear about grade inflation and wonder how we could be the one to ding a student’s GPA. They all have 4.0s, right? And yet, […]
Using Student Texts
In our Teaching Develop Seminar on Tuesday, one side note of the conversation fascinated me. As instructors talked about how they respond to student writing, it became apparent that many (possibly most) feel reluctant to use current student work (“live writing,” Lisa called it) as content to be addressed in class time. These instructors may […]
What Makes a Good Course Text?
I’m in the process of choosing texts for my course, and I’m reminded of all that goes into those choices. Our course is a course in academic writing, which means that students are coming to terms with what it means to use writing in academic contexts. I don’t think this means that they are learning […]
This Is My Theme for English 1010
The question of content in first-year writing courses comes up a lot. Do these courses really have “no content”? One answer is that the content of the course is the writing that the students produce. Mostly, I like this answer, as it nicely pivots the attention of the question away from what gets read over to […]
What Are You Talking About?
Tony Scott and Lil Brannon have an article called “Democracy, Struggle, and the Praxis of Assessment” in the December CCC. I’ve read Scott before. We use part of his Dangerous Writing in our seminar for new instructors, and I appreciate his attention to the working lives of students and, increasingly, instructors. How can we discuss teaching without […]
Post-Scribing
I think the bones of our course are fairly easy to describe. I might say to a new teacher something like this: 1. Create an environment where writing seems an appropriate action (with readings, engagements, questions, problems), and 2. Respond vigorously to what gets written (and said) as both a reader and an interested colleague […]
Journey into History
Recent events have given me cause to dig into the Freshman English archives, which go back to the mid-1980s. This is fascinating reading. I’m serious here– there’s a real difference of style in how the Freshman English Program and the English Department communicated back then compared to now. Lots of long letters, long memos. Now, […]
Ovular Logic
In the opening scene of Orson Welles’ 1962 adaptation of The Trial, a suddenly awakened and apparently under arrest Mr. K. (Anthony Perkins) responds to the oblique requests of police inspectors. One inspector begins to document the evidence in the room by writing in a notebook. This writing, we learn in several ways, is a […]