The Difference Publics Make

by Howard Fisher When teaching students to anticipate how their work might circulate in the world, writing instructors understand the importance of posing questions about rhetorical ethos: who uses the writing and how the social positions of readers will shape their needs, expectations, and reliability judgements. However, in the workshop I co-led with Mckenzie Bergan earlier […]

Brown Bag Lunch Reflection

This year, we’ve implemented an event series called the Brown Bag Lunch. Once a month, the First-Year Writing office picks a topic related to teaching and we gather with other instructors to eat lunch and discuss various methods, challenges, or experiences in our teaching. September’s lunch discussed student engagement, October’s discussed how to incorporate games […]

Apologia Pro Dulcibus Frumentorum

Apologia Pro Dulcibus Frumentorum: An Appreciation of One Too Commonly Ignored Contributor to Social Bliss, Conjugal Stability, and Civic Cordiality, (Or Why Candy Corn Is Super Sweet) By Tom Layman IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION, while speaking with some students of supposed good standing, and teachers who I believed were touted for the quality […]

November 2016 Teaching Workshop: Creativity in Critical Writing

It wasn’t too long ago (though, because it took place before the Thanksgiving break, it feels like years have come and gone in the meantime) that FYW held a teaching development workshop on a topic that’s especially dear to my heart, Creativity in Critical Writing. In the workshop, we discussed several important questions, including . […]

October 2016 Teaching Workshop: Habits of Mind

Educational outcomes in traditional settings focus on how many answers a student knows. When we teach the Habits of Mind, we are interested also in how students behave when they don’t know an answer. . . . We are interested in enhancing the ways students produce knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce it.   —Arthur […]