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, […]
Letter to an Instructor
In the past decades American academic institutions have experienced a steady increase in the numbers of international students. Increasing economic pressures and the commodification of education have led college administrators to intensify recruitment efforts overseas in an attempt to bring an even larger number of international students to US campuses – a development that in […]
Bend and ‘Flect
When I think of “reflection” outside the world of composition and rhetoric, I think of light that emanates from a source bouncing off a surface that redirects that light–like sunlight bouncing off car windshields. The light is conceived of as linear, and the relationship between source and surface is geometric, the point of origin different […]
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 […]
Legos and Eggs
I’ve been sampling bits of the new 4th edition of Jim Williams’s Preparing to Teach Writing, in part because I wanted to see whether Williams had changed any of his approach (he hasn’t), but mostly because I was thinking about his chapter on the relationship between teaching grammar and improving writing (there is no causative […]
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, […]