Practicum in Teaching Writing

Required Texts & Materials:

• Essays and Explorations: An English 1 Anthology
• Victor Villanueva, ed.: Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, Second Edition
• Wysocki et al.: Writing New Media
• A journal of some sort
• A thumb/USB drive (any size should be fine)

Overview:

This seminar is designed to do multiple things, but two in particular: 1) to give you a broad overview of the major theories and pedagogies of teaching college-level composition; and 2) to provide you with guidance and support as you begin teaching English 001 at UVM.

Either of these goals could be the exclusive topic of a very full (and very productive) seminar, but we don’t have that luxury. Addressing both will demand of us a flexibility and sort of improvisational approach that may seem unorthodox at first, but which will ultimately allow us the best potential for growth and learning.

Assignments:

Teaching Journal: We’ll be engaging in an activity described by Kathleen O’Shaughnessy in her article “Writing A Bicycle” (The Quarterly 26.3, National Writing Project, 2004). She writes:

Try writing in a classroom journal [. . .] but don’t attempt to identify big problems or to find solutions. Simply record moments from your days with no evaluation or interpretation of the event’s importance. Often the events that capture my attention mean nothing in particular at the moment; my journal entries are just verbal snapshots, what Tom Romano calls “rendering experience.” Include as much actual dialogue from an event as you can recall and fill in the rest with reasonable facsimiles. (np)

At three points in the semester we’ll reflect on the journal entries up to that point, and you will turn in your journal and reflection. For some of these reflections I will give you specific questions or ideas to consider. For others, the entries themselves will guide your reflection. If you’ve been journaling and you attempt the reflections, you’ll get full credit. It’s that simple.

Reading Responses: There will be a Reading Response due each day we will be discussing readings. (Readings we may discuss over more than one class period will only have one Response due on the first day of our discussion.) I will provide you with topics for discussion or questions to address for some of the readings, for others you will be free to respond as the spirit moves you. I do not expect you to demonstrate perfect mastery of the readings in your Responses. Rather, I’m looking for serious engagement with the pieces under discussion, which may take a number of forms. Reading Responses will be due, by e-mail, no later than 10am on the days of our reading discussions, and should be about 1 page, single-spaced.

Workshop Demonstration: Each of you will be required to lead a workshop of one or more sample papers I will provide you. In your workshop demonstration, your classmates and I will take the role of the students in your course. You are free to run the workshop as you see fit, but you must engage with the writing and revision of one or more of the sample essays. I encourage you to be creative in your approach to the workshop – use this time as a practice or warm-up for a workshop activity you would like to try in your English 1 course. After your workshop demonstration, you will have one week to draft a 3-5 page, double-spaced, evaluation/analysis of your demonstration. You may summarize (briefly!) the activities in your demonstration, but the majority of your analysis should be an analysis of what cognitive skills and/or awarenesses you attempted to instill in us, how you attempted that, the relative degree of success and failure in your attempt, why you think the demonstration succeeded and failed as it did, and what you plan to do differently next time you perform this workshop.

My Greatest Fear as a Teacher: A few weeks into the semester, I will ask you to write down either your greatest fear as a teacher of English 001 or your biggest persistent problem. On September 25th we will meet as a class with Pat Mardeusz, one of the reference librarians, to discuss research tools and resources for composition and education scholarship and we will then conference individually to discuss your fear and a research plan. You will then research approaches and solutions to this fear/problem and evaluate your findings in terms of their applicability to your particular teaching situation. That is, your Greatest Fear paper should have two main components: 1) a review of the literature describing the major works on your topic; 2) an evaluation of the suitability and applicability to your classroom and developing teaching teach style of the major proposals in your lit review. These two components may be structured in any way you think effective. Your Greatest Fear paper should be 7-10 pages long, double-spaced.

Sequence Revision Analysis: Next semester you will be teaching a version of this semester’s assignment sequence, but how closely that version adheres to the original syllabus will be up to you and your classmates. We will work through the second half of the semester on a collaborative revision of the assignment sequence. As we work on the revision, you will be thinking through and drafting an analysis of the revised syllabus, focusing specifically on your Greatest Teaching Fear and the other teaching troubles you’ve encountered this semester. How will the revised syllabus help you to overcome these difficulties? How will it make your job harder? And most importantly: why and what do you plan to do about this? Your Revision Analysis should be 5-10 pages, double-spaced.

Grading:

• Teaching Journal: 10%
• Reading Responses: 10%
• Workshop Analysis: 15%
• Greatest Fear: 35%
• Revision Analysis: 30%

An Important Note:

If you have (or suspect that you may have) a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, I encourage you to contact both myself and UVM’s Office of Accommodation, Consultation, Collaboration & Educational Support Services (ACCESS), A-170 Living & Learning Center, 656-7753 (www.uvm.edu/~access) as early as possible in the term. The ACCESS Office will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodation for this course.