Laura Hardin Marshall Laura Hardin Marshall (referred by Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers) is the Writing Support Coordinator at Webster University and a PhD candidate in rhetoric and composition at Saint Louis University, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition. Her research focuses on the response practices of writing instructors and consultants, examining what feedback we offer to students, how we offer it, and what students then do with that feedback as they work through their revisions and future assignments. She has taught courses on basic writing and college preparation, introductory and advanced composition, and writing consulting and has published articles on writing program and writing center administration. What do you think is the most important recent development or pedagogical approach in teaching composition? The overall move toward more diverse and inclusive conceptions of composition, language, rhetoric, and communication have made an enormous impact on teaching and learning—or it has the potential to do so when more instructors, administrators, and universities embrace it. Similarly, many composition instructors have re-envisioned the five-paragraph essay and more traditional thesis-driven composition. By moving away from more formulaic and/or academically traditional types of writing (which often put US- and white-centric conventions on a pedestal), we can help students conceive of writing in more diverse ways that meet their linguistic and rhetorical needs. It feels as though so much of composition instruction still centers certain “right” or “standard” ways of thinking and doing that only actually fit very specific and rigid situations, and we do students a disservice by limiting the scope of what they can do! As writing instructors we can do a much better job at being transparent about identifying and knowing how to work with (or against) the contexts and conditions at play when we choose what and how to write. By understanding context and timing, situation and audience, we can better know how diverse and versatile (and enjoyable!) writing can be. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I like to emphasize rhetorical situations and kairos (having a sense of timing that is appropriate, intentional, and suitable for the given situation). When we write, there is so much more to it than developing and supporting a thesis, but students are often stuck in a very narrow mind frame. So many students seem to approach writing by thinking of it only as a thesis-driven, five-paragraph essay that’s been drilled into them year after year, and that style of writing is so often (sadly) devoid of creativity and context, often with an audience of one. They’re taught a form of writing that never sees the light of day. When we can point to other assignments and writing contexts that call for diverse ways of communicating, students can better see what composition is (or should be) truly about. They have to be able to see who they’re writing about or to (and the potential diversity of their audiences), in what locales and modes, at what time of day or year. I believe that when students can identify the wide variety of elements at play, they have a better understanding of the possibilities and choices that go into making composition work. What is it like to work with the editorial team at Bedford/St. Martin's? The Bedford/St. Martin’s editorial team was such a delight to work with! I initially thought most of the events would be focused around “selling” us on certain textbooks and/or instructional tools, which we would then be encouraged to adopt in our classes or programs. That couldn’t have been further from the truth! The editorial team was so clearly invested in learning what composition teachers and scholars want and need in the classroom. They cared about hearing about our experiences: what has worked, what hasn’t worked, what have we observed about student engagement, etc. I didn’t realize the care and intentionality that goes into developing educational materials that work for instructors and students, but the team very much demonstrated those qualities. They came through in each of the events they planned. It was such a pedagogically energizing experience! What do you think instructors don't know about higher ed publishing but should? I think many instructors—like me before this experience—don’t know how pedagogically informed higher education publishing is. I initially thought that commercial textbooks were developed and written by people who were far removed from actual classrooms and students. If nothing else, I assumed that most of the offerings would have mostly stodgy concepts and practices focused on a “current-traditional” sort of pedagogy, i.e., quite out of touch with current issues and practices. My experience as a Bedford New Scholar made it very clear that higher ed publishing is aware of and wants to tap into pedagogies that are more inclusive and functional for an every-changing student and instructor population. The offerings and the technological tools they develop are much more progressively student- and instructor-centered than many might imagine. And they’re so friendly and willing to be hands-on! I was surprised by how many resources were available to help instructors maximize how we teach and support students. Laura’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Laura’s assignment. For the full activity, see  Double-Entry Research Log. The double-entry research log serves to orient students to the wide range of tasks involved in academic research. The accompanying citation exercise helps illustrate that citation conventions—though seemingly arbitrary—have purpose and meaning for academic readers. (It also promotes regular and early citation.) It also gets students into the habit of thinking about and responding to the research they find. Students in the early stages of researched writing often think about quotes as evidence they can lob at readers without any follow up; they pass the “ball,” and then it’s up to the reader to run with it. With the double-entry log, though, students know they’re supposed to stop and think about the idea they’ve chosen, and we’ll talk throughout the semester about how they’ll do the same when they incorporate the quotes into formal writing. The screenshots help me as an instructor assist students in quoting and citing correctly; they’ll be used later when we discuss paraphrasing, too. Lastly, summaries help students understand the piece and practice conveying authors’ claims clearly, but it’s also a useful reminder of what each source is about, which can often become fuzzy the deeper into the research process we go.  ... View more

Antonio Hamilton (recommended by Kristi McDuffie) is pursuing his PhD in Writing Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches first-year composition courses and is a member of the Rhetoric Advisory Committee. His research interest focuses on how writing is remediated and potentially restricted in online writing environments, such as Automated Writing Evaluation software and Language Models. He is specifically interested in writer agency when writing with these programs, and what forms or styles of writing are prioritized. His research draws on intercultural rhetoric, algorithmic knowledge, and rhetorical genre studies perspectives to assess how writing is digitally transformed. How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid? I think engaging students in my course is probably one of the most difficult things, especially post COVID-19. But it is definitely one of the most important things to establish at the beginning of the semester. For me, engagement is not just teaching relevant material or having exciting in-class activities but also doing my best to ensure that every student feels comfortable in the class. I try to do this by using the first few weeks of class to establish trust with my students individually and as a group. For the most part, the first few weeks of my course allow a decent amount of in-class brainstorming time. I use this time to go around and talk to each of my students and help them work through or develop their ideas for whatever the first major assignment is. I believe this encourages them to feel that my classroom is a safe and collaborative environment where the instructor regularly engages with everyone. Basically, if they see I am engaging with them, then hopefully they engage in the course and realize that engagement is a two-way-street. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? The most important skill that I aim to provide my students is independence and ownership of the work they produce. I believe that oftentimes, students are accustomed to producing work that is either strictly a regurgitation of their instructor’s thoughts or having the feeling that they are producing work for the instructor and not work from themselves. I try to make sure that students know that I care about their ideas, and I will always do my best to help them to achieve their goals. Doing this helps them build that independence and ownership of their work because it is intrinsically their individualized ideas. I try to avoid questions such as “What do you think I should do” or “Do you like this idea?” I always center it back to the student by responding “Is this an idea that you produce?” If it is, then I encourage them to stick with it! What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? Having the opportunity to meet, discuss and work with other Bedford New Scholars was an enlightening experience. Because of Covid, I think that we often think about what is going on outside of individual departments. For me, hearing what other graduate students are doing in their composition/rhetoric/writing related courses was reaffirming and motivating. It was assuring to hear that other scholars have the same classroom concerns, teaching goals, theory applications, etc. It showed me that what I am doing in my classroom is not so different than what others are doing around the country at their own institutions. I also was able to learn about new in-class activities and assignments, one of which I implemented in one of my courses this semester! Essentially, interacting with the other scholars allowed me to grow as an instructor myself. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? Professionally, this was my first time participating in something that gave me the opportunity to interact with other graduate students, as well as getting a peek at what goes on behind the scenes with a major publisher. It was all quite enlightening and informative. In regard to the other graduate students, it reaffirmed the collaborative nature of our field and showed me that the sharing of ideas can potentially lead to connections down the line. This may sound simple, but I think that in the past, I would just listen. If I did not perceive what was being said as immediately relevant, I would hold on to those ideas. But something does not immediately need to be relevant for it to be important. In regard to my classroom, listening to and having conversations with speaker Dr. Wonderful helped me consider how to maneuver through potential difficult classroom conversations. I have worked on having a more self-aware classroom environment that tries to prioritize each student’s opinions and thoughts equally. This has always been something I try to do, but through hearing the other scholars and Dr. Wonderful speak about this, I feel that my approach is becoming more refined. Antonio’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Antonio’s assignment. For the full activity, see Remediation Remix . For the Remediation Remix assignment, students are asked to remediate their research paper into a new genre. The assignment applies Bolter & Grusin’s (2000) concept of remediation. The goal is for students to think about the varied ways information can be communicated and asks them to consider accessibility. Additionally, they must think about how certain information may be more effectively communicated in certain genres. The students are asked to write a proposal that I provide feedback on, and then they go on to create the remediation. Accompanying the remediation is a rationale statement where they detail their choices and reasons to explain why they successfully remediated their research paper. I enjoy this assignment a lot because it shows students that writing and communication is not just bound to the traditional academic essay. ... View more

  Dilara Avci (recommended by Dev Bose) is pursuing her MA in Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Arizona. She has taught writing and literacy across diverse backgrounds and age levels, from elementary school to college. She is currently teaching First-Year Composition. Her research interests are the role of individual learner differences such as language aptitude and anxiety in writing and material design with a focus on digital literacies and critical pedagogy. She believes in the importance of sharing experiences and creating an inclusive learning environment and has been involved in a variety of Teaching-as-Research Projects, Faculty Learning Communities and conferences on writing and teaching practices.   How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid? I am a writing instructor and act as a choreographer at the same time. I perform on stage every day when I am in front of my students by grabbing their attention and energizing them for learning. Like a choreographer composing the sequence of steps and moves for a performance of dance, I compose my lesson plan and activities step by step. While doing so, there are many factors I need to consider such as the learner profile, several identities, diversity in the classroom, my students’ needs, individual learner differences, student learning objectives, and teaching during pandemic. To embrace all these varieties and engage my students, I try to integrate a number of activities and differentiated instruction by conducting a station-rotation model of learning in class activities, giving students options as part of assignments and creating opportunities for informal and formal reflection on students’ learning. Similar to a choreographer, I ensure that all the movements and steps in a performance (lesson) are systematically related to each other so that the activities are not in isolation but in a sweet harmony. Therefore, I benefit a lot from workshopping, genre-based instruction, one-on-one conferences, and technology-enhanced learning by integrating discussions, group work, and interactive slides with Nearpod, Padlet and Kahoot activities.  What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I care mostly about teaching my students a growing mindset, the importance of practicing and building confidence in themselves and in their skills. If my students learned only one thing from my course, it would be the knowledge of how to set goals and work to reach them. In the beginning of my courses, what I usually realized is that my students were quite stressed about whether they would pass or fail the course and focused too much on the grades. Throughout my courses, however, they learned that there is always room for improvement in writing and in life. In my opinion, this is necessary and it aligns well with the notion of “All writers have more to learn” stated by Adler-Kassner and Wardle (2015) in Naming What We Know . In that way, students may perceive “failure” as an opportunity to improve more, and instead of “viewing feedback or revisions as a punishment,” they embrace “writing as an ongoing process” ( Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015) . As a consequence of this growing mindset and rhetorical awareness, they know how to analyze a sample work, draft, revise, and create a better version of their writing/assignment in a planned way without giving up after a messy first draft.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? I have participated in several professional development opportunities but the Bedford New Scholars program has been distinct among those. In other professional development opportunities, we mostly talk about what amazing things we do in our classes and how we can even achieve better teaching and learning outcomes in future, which in a way pushes us to put ourselves “in the best shape.” However, the Bedford New Scholars program encouraged us to be who we are with our strengths and weaknesses, show our vulnerable sides in teaching and learning, and create sincere discussions on what we are challenged by and how we can work toward those issues. It is an inspiring learning community in which we have a great opportunity to meet other instructors in the writing program all over the United States, have conversations on teaching and learning without the fear of being judged or evaluated, and realize that we are not the only ones who sometimes struggle with planning, teaching, and giving feedback. We share similar concerns and face many challenges. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? The Bedford New Scholars program helped me gain new perspectives in teaching writing, rhetoric, and argumentation. The summer Summit was especially helpful with mind-opening guest speakers, presentations by the Macmillan team and Assignments that Work sessions by other scholars. To illustrate how the program added new methods and perspectives into my teaching repertoire, I would like to share the following example: I was quite hesitant to bring sensitive issues into the classroom setting due to my learner background and the learning system I grew up in before attending the summer Summit. Dr. Wonderful Faison initiated a welcoming discussion on this topic and shared exhilarating readings that can be used as teaching materials. She was able to spark new ideas that we can experiment with regarding critical pedagogy with our students. I know that I will be using many things like this one I learned from being a part of this amazing learning community. Dilara’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Dilara’s assignment. For the full activity, see Visual Literacy & Analysis . The second major project that my students complete in the ENGL 101 course is to design a digital poster or infographic. The unit focuses on multimodal elements, visual literacy, and how meaning is created through images, text, audio, illustrations, and design in a digital poster or infographic. In this in-class interactive assignment, the students are asked to choose a visual/image of an advertisement to analyze and explain its purpose, the target audience, what makes it a powerful visual, how certain visual strategies or techniques are used, and their reason for choosing the image. While implementing the activity in class, I benefited from Padlet, a technological tool that allows note-taking and sharing in the form of a post-it. Padlet allows students to add a visual and text and to read, like, and comment on their peers’ posts in a convenient way. I find this tool quite useful in creating student engagement and interaction in the class setting. Find Dilara on Instagram @dilaratunaliavci. References Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. (2015). Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies . University Press of Colorado. ... View more

Madhu Nadarajah (recommended by Nick Recktenwald and Tia North) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Cultural Rhetorics at the University of Oregon where she is researching the discursive practices within the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. She is currently serving as the Assistant Director of the Composition Program where she worked on redesigning the Composition Policy Handbook, helped with graduate teaching instruction, and facilitated the annual Composition Conference. She is also a Culturally Responsive Teaching Fellow in which she draws on her work in Cultural Rhetorics to provide anti-oppressive teaching principles for the wider Composition community in the classroom.     How do you ensure your classroom is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive? For me, community building exercises are crucial to ensuring the classroom is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive. Through community, students learn to trust the classroom space and become more comfortable having transparent conversations. One approach I take to help build community in my classroom is through the readings I assign. Part of my writing pedagogy is to inform students about the complexity surrounding writing studies. Many of my students are taking my class to fulfill their writing requirement and therefore are unaware about the history of writing in institutionalized settings. One reading in particular that helps students situate themselves within the history of writing studies is CCCC ’s “Students Rights to their Own Language” (1974). While the article was published a little under fifty years ago, many of the concerns brought up still remain true for writing students, particularly that surrounding a student’s agency. By framing the classroom through readings like “SRTOL,” we began to have transparent conversations about voice, power structures, and community. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? A skill that I aim to provide my students is for them to have a greater awareness of their own rhetorical traditions. In my classroom, we define rhetorical tradition as not only a means of communicating, but also the cultural and material effects that have led us to these communicative practices. I want students to become aware of the rhetorical tradition they are bringing in, how they have come to gather those traditions, and how it interacts with the rhetorical traditions of their peers. Moreover, this awareness leads students to understand how their rhetorical traditions are part of the larger constellation of rhetorical traditions. In other words, how do these rhetorical traditions exist with one another? I believe this awareness of rhetorical traditions is an important skill for students that they can carry over to their other classes and to their lives outside of school. In particular, understanding the cultural and material effects that inform their way of communication allows students to intimately understand the weight of (physical and cultural) space.  One assignment that helps students understand their own rhetorical traditions is my “Social Literacy Assignment” (provided later in this post). I define a social literacy narrative as an exploration of a rhetorical moment that informs your awareness of a social issue (or issues) that directly impacts you and how that shapes how you communicate and interact with others. In this assignment, I also ask students to pay close attention to how subject-position cannot be separated from how you perceive and are impacted by the rhetorical moment you are reflecting on. I find this assignment (especially since I assign it early on) allows students to have a more nuanced understanding of the importance of rhetorical practices.  What is it like to be part of the Bedford New Scholars Program? The Bedford New Scholars Program provided me with an incredible opportunity to be in community with other graduate students who are also passionate about teaching and rhet/composition studies. Additionally, while we all had a background in rhetorical studies, our approaches to the field varied greatly. In turn, this offered me a great opportunity to collaborate and network. My favorite part of the Bedford New Scholars virtual Summit was the “Assignments at Work” session. This session was an opportunity for the Scholars to share and workshop an assignment or lesson plan. I received valuable feedback on my teaching assignment and I was able to learn about the exciting materials from the other instructors. The other parts of the Summit that I really enjoyed were the sessions led by the guest speakers, Dr. Andrea Lunsford and Dr. Wonderful Faison. Their individual talks were incredible and I learned so much about their pedagogical approaches. Moreover, the Bedford New Scholars Program provided me with a greater understanding of what higher-ed publishing looks like. We tend to view higher-ed publishing as these “big bad guys.” However, the Bedford New Scholars program has opened my perspective to how nuanced publishing really is. While publishing is definitely not without its faults, what I appreciated about the Bedford New Scholars Program is learning how Macmillan Learning prioritizes student perspectives in the development of their textbooks. How will the Bedford New Scholars Program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? The Bedford New Scholars Program is a collaborative and engaging experience. In particular, I learned a lot about the behind the scenes of higher-ed publishing. I think this new knowledge will help me tremendously in my professional development. One of my roles is that of an Assistant Director of Composition. Within that role, I often discuss textbook options and reflect on the newest trends in textbook content. The Bedford New Scholars Program gave me an inside look into the most current trends for writing textbooks and how that information was determined. I will be taking this new insight back into my role as we start to discuss the textbook options for the new academic year.   Madhu’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Dilara’s assignment. For the full activity, see Social Literacy Narrative. My assignment asks students to write a social literacy narrative in the form of a letter. I typically assign the “Social Literacy Narrative” within the first week of the quarter in place of an “Initial Reflection” assignment. This is a great way for students to reflect and expand on their understanding of rhetoric, especially as it applies to their own space and place. The assignment asks students to consider the rhetorical moments that helped shape their awareness of social issues that directly impacted them and how that shapes the way they communicate and interact with others. It also requires students to reflect and interrogate how their subject-position plays an integral part in those rhetorical moments, especially as it informs how they communicate with other people and different communities. I offer four different examples of what I regard as a social literacy narrative so the students have an idea of how they should model their assignment. I have students write the assignment in the form of a letter because it is a style that allows for personal expression and is addressed to someone the writer specifically designates to be the recipient. Find Madhu on Twitter @MNadarajah9. ... View more

  Brittny M. Byrom  (recommended by Michael Harker) is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition and serves as the Associate Director of Technology and Finance of the Georgia State University Writing Studio. Her primary research focuses on the intersection of theories of rhetorical empathy and beauty and justice. Her work in writing center research concentrates on developing balanced practices between tutor emotional labor and collaborative learning environments. Brittny began teaching in 2017 and began working in writing centers in 2015.     What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? The most important skills I aim to provide students are self-reflection and critical analysis. I design my course with ideas of Rhetorical Empathy ( Lisa Blankenship & Eric Leake ) and justice ( Elaine Scarry ). My primary goal is to provide diverse materials and design engaging activities that help students communicate their reactions to content while making space for fellow students to communicate their own reactions. Understanding why we react in certain ways to certain material and discussing how we each respond to similar material differently demonstrates how to read and interpret texts from distinct perspectives and lenses. I believe such reflexive practices prepare students for productive critical analysis discussions. By knowing how we reached a conclusion and discussing different perspectives, students can more thoroughly and thoughtfully explain their arguments and the rationale backing up their stance.  The most common issue I have found students struggling with is figuring out what they want to say about a topic. They come with some facts and details; however, they struggle to say anything about the mound of evidence provided. I hope that by helping students develop self-reflection skills they can figure out what they want to say and why they want to say it.  How do you ensure your course is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive? Georgia State University serves a diverse population who come from a wide range of backgrounds. In order to engage students and create an inclusive classroom, I intentionally diversify the course’s reading list so it includes content creators of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender and gender identities, sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and persons with disabilities. By having course materials representing different identities and backgrounds, students can—hopefully—find someone with whom they identify and someone they have never before encountered. Routinely adjusting the reading list and mindfully making space for diverse creators demonstrates the thoughtful practices and skills I want my students to develop. Given that my students are from diverse backgrounds—often folks from minority groups and systemically disenfranchised backgrounds—I acquainted myself with my university’s abundant student resources. I provide students with a list of additional resources in the syllabus and through our online learning system with up-to-date information, and we spend a day reviewing those resources. I practice the adage, “you cannot write when you have a leaky roof.” Life happens; hopefully, we can provide access to resources that support students’ needs. What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program?  I have enjoyed being a part of the Bedford New Scholars program! As a fifth-year PhD student, I encourage incoming graduate students to create community among each other in our department; however, the longer I’m in my program the more I recognize the importance of meeting scholars outside of my university as well as meeting the publishers who work in our fields. While this recognition is obvious to seasoned academics—especially since these meetings are common activities occurring at academic conferences—many current graduate students have not had the opportunity to participate due to pandemic concerns. The connections we make as junior scholars are crucial for graduates completing their programs and heading into the job market.  Thankfully, the BNS program provides such opportunities while accommodating travel concerns. This program has provided me the opportunity to meet with fellow scholars who are as excited about teaching, join workshops with leading scholars in my field, and learn about the publishing process. Additionally, the BNS program afforded me opportunities to work on projects that align with my academic and teaching interests.  What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? During the “Assignments that Work” presentations, I learned creative ways to teach students common concepts. For example, Laura Hardin Marshall presented how she teaches MLA formatting using a menu. She designed two menus—one using typical menu formatting and one with that formatting removed—to demonstrate to her students the importance of formatting! It is easier to teach the importance and use of formatting by having students read through and respond to a common item that has a lot of detailed formatting that has had that formatting removed. Creative visuals such as Laura’s example are valuable teaching tools that aid students see the importance of the concepts that we instructors try to teach. Talking students through each step of MLA formatting is not as eye catching as a menu with no formatting. It is those interesting and visually jarring pieces that can lead to productive conversations about the day-to-day concepts students need to learn.  Brittny’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Brittny’s assignment. For the full activity, see Photo Essay . I presented my “What is Beauty: A Photo Essay” assignment during the Assignments that Work workshop. The assignment requires students to identify something they consider beautiful—I typically theme my courses, and this particular class was themed on beauty—and they take photos of that person/place/thing. The main requirements are that students must take the photo themselves (screenshots do not count) and organize their photos and caption-style paragraphs in a narrative form. This assignment establishes the topic students will research for the rest of the semester, so clarity is essential. The goals of this assignment are to (1) get students thinking creatively about their research topics, (2) get students reflecting on what emotionally moves them and why, and (3) get students utilizing, often overlooked, campus resources such as borrowing camera equipment. I developed this assignment because I was tired of grading essays about perfunctory and, frankly, boring topics. In order to complete the photo essay assignment well, students are pushed to be creative and thoughtful about their noun that represents beauty since they will be researching that topic for the remainder of the course. My students enjoy the challenge! Find Brittny on Twitter and Instagram @brittnybyrom. ... View more

  Rachel Marks  (recommended by Angela Rounsaville) is pursuing her PhD in Texts and Technology with an emphasis in Digital Humanities at the University of Central Florida, where she expects to defend her dissertation “On your Left!”: Exploring Queerness, Masculinity, and Race in the Marvel “Captain America” Fandom in May 2024. She currently teaches the first-year writing course Composition II: Situated Inquiry of Writing and Rhetoric and has taught Composition I: Introduction to Writing Studies in the past. She has also served as a consultant at the University Writing Center and as a student editor on Stylus: A Journal of First-Year Writing . Her research focuses on LGBT representation in popular media, fan interaction and critique on social media platforms, and how fans respond to representations of queer characters in the media. How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid?  I normally teach face-to-face classes, and I like to balance the time I’m lecturing with hands-on activities, particularly activities that get students thinking about their semester-long research projects. These activities include quick-writes or brainstorming activities, where students spend 5-10 minutes writing about their thoughts on a reading or on an upcoming paper. I also have group activities, where students can collaborate in order to apply something we’re learning in class to a real-world situation. One example is my rhetorical situation activity, where students evaluate the rhetorical situation in a video discussing the creation of Pandora at Disney World. While I do spend some time in each class lecturing, I try to hold student attention with visuals like slides, example papers, and videos relating to that day's topic. On days when we’re preparing for a major paper to be due, we have peer review sessions as well as workshops where students can receive feedback from their peers, discuss their papers, implement feedback, and ask questions. I also hold “one-on-one” conferences each semester, where in lieu of class, every student individually can bring in their work and discuss their research projects with me, getting feedback on their writing in real time.  What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students?  I want my students to gain a deeper understanding of how writing works in the world, as well as gain writing and research skills that they can take into their majors and career. I first want my students to realize that there is writing all around them, in everything they do, whether that’s posting on social media, applying for a job, or taking notes for classes. Then, for their research projects, they choose a community that they're involved in and study how writing and communication helps that community to function and meet its goals. I then have them take the research they collect from both their communities and our library database to create a research article in the style of an academic journal. This gives them awareness of both common academic genres and scholarly research, as well as everyday writing that occurs in their communities. Many of the students going through the composition program, particularly at my university, are in the sciences or in engineering and don’t particularly “like writing.” I want them to realize that writing is an important skill to have, both in and outside of the classroom, even if you aren’t in the humanities disciplines.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? This program is a unique opportunity to be able to hear from scholars and professionals in the composition and higher education fields that are outside of my university. So far, I’ve really enjoyed being able to collaborate with other composition instructors and share teaching ideas, work with the editorial team to learn more about instructional materials, and hear from composition pedagogy experts. Our Bedford New Scholars summit allowed us an open environment to talk about new teaching ideas and learn about interesting course materials, both textbooks and digital tools. I’ve been surprised at how much I have in common with other composition instructors in both the challenges associated with teaching as well as the rewards.  However, I’ve also appreciated how many different approaches to engaging students I’ve been exposed to that I wouldn’t have been otherwise.  How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? The Bedford New Scholars program has given me a greater appreciation for higher education publishing and the possibilities for interactive materials that can be incorporated into my courses. I plan to take better advantage of the variety of rhetoric and composition textbooks Bedford offers, as well as supplemental materials like classroom activities, assignment ideas, and multimodal texts like videos. This program has also encouraged me to think “outside the box” when it comes to my teaching and lesson planning. I have seen the kinds of assignments, lessons, and conversations with students that are possible and am excited to incorporate new ideas and approaches to my practice. The “Assignments that Work” workshop encouraged me to share my own assignment ideas with others to get feedback and also provided me with an archive of assignment ideas that I can potentially adapt for my own course in the future.  Rachel’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Rachel’s assignment. For the full activity, see Peer Review Worksheet . My assignment that works is a worksheet used for in-class peer review sessions. For this, students bring in their rough drafts, swap papers with a partner, and give each other feedback while they are together and can collaborate. However, when I first did peer review in class, there wasn't enough structure—students didn’t know how to respond to their peer’s papers, so they would either comment on sentence-level errors or make generic comments like “good job” or “interesting topic.” They now complete a peer review worksheet which is based on the rubric for their major papers. For each section of the rubric, students say whether their peers completed that component, what they did well, and what they can improve upon or clarify. At the end, they give summative end comments with overall impressions of the paper and questions for their peers. This not only helps students focus on the goals of the assignment and the most pertinent parts of the paper when giving feedback, but also helps them review the requirements of the assignment for themselves. Lastly, since I base my feedback on the rubric, this peer review worksheet helps students give their peers feedback in a similar way.  Find Rachel on Twitter @RachelKatMarks. ... View more

Bedford/St. Martin's is pleased to announce the participants in the 2022 Bedford New Scholars Advisory Board! Advisory Board members are:   Olalekan Adepoju   Olalekan Adepoju (recommended by Andrea Olinger) is a doctoral candidate in the University of Louisville’s Rhetoric and Composition program. He teaches a variety of courses in writing, including first-year composition and intermediate college writing. He also serves as the assistant writing center director, where he works with international/multilingual students as well as graduate students and faculty writers. Currently, Olalekan is an executive committee member of the Non-native English-Speaking Writing Instructors (NNESWIs) in the United States. His research interests lie in writing studies, intercultural rhetoric, ESL teaching, and discourse analysis. He has continued to write about these interests and published in both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed journals.   Dilara Avci   Dilara Avci (recommended by Dev Bose) is pursuing her MA in Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Arizona. She has taught writing and literacy across diverse backgrounds and age levels, from elementary school to college. She is currently teaching First-Year Composition. Her research interests are the role of individual learner differences such as language aptitude and anxiety in writing and material design with a focus on digital literacies and critical pedagogy. She believes in the importance of sharing experiences and creating an inclusive learning environment and has been involved in a variety of Teaching-as-Research Projects, Faculty Learning Communities and conferences on writing and teaching practices. Noah Bukowski   Noah Bukowski (recommended by Scott DeWitt) is pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy, specializing in Disability Studies at The Ohio State University. Noah attempts to foreground accessible pedagogies and collaboration in all of his work on teaching writing. He has taught First Year Writing, Introduction to Disability Studies, and co-taught Introduction to Teaching First Year Composition as a Graduate Writing Program Administrator. Ever since his undergraduate degree and into graduate school, Noah has worked in the writing center as both a tutor and administrator. In 2019, Noah co-authored a chapter in Theories and Methods of Writing Center Studies with Brenda Brueggemann titled "Writing Center Research and Disability Theory." Noah is currently most interested in the work of finessing accessible pedagogies during the pandemic.   Brittny Byrom   Brittny M. Byrom (recommended by Michael Harker) is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition and serves as the Associate Director of Technology and Finance of the Georgia State University Writing Studio. Her primary research focuses on the intersection of theories of rhetorical empathy and beauty and justice. Her work in writing center research concentrates on developing balanced practices between tutor emotional labor and collaborative learning environments. Brittny began teaching in 2017 and began working in writing centers in 2015.   Antonio Hamilton   Antonio Hamilton (recommended by Kristi McDuffie) is pursuing his PhD in Writing Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches first-year composition courses and is a member of the Rhetoric Advisory Committee. His research interest focuses on how writing is remediated and potentially restricted in online writing environments, such as Automated Writing Evaluation software and Language Models. He is specifically interested in writer agency when writing with these programs, and what forms or styles of writing are prioritized. His research draws on intercultural rhetoric, algorithmic knowledge, and rhetorical genre studies perspectives to assess how writing is digitally transformed.   Laura Hardin Marshall   Laura Hardin Marshall (referred by Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers) is a PhD candidate at Saint Louis University, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition. Her research focuses on the response practices of writing instructors and consultants, examining what feedback we offer to students, how we offer it, and what students then do with that feedback as they work through their revisions and future assignments. She has taught courses on basic writing and college preparation, introductory and advanced composition, and writing consulting and has published articles on writing program and writing center administration.   Rachel Marks   Rachel Marks (recommended by Angela Rounsaville) is pursuing her PhD in Texts and Technology with an emphasis in Digital Humanities at the University of Central Florida, where she expects to defend her dissertation “On your Left!”: Exploring Queerness, Masculinity, and Race in the Marvel “Captain America” Fandom in May 2024. She currently teaches the first-year writing course Composition II: Situated Inquiry of Writing and Rhetoric and has taught Composition I: Introduction to Writing Studies in the past. She has also served as a consultant at the University Writing Center and as a student editor on Stylus: a Journal of First-Year Writing. Her research focuses on LGBT representation in popular media, fan interaction and critique on social media platforms, and how fans respond to representations of queer characters in the media.   Madhu Nadarajah   Madhu Nadarajah (recommended by Nick Recktenwald and tia north) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Cultural Rhetorics at the University of Oregon where she is researching the discursive practices within the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. She is currently serving as the Assistant Director of the Composition Program where she worked on redesigning the Composition Policy Handbook, helped with graduate teaching instruction, and facilitated the annual Composition Conference. She is also a Culturally Responsive Teaching Fellow in which she draws on her work in Cultural Rhetorics to provide anti-oppressive teaching principles for the wider Composition community in the classroom. Lupe Remigio Ortega   Lupe Remigio Ortega (recommended by Mary Fiorenza) is a dissertator pursuing her PhD in English, Composition & Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She currently serves as the Senior Assistant Director of English 100, the first-year writing/freshman writing requirement at UW-Madison. In this position she works mentoring first-time English 100 instructors, which includes leading fall and spring orientation, teaching a first-year writing proseminar, and organizing and leading professional development workshops. Previously she has taught English 100 at UW-Madison as well as first-year writing at California State University Fresno and the first-year writing equivalent at Reedley College in Reedley, California. Her research focuses on transnational literacies, indigenous literacies (oral and spiritual), and the impact of migration on Mixtec literacy practices in the US and Mexico.   ... View more

Brendan Hawkins Brendan Hawkins(recommended by Elias Dominguez Barajas) is pursuing his PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at Florida State University. His research, teaching, and faculty development interests and experiences span rhetorical genre studies, histories of rhetoric, online writing instruction, and general education composition classes. He serves as a College Composition Program assistant director where his primary responsibility is mentorship for first-year teachers. How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid? When I started teaching online, I made weekly activity sheets that described the goals for the week as well as the readings and activities students would do. I have adopted a similar practice for my face to face, onsite teaching as well. I keep a running Google Doc with my lesson plans typed up for students to see. I project it on the whiteboard and use it as a reference point for class. It is a simple practice, but it helps students who are unable to attend that day (because I’ve essentially taken notes for them already) and it helps me both visually and verbally indicate where we are in the day’s plans. This move is a simple act of transparency that I try to implement throughout my teaching. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I aim to help students understand the complexities of genre and how the concept functions in their everyday decision-making processes. They typically think of “genre” as a classification system but don’t realize the role it plays in not only how they understand but also how they respond to situations, particularly those in the writing classroom. We examine the contexts in which genres typically happen and how those genres shape how folks act and interact with each other. My favorite example is the small, unassuming genre of menus. If students can see how texts—produced and received as genres—function and interact with other texts and people(s), I think students are set to be effective communicators in a variety of situations, both curricular and extracurricular.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? I’ve enjoyed the chance to meet other instructors from across the U.S. Conferences are hard to attend (especially when they’re cancelled for pandemic-related safety concerns), so being part of Bedford New Scholars was a great way to meet other folks in the field and share ideas about teaching and about the ways we use instructional materials. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? It’s a vague and/or cheesy answer, but I have lots of notes from the summer summit that I plan to revisit ahead of my next semester of teaching. I appreciate the time to sit and listen to how other teachers approach their teaching. It’s also great to hear about other courses and about other institutions, since I—as many other folks might—get tunnel vision when thinking about my own institution’s curricula and policies.   Brendan’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Brendan's assignment. For the full activity, see  Rhetorical Analysis Activity. We have a common syllabus for our 1,000 and 2,000-level courses, which means our major assignments are the same across all sections. Therefore, I chose to share an activity I do with students that helps them build genre and rhetorical knowledge they’ll need both in these courses—particularly the 2,000-level course—and in their other classes. I provide the framing for the day’s activity (Figure 1) in a Google Doc I share with my students, which we use all semester for our lesson plans, notes, and activities.   Figure 1. Screenshot of the day's Lesson Overview.   The lesson I’m sharing is a two-part lesson that asks students to (re)define key rhetorical terms we had been covering ahead of a rhetorical analysis project. Rhetorical definitions often remain too abstract for students to sese how these aren’t just terms but actual practices. As Figure 2 demonstrates, I ask students in the first activity to define the rhetorical term assigned to their group and then describe how it functions within the speech we were analyzing.   Figure 2. Grid students use for small group activities.   As they completed the activity, students were able to both define and apply the definitions. I was able to move from group to group (via Zoom breakout rooms in this case) and challenge the ones who provided a vague or brief answer and help those who were struggling. We then turned to practice rhetorical skills in another way. Students struggled in their previous activities to determine the difference between summary and analysis. The second half of the day’s lesson, depicted in Figure 3, asks students to summarize a section of the speech we were analyzing and then provide a separate analysis or evaluative statement about that part of the text. By the end of the activity, we were able to use students’ answers to the activity to build a rough outline of a rhetorical analysis we could write on the speech.   Figure 3. Excerpt of grid used for the day's second activity.   ... View more

Emily Gresbrink Emily Gresbrink(recommended by John Logie) is pursuing her PhD in Rhetoric, Scientific and Technical Communication at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She expects to complete her degree in 2024. Emily currently teaches University Writing, housed in the First-Year Writing program. Her research interests encompass technical communication, the rhetoric of health and medicine, pandemics, rhetorical analysis, archives, bioethics, and mentoring. She also serves on the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts Assembly as a Graduate Student Representative, co-chairs the graduate student mentoring subcommittee for the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), and works with the mentoring committee for the Online Writing Centers Association (OWCA). How does the next generation of students inspire you? I am always inspired by the creative approach students take to assignment prompts. Giving them something open-ended like a discussion post and getting a range of answers is reflective of different career paths and scholarly goals, but also of the way students think and process their work. I love seeing how students think, and how those thought processes come out on paper and multimodal assignments. Sometimes I get caught up in my own process of writing that I have been comfortable with for so long, and it’s refreshing to see how a younger scholar might approach a similar task.  I am also inspired and invigorated by the commitment to real-world change, intervention, and action my students bring to and from the classroom. Academia exists within a bubble, and it can be hard to take what we learn out of the classroom and interject it into the world. But I see and hear the ways that students want to make a difference — say, “I can use my voice to be more confident when I write about issues I care about” — that keeps me coming back to the classroom, easily. This next generation of students is going to be a paradigmatic shift in the way things are done in the world. It’s so exciting. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? So, hear me out: Ratatouille (2007) was really onto something when Chef Gusteau said, “Your only limit is your soul. What I say is true — anyone can cook.” I tell every one of my students that on the first day of class, and sometimes people are like … “Why is this instructor talking about a Pixar movie?”  But genuinely, I feel that way about writing — anyone can write. The skill I aim to provide my students, then, is individual practices: that is, how to tease out writing in a way that works for their position, their minds, and their bodies. Not everyone will like the pen-to-paper approach and some will like podcasting or audio forms of writing. That’s okay; let’s run with more audio-based feedback and writing remixes. Someone else might be a very technical, document-based author. Great; let’s lean into editing techniques, document design, and get them where they want to be. Letting students make safe mistakes, find what works for them, and get into the cuisine and chef skills they like (to keep the cooking metaphor alive) will help them create a writing piece (culinary masterpiece?) that fits their style.  What would your blue-sky courseware look like for a composition course?  That is a good question. I am a major fan of all-in-one tools, especially ones that include textbooks, assignments, peer review tools, calendar apps … the less clicks and stops my class has to make in their busy lives, the better it is.  I liked being able to play around with Achieve’s peer review tools this summer during the Bedford New Scholars summit. That had a slick interface. There was not a confusing exchange of emails, cross-platform integrations (email suites to LMS), and it was all in one place. And you could edit and share feedback right in Achieve, which was nice. I also really like having a good textbook to ground the coursework and discussions throughout the semester. I have previously utilized 50 Essays in a section of first-year writing and my students liked the variety of essays they got to read over the course; having everything in one place for them made it easy instead of carrying around a lot of books or having to sift through a bunch of files. Oh, and having e-book availability is great too!  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Oh, it is super fun. We met for a week in June and clicked right away. Every one of the other scholars in the group brings so much to the table that is unique and fulfilling to composition and pedagogy. I remember leaving our virtual event in June feeling so refreshed and ready to teach again. I am still thinking back to that week even now and calling into the ideas and topics we talked about during that time.  It is valuable as well to see and engage with how publications, textbook development, and production works as well. Sometimes as emerging scholars in graduate studies, we do not get to see that; we just work with the texts. But being able to collaborate with the folks who make the books we use is interesting — we can ask questions about publication, pedagogy, development, and the backside of what makes a book. It’s genuinely really fascinating to understand, and it has given me a greater appreciation for textbook development.    Emily’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Emily's assignment. For the full activity, see Literacy Narrative. My assignment that works is a literacy narrative. I utilize this assignment when teaching first year writing. This is the first assignment my students and I work together on, and it is often the favorite of the whole semester. Briefly stated: A literacy narrative in this context is both a reflection and narrative — it’s a free-flowing piece of writing that allows students to dive into their identity as writers, but also lets them settle into a practice of writing and revision that they will use throughout their semester and beyond. They get to choose their own story under the direction of one prompt: writing about a time where writing impacted them.  This assignment works because it is a space for students to make productive mistakes and find their footing. Students have liked to ease into the writing process with a space to talk about themselves — they are experts in their own lives and experiences! — rather than a hard research topic. And there is some sort of catharsis about writing about writing. I cannot tell you how many students write about the trauma of ACT or SAT exams and how this class could serve as a reset for that unpleasant experience.  ... View more

Gina Atkins Gina Atkins (recommended by Casie Fedukovich) received her MA in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at North Carolina State University in 2021 and is now pursuing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She teaches English 101: Academic Writing and Research and serves on the First-Year Writing Program Council as the MA Representative. She is also CRLA III certified. Her research interests relate to developing antiracist pedagogy, antiracist praxis, accessibility in the writing classroom, and linguistic justice.   What do you think is the most important recent development or pedagogical approach in teaching composition? History and research have shown that the perpetuation and teaching of academic writing has racist undertones that exclude various knowledges of underrepresented groups; as a result, it is not false to say that composition, especially academic writing is problematic. However, recent discussions about the field’s turn towards disciplinarity has asked scholars to examine this material reality regarding future sites of research and teaching. An interesting inquiry is not only how to teach writing in an anti-racist manner, but if antiracist composition even exists. And while this has caused some contention in the field, I am excited that scholars are looking into the field’s turn towards disciplinarity and how antiracist practices can, and should, be a core aspect of that turn. What is the most important skill you aim to provide to your students? In my writing classroom, I want to encourage students to expand their writing skills across various contexts of their choosing (e.g., academic, professional, or personal). I hope to impart that writing is a core communication tool that goes beyond merely essays, and that they can utilize their abilities, lived experiences, and linguistic knowledges to express themselves as writers. Several students come to the classroom having negative associations with writing and composition classrooms and I hope my classroom can mediate some of those anxieties and instead help students see that everyone writes, thus everyone is a writer. I also aim to expand student’s ideas of writing to see that it’s not just something they do in one or two English classes and never think about again; writing happens in computer science, in engineering, in business settings, and amongst friends and family. Through asking students to view writing as a ubiquitous communication tool, I want to encourage students to foster a culture and community of writing for themselves and with one another. What do you think instructors don’t know about higher ed publishing but should? Several instructors, including myself, see higher ed publishing as a capitalist structure that impedes accessibility to students and provides no material benefit to junior faculty seeking tenure. However, after working with and speaking with members at Bedford/St. Martin’s and the instructors who publish with them, I see the educational benefit of publishing is exactly because of the students themselves. For GTAs and junior faculty members, these textbooks can provide a great base for course preparation and for students, these textbooks can provide valuable and easy-to-digest information that is supplementary to their coursework. And as I said earlier, if we want to encourage a culture and community of writing, we need textbooks and other forms of educational materials that foster this.  What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? That course assignments can have the dual benefit of aiding student’s personal and academic goals and that the two goals don’t have to be mutually exclusive. For example, assignments can use gamification or even visual rhetorical practices to ask students to build critical thinking skills while scaffolding rhetorical concepts and student outcomes. I also learned that assignments can be creative in a way that pedagogically benefits us as instructors while enriching student’s experiences in the classroom as well. When I first started teaching, I dreaded having to think of my own assignments or making them specific to my classroom, but after learning from the other Bedford New Scholars, I see the excitement that can come from riffing on a previously seen assignment or brainstorming a new variation of one. While it may be a lot of work on the front-end, seeing how the creative assignments of others helped them grow as instructors really inspired me to look at course-planning in a new light.   Gina’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Gina's assignment. For the full activity, see Teaching Stages of Revision and Peer Editing (The Ariana Grande Assignment). In my classroom, I have my student’s peer review one of my graduate papers to give them an introductory idea to how peer review will occur in our class. I originally chose to use one of my papers because as a GTA, I didn’t have my own repertoire of student examples, but I also recognized that providing vulnerability with my students made them feel more at ease about sharing their own writing later in the semester. It also helped that the paper was a definite first draft where students had the ability to see the hierarchy of feedback that was necessary for specific aspects of the paper. For example, I asked students to prioritize feedback related to the genre, development of the argument, and the organization of the paper since it was a first draft rather than simply focusing on spelling and grammar that would be more helpful for a later draft. Another unexpected bonus is that letting student’s peer-review my paper and point out obvious issues that come with a first draft helps them see the benefit of not procrastinating or turning in a first draft themselves. As a result, they can note that writing is a reflexive practice. ... View more

Courtney A. Mauck Courtney A. Mauck(recommended by Rachael Ryerson) is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio University. She expects to finish her degree in Spring 2022. At OU, she serves as Assistant Director of Composition and primarily teaches first-year writing courses. She also teaches junior composition courses themed around feminist game studies and has co-taught two graduate courses, “Teaching College English” and “Learning Transfer.” Additionally, she has received her certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies. Her research interests include digital rhetorics, multimodal composition, social media, game studies, learning transfer, and first-year writing pedagogy.   How do you ensure your course is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive? For me, I think the most important aspect of this is always being flexible and willing to learn or try new things. Of course, there are some common “best practices” when it comes to making the classroom a more inclusive and equitable space; however, there are certain issues or ideas that may be unique to a specific class or a specific group of students. For this reason, I always start my courses with a Welcome Survey where I try to gauge things like students’ prior knowledge coming into the course and students’ feelings about writing. Within this, I always ask: “Is there anything I can do, as an instructor, to make this class more welcoming or accessible for you?” In doing this, I am often able to learn both students’ accommodation needs and students’ expectations, fears, and/or concerns about the class and then can quickly adjust based on those responses. It is important to me that my students see the classroom as a collaborative space where they also have a voice.     What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I think the most important skill I aim to provide my students is confidence in their abilities as writers. Often students enter the writing classroom assuming that writing is an innate skill that they simply do not possess. So many students have told me “I’m just not a good writer” or that “Writing is just not my thing” and many other variations of the same. For many students, writing ability is viewed much like an achievement in a video game—once you unlock it, that’s it, you’re a writer now! Because of this, one of my main goals in the classroom is to help students see writing as a rhetorical tool that they can practice using for different purposes and within different contexts. They all already do writing in their everyday lives, they just need some help making those connections to rhetorical concepts and building their confidence in themselves.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Being a part of the Bedford New Scholars program is an amazing opportunity. I think one of the most important experiences for junior scholars is having opportunities to connect with other junior scholars. The Bedford New Scholars Virtual Summit this year provided so many opportunities for me to connect with and learn from other scholars. Most importantly, the summit (and the program in general) brings together scholars with diverse research interests and academic backgrounds. The “Assignments that Work” presentations gave me the experience to learn directly from other teachers about new and exciting things I could be doing in my classroom. This is incredibly important to me. On top of that, the Bedford New Scholars program has allowed me to work on projects that align with my research interests, such as giving feedback on a textbook manuscript in order to ensure it aligns with the goals and values set forth by scholarship in antiracist pedagogy.  How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? During the virtual summit this summer, not only did I have the opportunity to learn from the other scholars, but I also had the opportunity to learn from the great team at Bedford/St. Martin’s. The summit itself was a great professional development opportunity. Learning about higher ed publishing and getting to see some of the textbooks and other resources that Bedford/St. Martin’s is producing (such as Achieve ) has really impacted the way I think about the relationship between classroom practice and classroom resources. As a graduate student, things like textbooks and LMS are often decided for you. However, the Bedford New Scholars program has given me practical experience with designing activities and courses that fully integrate the textbook and additional materials that Bedford/St. Martin’s provides.      Courtney’s Assignment That Works: “Bad” Design Activity During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Courtney's assignment. For the full activity, see "Bad" Design Activity.  In all my first-year writing classes, students are expected to compose multimodal projects. However, students can often be hesitant to engage in this kind of work in academic spaces, even when they have experience composing multimodally outside the classroom. For this reason, I have students first practice multimodal composing by purposefully designing a poster or infographic that is “bad” based on the design principles they’ve been learning in Writer/Designer (such as emphasis, alignment, or contrast). In groups or together as a class, we work together to discuss what makes the poster design “bad” and how we could make it more effective.  In practicing “bad” design, students are able to learn a bit about good design in a space where failure is a safe option. Because the activity is low-stakes, students are given an opportunity to practice using multimodal tools and producing multimodal texts without any expectations or fear over their grade. Usually the texts that students produce are quite comical and easily get the whole class engaged in a discussion about multimodal rhetoric and design. My hope is that this activity gives them the confidence boost they need to move forward with more complex multimodal projects.  ... View more

Leah Washburn Leah Washburn (recommended by Wallace Cleaves), Bedford New Scholar 2021, is pursuing her PhD in English Literature at The University of California, Riverside and hopes to graduate in Spring 2023. She graduated from University of Central Florida in 2018 with an MFA in Creative Writing, where she taught Intro to Creative Writing. She also worked two years on The Florida Review, coordinating undergraduate interns and providing administrative support. During her undergraduate years, she worked as a writing fellow at Rhodes College for three years. Her research interests include digital media, ludology, narratology, contemporary speculative fiction, and postmodern fiction.   What do you think is the most important recent development or pedagogical approach in teaching composition?  I don’t know if I would consider it recent, but the increase in contract grading and understanding that effort is not the same as product. Product- versus process-oriented learning has been the shape of the field for the past decades, and I think the contract grading system is just a more equitable continuation of that. I first heard about in Asao Inoue’s Anti-Racist Writing Pedagogies , where he outlines the contract he gives to his student and spends a whole class period negotiating it with them. Giving students agency and power is important in a class where they have to repeatedly share writing, an act that makes them extremely vulnerable. I appreciate that more and more the idea of effort and “productive failure” is prioritized in the composition classroom. I’m a former athlete, so it always seemed strange to me that classrooms would not give students safe spaces to fail and then learn from the failure. I’m glad that more and more pedagogy is prioritizing the student learning process and giving them safe spaces to learn from their mistakes.  What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students?  Critical reading and thinking are a vital part of the argumentative rhetorical process, and in brief semesters—or even briefer quarters—I think this gets overlooked for the sake of writing mechanics. A lot of times students hear critical reading and critical thinking and their mind goes to deep analysis of “literature” that relies on an encyclopedic understanding of fancy literary terms. That’s not what critical thinking is. They often do critical thinking in their everyday life. Questioning whether it’s better to buy off-brand cereal or the Kellogg’s bee; debating what they should wear to party; deciding how to manage their inventory in a video game. Our students are doing acts of critical thinking all the time. In my classroom, I just try to make them aware of this and then apply that to a text. Why did the author make this decision? Ok, this sentence made you feel sad—why? Encouraging the inquiring spirit is vital to building their critical reading skills.  What’s it like to co-design or work with the editorial team at Bedford/St. Martin’s?  Working with this editorial team was very wonderful because, clearly, they all listened. I know that seems like such a small thing, but (especially in academia), there tends to be times where you hit a wall where people just stop taking feedback. While maybe we Scholars didn’t know the logistical side of making ideas come to life, the editorial staff was happy to answer questions and eager to learn from us. It always felt like a conversation open to discussing how to make something the best version it could be. What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? No one is perfect, and the funkier the assignment, the better. Let me clarify: the more creative and personable an assignment is to your class, the better it goes. Student’s write tons of essays, but having them do something that is unique and new allows them to stretch their writing brain. And there are a lot of ways to twist an “essay” into something that fits the course requirements but also invites the students to think differently.  Leah's Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Leah's assignment. For the full activity, see Dungeons and Dragons in the Composition Classroom. This assignment is designed to introduce students to the “Analyzing Stories” essay from the St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , but it can be tailored for any assignment or classroom. The goal is to help students critically think and read without revealing to them that they are actually doing it. For my class, I created four different puzzles designed to help them move toward the essay. Students got into groups of 4-5 and then each person chose a “character” to play from 6 options. Each group could only have one of each character. My challenges were geared towards citation, essay structure, analyzing stories, and general argumentation, but you can substitute whatever areas you think your students need to work on. The materials provided are the ones I came up with but change them as you will. The goal is to give students opportunities to make choices and think critically about the challenge in a “game-like” way that sneakily introduces them to information they need to know.  ... View more

Rhiannon Scharnhorst Rhiannon Scharnhorst (recommended by Samantha NeCamp), Bedford New Scholar 2021, is pursuing her hybrid PhD in Writing Studies and Victorian Literature at the University of Cincinnati, where she expects to defend her dissertation Willful Objects and Feminist Writing Practices in May 2022. She teaches a variety of courses in writing, from first-year composition to advanced topics classes, including Writing with Style and Food in Literature. She has also served as the Assistant to the Composition Program, writing and designing the department's handbook, overseeing graduate student education, and hosting the annual graduate conference. Her research draws on feminist rhetorics to make sense of objects in writing studies, including typewriters, cookbooks, and other tools. She also writes about materiality, embodiment and writing practices of nineteenth-century women writers in Great Britain.   What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? How to communicate effectively in writing, which starts with helping students unlearn limiting beliefs about writing. So often students enter the classroom believing they are “bad” writers because a previous teacher told them they were. They see writing as a performative act, done only as a test of grammatical intelligence or syntactical prowess in the classroom. Yet they are some of the most prolific writers I’ve ever seen.  In my classroom we spend a lot of time unpacking what makes writing “good” or “bad” (hint: it’s always contextual). A well-crafted text message can be just as “good” as a brilliant essay. Both require an awareness of the rhetorical situation, the affordances of the genre, and a lot of practice. I want students to leave with an understanding of writing as a recursive process, a tool for thinking and not just a record of intelligence logged onto a page. I want them to have the confidence to try things in writing that might not work out. Writing is a skill we cultivate through practice, not something that’s given to us by a muse or higher being.  How does the next generation of students inspire you?  They refuse to live by the status quo. If they see injustice, they work to correct it. They are willing to call out bad behavior, refuse to back down when something’s not right, and are actively trying to address some of the most pressing issues in our world today. I am constantly in awe of their resilience: what they’ve lived through with the pandemic, climate crisis, racial injustices, mass shootings just in the last year is astounding. Yet they continue to fight, continue to seek out opportunities for growth and change, and are all around some of the most resilient individuals I’ve had the chance to learn from. Their vulnerability and openness about their personal struggles with issues like mental health—struggles that I myself also experienced—are also inspirational. What with all those platitudes, I can’t forget to add they are also hilarious: rhetorically adept, unabashed, irreverent. I spend a lot of time laughing with them.   What do you think instructors don't know about higher ed publishing but should? Publishers like Bedford/St. Martin’s use their power to create texts that are inclusive and equitable by recruiting and publishing diverse voices and perspectives and by asking for feedback throughout that process through programs like BNS. I mistakenly assumed higher ed publishing was more of a top-down process than a real reciprocal relationship between publishers and teachers. Instead, the editors are just as invested in creating tools and texts that challenge the status quo. The texts are continually revised, updated, diversified. They seek out students and teachers who will give them honest feedback. They commit to doing better, being better, and invest their time in figuring out how to provide material that responds to in-the-moment concerns. Most importantly, they listen!  What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? The struggle is real, y’all! Hearing from other dedicated teacher-scholars across the country about their teaching practices gives me hope for the future of higher education. The diversity of approaches (labor contracts, trauma-informed teaching), the variety of modalities (visual essays, memes), the shared anxieties and concerns (extremism in the classroom, pandemic issues): all helped me appreciate and reassess my own standpoint as an imperfect teacher. In particular, we revised our diversity philosophies together after a week spent thinking and discussing how to bring antiracist practices into the composition classroom.  Out of those conversations was born my commitment to “failure”: that doing important work like creating equitable and culturally relevant curriculum requires a commitment to listening, changing, apologizing, improving. There is no perfection in teaching, only the continual recommitment to this necessary work. Thank you to everyone who read, shared, or listened as we co-created this space for change.      Rhiannon’s Assignment that Works: Autoethnography  During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Rhiannon’s assignment. For the full activity, see Autoethnography. Students don’t know how they write; by that I mean they don’t know what their writing process looks like on the page as it happens. In most cases, the students I teach in introductory composition courses have never considered writing as a labored, material process. This assignment asks them to record their screens while writing, as well as the environment they work in, the people they talk to, the objects they use, and ultimately their thought process as they write. They use this primary data to write an autoethnography, detailing what they witness in the screencasts as well as any conclusions they draw after coding their compiled data.  Usually, the material realities of their lives show up on the page, from what they use to write (computers, cell phones, pen and paper) to the spaces in which they write (kitchen tables, coffee shops, beds, buses). The writing process expands, spreading from time spent typing on a screen to conversations about the assignment with roommates. They begin to reassess their own practices, interrogating what works and what doesn’t. My hope is that the assignment sets them up for future writing success by bringing their awareness to the labor behind it. ... View more

Hyoung Min Lee Hyoung Min Lee (recommended by Dr. Claire Carly-Miles), Bedford New Scholar 2021, is pursuing her PhD in English at Texas A&M University. She teaches Writing About Literature as a graduate teaching assistant. She has also taught Rhetoric and Composition and worked as a grader for Technical and Business Writing. She is interested in teaching 20th- and 21st-century American literature with a focus on diversity and social justice. Her research interests include theories of race and biopolitics and 20th- and 21st-century American literature, especially African American literature.   How do you engage students in your course, whether face-to-face, online, or hybrid? A method that has worked especially well for me since the global pandemic changed the way classes are conducted is to assign students discussion posts as well as response posts to their peers’ discussion posts prior to each class meeting. I make sure to directly reflect students’ discussion posts when I design my class materials. What I find to be an effective approach I take here is to cite students’ discussion posts in my course materials and give recognition to students by putting students’ names before introducing their questions. I would often highlight especially helpful parts within a discussion post and ask the student whose post I cited to elaborate further on their discussion question or begin to respond to their own question for the class. I found this to be an effective way to increase participation without the recourse to random cold calling, which can make some students feel uncomfortable, especially in online settings. I can confidently say that this method worked well for including even the less vocal students to become important contributors to class discussion.  What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I try to equip students with revision skills and the habit to keep revisiting one’s own writing. I try to provide students ways to approach writing as a (collaborative) process rather than a product to be quickly written and be done with. As a teacher who has acquired English language skills as a second language, I understand what it means to approach writing as a process; I continue to strive to be a better writer of English prose by revising, editing, and asking for my peers’ suggestions and advice because I cannot take my written communication skills (in English) for granted. To show that writing is a process for anyone who tries to write well, I ask students to write rough drafts for major assignments and provide them with a chance to revise their paper after receiving comments from me, their peers, and themselves. I aim to provide students an understanding that patience, resilience, and collaboration are significant for writing well. My goal is to see students’ increased awareness of their writing and decreased fear of writing by embracing writing as a process.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Having majored in literature, it has been a new and challenging experience for me to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program with many scholars whose expertise firmly lies in rhetoric and composition. Although there were moments I was worried about my lack of expertise in the field of rhetoric and composition, my experiences of having taught first year composition and writing about literature courses have allowed me to join in the rich conversations that took place in the program. Among many things, this program surely deepened my interest in anti-racist pedagogy. For instance, Dr. Uzzie Cannon ’s lecture offered during the Summit week was an amazing opportunity to learn more about DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in teaching composition as well as other Scholars’ insights into social justice pedagogy. These opportunities to learn also greatly benefited me when I received an offer to review a textbook from a DEI perspective as a Bedford New Scholar. I learned so much by being a part of this wonderful program. It has been an honor for me to be a part of it. What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? I have learned so many valuable lessons from other Bedford New Scholars, especially during the Summit week. Having the chance to learn about other Scholars’ “assignments that work” was an amazing opportunity to grow as a scholar and teacher. I was especially impressed by the ways these creative assignments incorporated multimodality by, for instance, making students approach writing not just through traditional writing on a paper but through creating video and audio responses. As someone who is not tech-savvy but wants to move out of her comfort zone to become a better teacher, many helpful suggestions other Bedford Scholars provided for me on incorporating multimodality more in my classroom gave me confidence that I could improve my own assignment and make it more interesting. I also learned so many helpful assignment building ideas with a focus on DEI and ways to make writing fun through incorporating gaming and photography in a composition classroom.   Hyoung Min Lee’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Hyoung Min’s assignment. For the full activity, see Creative Literature Response. I have designed a small writing assignment, a creative literary response assignment, to increase diversity and help students engage with literary texts more freely (without suppressing too much of their creative writing voice) before they submit more formally structured essays in my course on writing about literature. While assigning a creative response is a common method that many teachers have used to increase student engagement with a text, I have designed this assignment to function as a bridge between students’ creative interpretation of a text and formal analysis of the text. In preparing four prompts for the assignment, I tried to encourage diverse ways of student engagement with the texts. For instance, students who feel comfortable writing a response structured closely to a conventional literary analysis essay can choose to respond to a prompt that asks them to write from the reader’s perspective about interesting literary aspects while other students who want to approach the assignment more as a creative writing task can choose the prompts that ask them to imagine themselves as a character and write from the character’s perspective. From my teaching experience, after asking students to read each other’s posts and comment on them via Google Docs, students expressed how the practice of reading their peers’ creative literature responses offered them “new perspectives” on the texts we read in class.  ... View more

Eric D. Brown Eric D. Brown (recommended by Kyle Jensen), Bedford New Scholar 2021, is pursuing his PhD in Arizona State University’s Writing, Rhetorics and Literacies PhD program, where he studies writing technologies, writing pedagogy, and writing program administration. He has taught First-Year Composition, Persuasive Writing and Public Issues, Writing for the Professions, and Business Writing. Eric is also Assistant Director (AD) of Writing Programs, where he aids the director in growing the scope of Writing Programs and creating professional development for faculty. As Assistant Director, he also co-runs the National Day on Writing, ASU’s annual Composition Conference, and is an editor of Writing Programs’ bi-annual newsletter, Writing Notes .   How do you engage students in your course? I’ve found that one of the best ways to engage students in my courses is to show them that the writing process doesn’t have to be a lonely endeavor and that writing is hard, even for those of us who are “good” at it. I enact this approach by positioning myself as an expert on writing (what it is and how it works) but one that fails and stumbles through the writing process, just like they do. And I’ve found that students are particularly engaged with this idea when I write “live” for/with them. For example, I’ll write an email or an assignment sheet with them, talking through my thinking/rhetorical strategies and asking for advice and ideas from them. Regardless of what writing task I take on for/with them, they see me struggle to get started, stumble with wording, sidestep through typos/spelling mistakes, and go back and rework the text. In sum, they can see that “the struggle is real” when it comes to writing, showing students (who are often fearful of college writing) that even experts struggle with writing, that writing is collaborative, and that revision is essential to any writing situation.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? In sum, it’s pretty awesome. As a Bedford New Scholar, I get opportunities to work with Bedford/St. Martin’s on a variety of projects: feedback on textbooks, input about developing technologies, and opinions on readings for students, to name a few. It’s really great to not only get some insight into the higher ed publishing world but to contribute to that world. Meeting and interacting with the other Bedford New Scholars is also a notable highlight of the program. The virtual summit this summer gave me the chance to not only meet and interact with other new scholars, but I was able to work on projects with them and talk about what is most important to me with them: teaching. Sharing my work and sitting in on presentations for the Assignments that Work part of the summer summit was generative, as well as fun. I got a ton of great ideas for assignments to try out, and I was able to see my fellow New Scholars’ unique approaches to teaching and writing. What do you think instructors don’t know about higher ed publishing but should? I don’t think instructors know how willing and excited publishers like Bedford/St. Martin’s are to work with them, and I think this “not knowing” can lead to a view of higher ed publishing as “The Man.” While this was certainly a perception I  held in my early days as a graduate student (and before that as an adjunct), I have become persuaded otherwise. I have found higher ed publishers like Bedford/St.Martin’s to be highly invested in instructor input, experience, and in the workings/makeup of the writing programs instructors teach in. Before working with Bedford/St. Martin’s, I would not have imagined that my ideas, feedback, and support would be important to higher ed publishers, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. Furthermore, I have found that higher ed publishers like Bedford/St. Martin’s are more often than not pedagogically focused--they want to know what research is influencing our teaching, what we are doing in the classroom, why we are doing things the way we are, and how they can support that work.  What projects or course materials from Bedford/St. Martin's most pique your interest, and why? My writing program just shifted to using a common textbook (which we created with Bedford/St. Martin’s) , and Achieve is offered with the textbook. I’m excited to learn more about Achieve and use it with my students. I was able to use some of Achieve’s peer review functions this summer during the virtual summit, and I really liked many of its affordances. My institution’s current LMS has a very clunky peer review system, and I’m particularly looking forward to switching to one that allows me to shape and tweak peer review goals and that has an interface I think will be intuitive for my students. I also know that Achieve has some annotation functions, and I’m excited to use them with my students, as well.   Eric's Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Eric’s assignment. For the full activity, see Remediation. One of the goals of my 101 courses is to expand for students what writing is and how it works. My “Remediation” assignment works toward this goal, as it asks students to reshape their writing for new audiences and to funnel their ideas through a new medium or genre. In sum, students are asked to take an already completed written project (usually the first major project, which asks them to explore a literacy) and funnel its ideas through another medium/“translate” it into another genre. For example, students might take their project and (re)shape it into a podcast or blog post. Remediation gets students thinking about the ever-shifting relationship among writer, audience, and text (i.e., the rhetorical situation), but also asks them to focus on how the mediums/genres in which we communicate our ideas to others consist of different kinds of media that very much are “writing.” Students are excited to expand their notions of what “counts” as writing, and one of the assignment’s selling points is in how it asks students to not only consider how certain mediums/genres appeal to certain audiences, and not others, but to consider how their writing does so as well. ... View more