Boy using computer in classroom. "classroom-laptops-computers-boy" by R. Nial Bradshaw is licensed under CC BY 2.0. When Sonia Maasik and I published the first edition of Signs of Life in the USA in 1994, the Internet was only just emerging as a new medium in American life—one that had not yet significantly affected the way we consume products and entertainment, nor the ways in which goods and services are advertised. As we now know, the exponential growth of the Internet since then has changed all that. Entertainment is increasingly streamed across myriad digital platforms, and marketing has become a highly targeted matter: calculated algorithms match certain advertising to certain consumers, whose profiles have been constructed using data-mined information that has been gathered through what amount to digital spy networks. Gone are the days when advertising professionals (can you spell Mad Men?) cast about for a way of determining what, exactly, their target markets wanted through organic means; and equally gone are the days when there were but three national television networks broadcasting the same content to a relatively undifferentiated mass audience.  As I say, all this is commonly understood, but I think that this paradigm shift has reached a point where those of us who analyze popular culture through the lens of cultural semiotics in order to take the pulse, as it were, of American society, must revise our approach. This blog will be a sketch in that direction.  I was prompted to make this my inaugural topic for the 2022-23 Bits blogging year while visiting some friends over the Labor Day weekend who were watching a baseball game on TV when I dropped by. The game itself was rather dull, which wasn’t much of a surprise, but what really struck me was how dull and repetitious the advertising was. There seemed to be only two or three sponsors (insurance companies of one kind or another) who kept repeating the same uninspired advertisements. “What happened to all the car commercials and fast-food spots?” I wondered, as the same few ads rotated through each commercial break. “Where are the razor blades and after shave lotions?”  Being the incorrigible cultural semiotician that I am, I shared my thoughts with my friends, who weren’t much interested in the game either. They also happen to be very well versed in all things Internet (well, of course! they are millennials), and in the course of our conversation I learned that today’s television sets are essentially big-screen computers that are completely integrated with the Internet—which means that watching TV is no different than surfing the Web insofar as a viewer’s every move is being monitored and mined for data. And at that moment a light flashed on in my head: no wonder the advertising for the game was so half-hearted and so bereft of sponsors! Why bother with the expense of traditional, scatter-shot advertising spots when all you need to do is buy viewer data from the data marketers and then shoot targeted advertising at them on their smart phones?  The implications of all this are profound, because it means that mass culture has now been so sliced and diced into ever more granular consumer markets that attempting to determine the tenor of American life and consciousness simply by interpreting mass media content is doomed to failure. What we must do now is interpret what we don’t see on our TVs, as well as what we do. We must seek out the many sources of information and content that do not get covered in such mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Atlantic, Slate, Vogue, and Vox, for example. We must research and analyze what those who still use outmoded technology to discover what they are seeing in the way of television content advertising, and what this tells us. It is apparent that there are now essentially two Americas when it comes to entertainment and marketing: the younger tech-savvy audiences who get their news, entertainment, and advertising exclusively via digital media, and the traditionalists who go under the radar when it comes to cultural analysis. These two groups represent a split that parallels that of the great divide in American political culture, as the latter group has, accordingly, blind-sided the high-tech pundits of political prognostication in election after election in the new millennium. ... View more

This semester, I am taking an unpaid leave of absence from my adjunct teaching position. In drafting this first post of the Fall 2022 semester, I found my thoughts returning to the processes of revision. Taking leave, it seems to me, is revising and revisiting the narratives of working as an adjunct instructor, even as taking leave is also a privileged opportunity that I mean to use productively. After two and a half years of remote pandemic teaching, I can no longer see the possibility of returning to a normalcy that even in 2019 was non-existent. Instead, in taking leave, I am choosing revision. My intention is to grapple with multiple and workable pedagogical approaches to the crazy quilt of adjunct teaching. Quilt top, Crazy Pattern, ca. 1885 (Metropolitan Museum of New York from the Met Open Access Initiative)    Taking Leave In an article from Inside Higher Education, Rebecca Vidra helpfully offers advice on reasons to avoid quiet quitting, with links to articles on burnout and the Great Resignation. Most significantly, as Vidra suggests, “quiet quitting sounds awful for students” who inevitably bear witness to their teacher’s “simply slogging through each day with little to no enthusiasm.” Nevertheless, because I am not usually quiet, quiet quitting was not an option for me.  Instead, I decided to take an unpaid leave of absence from adjunct teaching. For me, at least at the outset, taking leave feels like a process of revision. Vidra also suggests reevaluating key values. In order to do this, I considered the sources, course goals, and core themes of my remote syllabi. I imagined that the values could be assumed from those themes. At the same time, now that my leave of absence was confirmed, it seemed well past time to make my values explicit. In other words, as I have suggested in previous posts, what draws me to James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Audre Lorde, and Black Panther, and how are my values reflected in those sources by Black twentieth-century writers and thinkers, and a twenty-first century Black film?  At the end of a long journal entry, I made a list of criteria–or key value–that my first-year writing sources throughout the pandemic seemed to share: The work that goes into grappling with conflicts The hope that joy will emerge for the greater good The knowledge that conflicts aren’t solved for all of time, but that continuous work is needed I wondered what these values had to do with teaching and learning to write. What skill sets was I trying to address?   Revision Then, I put my journal away for several days and returned to quilting, revising and updating the crazy quilts I made from recycled fabric and patches in Arizona throughout the 2010s. Quilting helps me stay focused on a specific nonverbal task while my mind wanders through the rough terrain of thoughts that are often difficult to express in writing. The students’ multimedia work seemed to evolve from similar processes of wrestling with spoken and unspoken language, and reflecting on their work seemed crucial as well. Needle in hand, I reconsidered the implicit and explicit work of teaching and learning and arrived at revision: the processes of reperceiving, rearranging, replacing, resourcing, refining, rethinking, reevaluating.   Revision seems the most significant labor of writing, and also, at least for me, the hardest work. Revision: Involves the processes of grappling with conflict.  Creates potential  joy for the greater good and Needs continuous work  Baldwin, King, Lorde, and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler explore the same themes in multiple works. All four of these creators focus on breaking silence, bearing witness, and grappling with the white supremacist roots of colonialism and ongoing racist inequities in everyday life.     Adjuncting Is it possible, after teaching and studying these sources, to learn from the difficult lessons of remote learning–and to somehow use that learning to create a better classroom, if not a better world? Is it possible to do this worthwhile work in the midst of the precarity and uncertainty in the life of an adjunct instructor?  Because I do not yet have an answer to these questions, I am taking leave this semester. I am looking forward to the crazy quilt of revision.  Quilting Supplies (Photo by Susan Bernstein, March 2020) ... View more

The following interview with professors Jami Blaauw-Hara of North Central Michigan College and Mark Blauuw-Hara of the University of Toronto-Mississauga was conducted via email in August of 2022. This is the first of four parts.     David Starkey: I always enjoy having a chance to discuss pedagogy and classroom practice with smart, engaged and innovative colleagues, so it’s a real pleasure for me to talk with the two of you.    Jami Blaauw-Hara:  We represent some diverse perspectives in terms of our institutions as well. It will be fun to hear what Mark has to say as well since we don’t dig too far into the weeds over dinner or coffee in the morning.   Mark Blaauw-Hara:  Thanks, David! We’re happy to talk with you as well.    DS: Jami, you’re the Writing Program Coordinator and a Professor of English and Communication at North Central Michigan College, a rural community college. Can you talk a bit about the particular joys and challenges of working in your institution?   JBH: NCMC enrolls a little more than 1,500 students per semester in a bucolic tourist area that swells with visitors in the warm summer months. Many of my students are really rooted to this location and see themselves as rural people. I have read and enjoyed countless essays about deer hunting, for example.  It’s fun for me to show how rhetoric, discourse, and genre awareness will help improve the lives of my students who may never leave the area. I love it when a student can understand how reading and analyzing a genre is similar to reading and analyzing a river for where the fish are likely to be.    DS: And the challenges?   JBH: I find that I am constantly making a case for what writing programs should NOT be: grammar-focused, lore-driven, and relying solely on Aristotle’s taxonomy. Last year I tried to modify our placement system for writing to directed self placement, but I was ultimately met with barriers of understanding. Our student services administration couldn’t see how it was a good model for all students and simply wanted to use it for students with outdated test scores. We have an English department of four faculty, two of which teach in other departments as well. When we’re all on the same page, this makes consistency among sections and decision making easy. When even one person leaves and a hire is not made or the hire is a blended position (teaching in other disciplines), our department can shift away from writing pedagogy based on scholarship in the field.   DS: And, Mark, while you also taught for many years at North Central Michigan, you’re now an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto Mississauga. What led to the move?   MBH: Mostly because it seemed like an adventure to move to Canada and see what life is like across the border. I was also really attracted to the program at UTM. Canada approaches writing instruction very differently than the US, and the writing program at UTM is brand new, so I was excited to be a part of a program that I could help build.   DS: Can you talk a bit about the major differences in writing instruction between the US and our neighbor to the north? MBH: In the U.S., I’d say that things have kind of stabilized into several tracks: first-year writing, WAC/WID, professional writing, etc. The U.S. has well-developed programs that address each of those. In Canada, things are much more fluid. They don’t have the kind of widespread graduate degrees in writing studies that the U.S. does, and they don’t have a big tradition of first-year writing. That’s not to say that universities don’t care about writing–they do. It’s just a different vibe. Much writing instruction takes place in writing centres, which are very, very active. Some schools have what I’d characterize as WAC/WID programs, but a big first-year writing program that’s mandatory for all students at a university is rare. Similarly, follow-up courses in rhetoric, professional writing, etc. are much rarer than in the U.S. My understanding is that their versions of community and technical colleges do more with formal writing instruction than the universities tend to. To me–and also to my colleagues at my new school–the situation in Canada represents a major opportunity to build model writing programs from the ground up and hopefully avoid a lot of the growing pains that the U.S. had as it tried a lot of different options before it settled on the ones that worked. I kind of feel like it’s the land of possibility as far as writing programs are concerned.   ... View more

For the past several years I have experimented with small tweaks to my grading policies in first year composition.  Despite these adjustments, I continued to be frustrated with grading each semester:  as long as traditional “quality-based” assessment is in place, I feel obligated to tailor feedback to a grading rubric, with an eye always to “getting the paper to pass,” even when that traditional assessment accounted for 50% or less of the final course grade.   The link between feedback and a grade, regardless of how I framed my comments, certainly shaped the way my students interpreted my feedback.  They sought a way of quantifying: “Dr. Moore, if I ‘fix’ this [i.e., do something in response to this comment], how much will my grade go up?”   So this semester, instead of the small tweaks, I have overhauled the system—and the language I am using to talk about grades.  Blending a version of labor-based assessment—which I call “The Process”—and Nilson’s specifications grading, my goal is simple: separate my feedback on writing from course grades, allowing students to make strategic decisions in response to feedback without feeling pressured to “get it right” and avoid a failing grade.   Here’s how it works: This semester, 60% of the student’s grade comes from their good-faith participation in our weekly class activities, as the following excerpt from my syllabus shows: The Process Writers need to engage in the process of improvement; the process grade in this course allows you to earn points through participation.   Full credit for each unit is 25 points, although up to 29 points are offered for each unit.   The process points you earn over the course of the semester (maximum 150) account for 60% of your course grade. Activity Points possible Watch videos prior to class (with verifications) 4 Complete readings (with verifications) prior to class 4 Attend 2 class sessions and complete assigned writing (word count) 8 Attend 2 class sessions and complete assigned writing 8 Attend ENGL 0999 (corequisite) and complete assigned writing 1 Visit with Writing Fellows (available only certain weeks) 1 Visit Writing Center 1 Complete a review exercise (or other options) 1 Visit instructor’s office for 15 minute conference 1   The process portion of the grade offers students a measure of choice while fostering engagement and the development of the habits we traditionally associate with success.  Verifications are either simple open-book content quizzes (for readings) or a short response for the 8 to 12 minutes videos.   The final 40% of the grade comes from a student-curated portfolio—for which I am using specifications grading, as indicated here.  This portion of the grade—which will not be determined until the end of the semester—requires students to be thoughtful evaluators of their own work.  The specifications still ask students to be deliberate and thorough in the writing process, revising and editing in response to feedback.  But the specifications remove the uncertainty associated with a traditional grading rubric so that students can make writing decisions for the portfolio with more confidence.   Will this system work?  After only two weeks into the course, I cannot say for sure. I know, however, that I will tackle my feedback on next week’s literacy drafts differently—because letter grades are off the table for the moment.   And that’s a good thing.    I will keep you posted as the semester goes on.   What changes have you made in your grading strategies this term?  I would love to hear from you.   ... 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

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Pamela Childers, a lifelong secondary, undergraduate and graduate school educator, writer, editor, and consultant. She enjoys collaborating with colleagues and students.   My First Teacher Letitia, my Welsh Grammie, took me at three to the circus in Philadelphia, while Mother worked at a switchboard and Dad was still overseas after the war. She read me poetry and prose long after I had started teaching English and recited Shakespeare for the Princeton Women’s Club in her late seventies, an age I am close to reaching. When I last visited her in the dementia ward of the nursing home, she looked up at me from her wrinkled pillow, smiled and said, “I raised you, didn’t I?” I nodded, and we both shared an unforgotten memory.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... 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

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Dr. Meridith Leo. Leo teaches courses in Composition and Rhetoric as well as Creative Non-Fiction at Suffolk County Community College’s Ammerman Campus. Dr. Leo earned her Ph.D. at St. John’s University where she focused on narratives of difference and belonging along with culturally responsive literacy narratives. Her research at St. John’s University led to work in Co-Requisite (ALP) coursework which is detailed in her dissertation “Integrating Emerging Writers into the Post-Remedial College: A Consideration of Accelerated Learning Programs.”   No Sleep, Only Teach Ding. It's 3 am. I should be sleeping but I'm not. That's the 3rd email from Katia. Ding. There goes another email. It's Jeremiah this time. Do I get up? The emails will just keep coming; they're awake. I guess it's time to start the day. Computer on. Login complete. Virtual meeting links sent. Black tiles slowly fade to Katia and Jeremiah. "Good morning. What's going on?" My voice is cracking as it wakes. Simultaneously I hear: "We need help with our essays!" Through a yawn, I manage to say, "Okay let's see what we can work through. Don't worry. We'll figure it out."     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Carmen Misé, Assistant Professor of English and Communications at Miami Dade College - North Campus. Misé is an insatiable reader and greatly enjoys film. Her favorite genre is horror (mystery, suspense, thrillers, sci-fi). She writes non-fiction and poetry, enjoys being outdoors and spending time with family, friends, and her dog Hamlet. Misé just became a first-time mom. She believes in aliens, and yes, the Earth is round.   Hello! As I logged into Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, using the recommended browser, and triple checking my Internet connection, I instantly dreaded the sea of silence in our “classroom.” The silhouettes of “users.” No faces, no voices. I felt like that one time I shouted, “Hello!,” as I stood at the Grand Canyon's South Rim. My salutation echoed through time and space, but I did not know its end destination or if anyone heard me. That day would be different. We laughed and talked about our favorite local restaurants. I met everyone's cat. We didn't cover thesis statements, but I was OK with that.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines.  ... View more

Dr. Faye Spencer Maor is Professor of English at North Carolina A&T State University where she teaches composition, technical writing and courses in African American Literature and rhetoric. She received the PhD in Writing Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research includes  work on feminism/womanism, African American writing pedagogy and literature.   Back in the 1970’s, I attended an HBCU by default for undergraduate school. It was the only college to admit me unconditionally and offer me financial assistance. The school gave me a scholarship and, to my surprise, placed me in honors English composition courses. Teachers were tough. We had no computers or internet (primitive, I know). My four years there were wondrous. I was safe, intellectually challenged and “unapologetically Black” (as they say today). It was there I was able to learn how to write, encouraged to write and given a platform to write. During my senior year, the advisor to the campus newspaper pulled me aside and told me I should go to graduate school. He told me my mind and abilities should not be limited to the job offer I had to work for a small-town newspaper. I ended up taking his advice and going to a large PWI (Predominately White Institution) out west for a Master’s degree.  Things went well there until I took a course from a professor who also happened to be the principal professor in the area in which I wanted to concentrate. In his class I made C’s and B- ‘s on my papers (that’s an F in graduate school). “Concerned” about me, this professor asked me to come to his office one day. In that meeting he told me he was “troubled” because I “couldn’t write” and needed to “check your papers line-by-line” and it was going to be hard for me to succeed. After all I was “deficient” in my education because I attended one of “those” schools and was admitted to their program because they were doing what they could for “Affirmative Action.” Devastation! I was humiliated and heart broken. I cried as I walked across campus because basically this man had just told me that getting a Master’s degree was impossible for me. I was pitiful and was only there because the university needed Black people! I went back to my efficiency grad student housing and cried and cried. What was I going to do?!  I was letting everybody down – myself, my family, my teachers…. Many of my friends were doing well working at big newspapers and television stations, but I was about to flunk out of a Master’s program because I couldn’t write! Why didn’t I know earlier? Was my writing really that bad? Were my teachers back at my alma mater wrong about me? A week of depression, crying and venting went by and then I decided to call my mentor who told me to go to graduate school in the first place. All I can remember of the phone call were two questions. The first was “How many people look like you in that class?” The second question was “What grades have you made in other classes on your papers?” My mentor made me stop, think critically, weigh the evidence, and make a conclusion – the very thing many of us teachers say we are trying to get our students to do. Examine is exactly what I did. I examined the fact that the only person who had trouble with my writing was this one professor. I managed to make A’s on papers written in other professors’ classes…. imagine that! I was a staff writer for a local magazine too. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was not the world’s best writer back them, but I also wasn’t any worse than many of my peers in the program.  This experience got me to thinking in a more poignant way about the pervasiveness of racism in almost every aspect of my life, and that even though I had gotten into a graduate program that was respected and one that I thought meant I had a little something going-on, I would have to deal with racism in the academy and no matter what, I better not forget who I was, how I looked or where I had gone to school. This experience taught me that despite what I thought about how well I was prepared, there would always be people in the academy who saw me and my undergraduate preparation as inferior. More importantly, I began to see how important and valuable and well prepared those teachers at my HBCU had made me. In both implicit and explicit ways, they knew what I had to face, whether I realized it at the time or not, and they got me ready for it. Ultimately, that teacher did me a favor. I decided that I wanted to teach writing at HBCUs. That institution gave me an education, I was learning, that was just as good, if not better, than what I saw at PWIs. I want all students of color to get what I got at my HBCU, and they should be able to get it no matter where they choose to go to school. So, my career has been varied, but always seated in my real-life experiences. I teach writing to students who are yet like me, given a last-minute chance by a school that may not have been their first choice. I teach them to prepare them for experiences like mine once they leave our HBCU. I want to be the voice in their heads reminding them to weigh the evidence, find the fallacies and reach a new conclusion about themselves and the world in which they find themselves, and after they’ve done that, do the same for someone else. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Dr. Nancy E. Wilson, Associate Professor and Directory of Lower Division Studies at Texas State University. Epiphanies Asked to share an epiphany, Misha mentions that while watching a YouTube video of a KKK grand wizard, she recognized that they had something in common: as an African American, she also wishes to preserve her racial heritage. When the class expresses alarm, Misha clarifies that she knows about the KKK’s hatred of African Americans; however, during quarantine she resolved to stop condemning and canceling others. Doing so made her feel superior but left her ignorant. She suggested that as a class we “run toward” uncomfortable topics and try to understand why people think what they think. Every class needs a Misha.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Kimberly Fain, Ph.D., J.D. teaches literature and writing as a Visiting Professor at Texas Southern University. She has authored over 50 publications including essays, articles, reviews, chapters and three books: Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature, Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies, and African American Literature Anthology: Slavery, Liberation and Resistance.     Digital multimodal texts—such as films, podcasts, and websites—offer varying textual features that appeal to an audience’s senses. When interpreting a multimodal text, features such as images, sound, and hyperlinks assist students with their critical thinking skills. Those various textual features engage students intellectually; therefore, they are powerful teaching tools. After 20 years of teaching—as I dive deeper into my research and writing in the field of technical communication and rhetoric—I emphasize more the persuasive elements of multimodal texts. Multimodal rhetoric has the power to persuade audiences to think or behave in a certain manner. Moreover, digital media offers educators the opportunity to teach multimodal rhetoric, while maintaining our students interests in pop culture subject matter. In this post, I’ll explore Beyoncé’s Homecoming (2019) as a multimodal text, explain how she uses storytelling as a method of truth telling, and offer student review questions for my supplementary article on this film. Beyoncé’s Homecoming is a 2 hour and 17-minute documentary featured on Netflix. This documentary is an exemplary digital text that utilizes multimodal rhetoric. Textual features such as the colorful concert footage, black and white behind-the-scenes commentary, and auditory quotes from intellectual icons—such as Audre Lord and Maya Angelou—teach diverse audiences about the power of Black womanhood, Black culture, and Black knowledge. As a cultural phenom, Beyoncé uses her pop culture platform and iconic influence to teach her audiences beyond the lyrics that she features in her videos. Beyoncé is a performer that makes her Black feminist rhetorical intentions known to her audience: “As a Black woman, I used to feel like the world wanted me to stay in my little box. And Black women often feel . . . underestimated” (Homecoming 1:07:35 -1:07:43). When Beyoncé’ speaks these words of invisibility, she is speaking to any marginalized individual that can relate to her feelings of self-doubt. Since Beyoncé draws her audience into her personal life with images of her children and rap mogul husband, Jay-Z, I also stress how storytelling is a form of truth telling. In an online Peitho journal article entitled “Black Feminist Rhetoric in Beyoncé’s Homecoming,” I express how storytelling is a persuasive tool when teaching student audiences. Gwendolyn Pough’s Check It While I Wreck It and “Personal Narratives and Rhetorics of Black Womanhood in Hip-Hop” inform my discussion of the use of storytelling or truth telling to evoke change in personal and social circumstances. By applying Pough’s theories of storytelling and truth telling in Beyoncé’s Homecoming performance, this explains how Beyoncé impacts her audience even though her storytelling and truth telling is rooted in the Black woman’s experience. (Fain) Regardless of students’ race, culture, or gender, many can relate to how storytelling is a valid form of truth telling. Storytelling as a method of truth telling persuades students to bring their own personal experiences into their analysis of the text. Unless a student can relate to the text, they have difficulty assessing its value. Since Homecoming was “No. 1 in over 40 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Spain, and Turkey” (@Bey_Legion), scholars could argue that Beyoncé’s music has universal appeal regardless of her identity. Nevertheless, I chose Beyoncé because she is well-known and shares common identity traits with my students. For instance, Beyoncé is a Southern Black woman performer. I’ve found that students will engage with multiple intersection points of a performer’s identity. Students from the South can relate to Beyoncé’s Southern identity regardless of race. Students who are African American often relate to Beyoncé’s Black experiences. Meanwhile, non-black female students can relate to Beyoncé’s expressions of motherhood, sisterhood, and/or womanhood. Therefore, if you’re interested in informing your students, while they joyfully engage with pop culture that is relatable, musical documentaries like Homecoming function in that manner. When teaching this Homecoming unit, I prepare students by showing them the YouTube trailer. This fast-paced trailer creates excitement and anticipation amongst most of my students. Depending on the length of the class (45 minutes/115 minutes), I might spend one or two class sessions watching the documentary with my students. However, I provide at least 10 minutes at the end of class to discuss significant events in the documentary. If every student has access to Netflix, I will ask them to watch the remaining minutes for homework. After watching the Homecoming documentary, they read my article entitled “Black Feminist Rhetoric in Beyoncé’s Homecoming.” For classes that prefer to verbally communicate, students will take turns reading in-class. However, if they prefer to read quietly, I provide that option instead. By the next class period, students are expected to have finished reading my article. Prior to assigning the questions, I’ll ask them if they have any questions. After this verbal warm-up, students are ready to answer my assigned written questions. If they prefer to answer the questions individually, I offer that option. However, I receive more intuitive answers when students work with a partner. By working with peers to answer these multi-pronged review questions, students gain a sense of community, while they brainstorm their interpretations with each other. If I was working with a remote class, I would provide digital ways for students to engage with each other. For instance, I would ask a multi-pronged warm-up question in the Discussion Board and require students to respond to one or two of their classmates. Digital teaching platforms—such as Blackboard Collaborate Ultra—provide small group options that allow students to engage more privately. To familiarize my remote students, I would provide a recorded lecture accompanied by lecture notes. This will provide more context for watching the documentary and completing the review questions at a distance. If you choose to have students work in digital groups, they can complete this task in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, Zoom, Skype, FaceTime and more. To combat disinformation and promote the importance of textual evidence, I emphasize how determining the ethos of an author is necessary for an individual’s interpretation of a text. Please see below where I present the first four review questions. Even when my students verbally discuss their written answers in class, I provide private feedback in Blackboard. As a result of professor-student and peer communication, my students report to me that that they have a deeper understanding of various themes—such as Black womanhood, Black culture, and Black knowledge—after completing the assignment. Review Questions:  How does the author’s bio establish her ethos (e.g., credibility, expertise) to speak about African Americans, Black feminism, and communication? Why is it important for an author to have expertise when speaking, teaching, and/or writing on any subject? Explain in 4-5 sentences.  Based on the Abstract, what are 5 arguments presented in this article? Please use bullet points to list your answers.  Please see the hyperlinked key words below the Abstract. What is the purpose of these keywords? Click on 3 different keywords. List the key words you chose and why. Then, explain in 3-4 sentences what you learned.  After reading the first paragraph of the article, describe the Homecoming documentary in your own words using text evidence from the reading. Explain in 4-5 sentences.   Bibliography @Bey_Legion. “Beyoncé’s #Homecoming—The Live Album is #1 in 40 countries.” Twitter, 17 April 19, 10:36 a.m., https://twitter.com/Bey_Legion/status/1118538707747913729. Fain, Kimberly. “Black Feminist Rhetoric in Beyoncé’s Homecoming.” On Race, Feminism, and Rhetoric, special issue of Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric in Composition, vol. 23, issue 4, Summer 2021. https://cfshrc.org/article/black-feminist-rhetoric-in-beyonces-homecoming/#pou3. Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé. Directed by Beyoncé and Ed Burke, performance by Beyoncé, 2019. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/81013626. Accessed 28 December 2020.    ... View more

    As another school term ends, I think back on what we hope our students have learned about argumentation. Some of that knowledge has to do with analyzing the arguments made by others. I would hope that students leave an argumentation class a little less gullible than when they entered and, yes, a little less gullible than many of the people they will cross paths with in their daily lives. They need to be able to see the flaws in others’ arguments, even when they are tempted to accept those arguments. They need a vocabulary for explaining what is so wrong with so much of what passes for truth these days. As they see new controversies arise in the social and political worlds that they inhabit, they need to be able to read the most recent headlines and the most recent social media posts with a critical eye. They must understand the need for seeking common ground as a starting place for reconciling seemingly irreconcilable differences. Hopefully, they leave us knowing a little more about what sources of information to trust, including blocking out those voices that tell them that no media outlet is to be trusted. Some of that knowledge has to do with backing up their own arguments. As a new teacher, I did what was then popular and assigned one big research paper, and then after seeing the mistakes students made, wished they had another chance to get it right, but the term was over, and it was too late.  As I evolved as a teacher, I learned to teach the use of sources as a skill to be gained through practice. Students can start learning to use sources skillfully from the first time they write about something they have read. They can learn that to use sources is just that—to make use of sources to advance their own ideas. The idea is to avoid a patchwork quilt of quotations from sources that have very little of the student’s own ideas to hold them together. They can learn that a source worth using is worth identifying with more than a name in parenthesis. I would hope that by the end of the term each student can smoothly incorporate sources into his or her writing while providing the claim to authority that makes that source worth drawing on. I would hope that students leave knowing how to find good sources and how to identify which sources are good and reliable. This means learning to sift through all the chaff available online to find the seeds of value. Research is so much more than finding any old source to list on a works cited page. Recognizing and constructing successful arguments are skills that can be learned. Never has there been a greater need for citizens to have those skills. Some of the most basic rights we hold as citizens are under threat. Every time our students decide whom and what to vote for they are using the skills of argumentation. When they stand up in support of that very right to vote they are doing so as well.   Photo: "Dimension"  by KT King is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

In his recent opinion essay in the New York Times, “My College Students are Not Okay,” Jonathan Malesic suggests that college administrators start “resisting the temptation to expand to remote learning, even if students demand it, and ensuring that faculty workloads leave time for individual attention to students.” Nevertheless, it seems possible to look at the same evidence of students’ challenges in Spring 2022, and to arrive at much different conclusions.   Malesic believes college students’ current malaise was precipitated by remote learning during the lockdowns and quarantines of 2020-21. Instead, I suggest it might be more helpful to think of the historical context for the shift to remote learning. Remote learning did not exist in isolation from events that took place alongside COVID inthe last two years that students have eluded to in class discussions, journals, and writing projects: George Floyd’s murder, the 2020 presidential election, the January 6th, 2021 Capital Riot, the white supremacist murders across the US, the climate disasters of wildfires and Hurricane Ida, and so on.      Moreover, the pandemic has not yet ended and the consequences, visible and invisible, continue to impact our students: nearly 1 million dead from COVID-19, the inception of vaccines, and the divisiveness of vaccine mandates and mask mandates. Other challenging circumstances are systemic racism and  the dismantling of the social safety net. The absence of a functioning safety net became more visible in the multiple crises in disparity that accompany COVID–healthcare, mental health care, childcare, housing, food security, education–the list goes on.    In other words, the suggestion that remote learning alone caused students’ current difficulties is disingenuous at best, and catastrophic at worst. Our students’ current disengagement with schooling is part of a constellation of issues that predated the pandemic, and that will continue to exist in the aftermath. Because of this, I would suggest that students did not feel cared for before the pandemic, and even more so, during the pandemic. COVID might have been an opportunity to pull together for the greater good. Instead, chaos ensued.    Remote learning certainly disrupted students’ lives. It did not help that there was no apparatus in place to address the needs of students who did not have access to the internet, and who had a difficult time engaging with Zoom, among other issues. The insistence on Zoom serving as a replacement for face-to-face classrooms exacerbated an already difficult situation, and a number of factors continue to contribute to students’ lack of engagement online: caregiving responsibilities, full-time work to support families and themselves, illness, including COVID and mental illness. This list of causes intersects with the absence of the social safety net, and the lack of infrastructure to support asynchronous learning, much less online classrooms.   Instructors also face these circumstances, especially, but not exclusively, adjuncts and other contingent workers in education This largely includes workers of color, who are often on the frontlines of student support. Contingent workers are usually assigned to this work without adequate compensation, without an adequate safety net, and in isolation from colleagues.    Justice: quilt patch from the quilt “2016/2022: In Hope and Sorrow” by Susan Bernstein Photo by Susan Bernstein   To return to Malesic’s original point–that administrators should not capitulate to student’s demands for increased remote learning–is to leave aside the fact of the increase in students with mental health disabilities, and also to ignore the high costs of college education and the need for many students to work to pay for their education, while supporting their families. To suggest that faculty workloads be adjusted to give students individual attention is to overlook the fact that contingent workers have high student loads at more than one institution. It is also to neglect the reality that contingent workers are not fairly compensated for the additional emotional labor of counseling or advising.   What do I suggest instead? Somehow, whether we teach remotely or face-to-face, we have to reconfigure the system–the whole system, not only academia, but the social conditions in which academia is embedded. That is not a quick fix. These last two years, the only thing I can think to do is to teach Baldwin, to share with my students Baldwin’s concern that “All safety is an illusion.”  I can try, as my long-time mentor used to remind me again and again, to keep the class grounded in writing, and to make sure that the students are working to grow their own writing. I can stay up to date with theory and practice, as well, and I can try to be a good colleague.   Additionally, I can try to change the system, both individually and collectively. Surely that seems too daunting a task. Yet, as this second full year of online teaching draws to a close, I continue to ask myself–and to ask you, my audience–what choice do I have to do anything else but to support positive changes?     The consequences of doing nothing haunt my dreams. Through that haunting, I allow my dreams to regenerate imagination, and to consider possibilities not yet imaginable. Listening to dreams might seem contradictory, or naive. Yet listening to dreams also reminds me to listen to students, however they communicate, whether through faces, blank screens, voices, Zoom chats, and especially silences.    Sharing the unexpected possibilities of imagination is a responsibility to be taken seriously. The challenge, in a time of pandemic is to confront that responsibility, even in weariness and even in fear. For the last two years in the isolation of remote learning I have taught James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr. I have read and reread their work, written new assignments, and worked with students to make meaning from their twentieth-century texts. I have done this teaching because, I realize, I am also searching to make meaning. The search is also a responsibility, and the search is ongoing. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Jenna Morton-Aiken, Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.   Voices Day 1: Welcome to Technical Writing. I cultivate tone and words to establish authority with young, mostly male, maritime cadets. Call me Dr. Their body language shouts, Stop trying, your class doesn’t matter to me. Weeks 1-3: Deploy resistance with strong voice and applied expertise as Covid-19’s shadow grows. Maybe this doesn’t suck, white gaps between double-spaced submissions whisper. Week 4: Campus abandoned, we’re all silenced. Week 5+: I’m here, I write with memes and raw emotions, my voice virtually transformed. Theirs, too—Help me, they say. I’m drowning, they say. Your words matter to me, they say. We write.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more