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

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Dr. Chris M. Anson. Chris is a Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, where he is also the Director of the Campus Writing & Speaking Program.   Boot Camps and Boot Straps Four years after I taught him in a federally-funded pre-college summer program for inner-city kids who some high school teacher saw a spark in—otherwise doomed never to go to college—we crossed paths on the campus just before graduation. "Cool Chris!" he yelled—the name the students had given me in that summer writing course. "Tyrone! What's up?" We high-fived. "I got into Harvard Law!" he said with a broad smile, "and you helped, man!" A story of triumph—his, and my small piece of it. But what's wrong with us that so many live on the margins . . . and of those, with such slim chances?   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to  tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com!  See the  Tiny Teaching Stories Launch  for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

The following interview with Haleh Azimi and Elsbeth Mantler, Co-directors of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program, focuses on professional development for faculty teaching corequisite composition and was conducted via email in December of 2021. This is the fourth of four parts. David Starkey: What are some of the biggest differences between the faculty development you do at CCBC and the development you do for external audiences? Haleh Azimi: Whether we are addressing faculty development for CCBC or external audiences, we always conduct some sort of needs assessment to collect information about what is needed. Who is participating in the session? Where do they see a gap or a need for information or a conversation? This applies to external colleges that may be brand new to acceleration or internal, specific workshops, such as the remote synchronous workshop mentioned earlier. We always try to ground our workshops in data and research, while also providing practical and tangible examples for practitioners to use. DS: And what do you teach that practitioners really seem to love? HA: It’s really exciting to work with external practitioners when we are sharing our ready-to-use thematic units, which are essentially our fully developed teaching materials. These materials include all scaffolded activities, including readings, writing prompts, and any alternative activities. Sharing this with other practitioners helps them conceptualize the way we approach our students through our curriculum. In our program, we are fortunate enough to have a bank of ready-to-use culturally relevant thematic teaching units for faculty to use. This is especially helpful for adjunct faculty who may not have the time to create a brand new curriculum every semester. DS: I imagine that you’re also working with multiple stakeholders when you’re doing professional development. HA: We typically host faculty and those in student development, such as advisors and the registrar. Deans and others in senior-level leadership positions, such as provosts, also attend external consultations. We think it is important that all stakeholders have a working knowledge of the program—especially when they are new to institutionalizing ALP. DS: If you had unlimited resources, what would your ideal faculty professional development program for ALP look like? Elsbeth Mantler: What would be really cool is if we had an opportunity to provide a true learning community for faculty involved with ALP so that we could dig deep, be collaborative, and share ideas. Teaching can be isolating, especially during the pandemic. There is also a lot of emotional stress that can come with working so closely with students especially since we really emphasize addressing non-cognitive needs. In my courses, especially since the pandemic, I always start classes with a brief and informal check-in with my students. For example, prior to finals week, I’ll say something like, “Hi, everyone! This could be a stressful time as you prepare for exams in your other classes. Is there anything that is causing you to not be able to do your schoolwork? You can share openly or grab me privately if you would like….” I say things like this and frontload these sorts of comments at the start of each class to build community with my students. They share their comments with their classmates, and I create an environment where students know they can come to me for support. I also work to build in student voices during these informal check-ins. My students have a wealth of knowledge and experiences. The peer-to-peer input is often more useful than what I can offer to them. I want students to know that they can connect with me and with each other. Sometimes students share very difficult issues with me, such as homelessness, food insecurity, and mental health struggles. DS: Students’ struggles can also weigh heavily on their instructors. EM: Faculty really need each other to share the burden of issues like these sometimes. Building a strong community that meets often would help faculty feel connected. HA: Elsbeth and I also would love to see an increase in monetary support for ALP adjunct faculty involvement with PD sessions. ALP is truly a unique program. The configuration and concentrated effort to meet students’ non-cognitive needs are areas that require significant professional development, and we want to support adjunct faculty for their time and commitment. We both started as adjunct faculty working multiple jobs. We understand how thinly stretched people are, so allocating a significant amount of resources toward adjunct faculty involvement in PD is something we both find important.   DS: Wow, I learned a lot! Thanks to both of you for taking time out of your extremely busy schedules to talk with me. HA: Thanks so much for the opportunity to share! EM: I've enjoyed the conversation! Thanks. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Jennifer Gray, Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at the College of Coastal Georgia.   Video Conference The student requested a video conference on Easter Sunday at 4pm. I said yes, because it was what he selected. I grumbled privately, as it was the only day without something work-related scheduled. I left celebrations at my neighbor’s house, much to our dismay, and logged in, expecting a blank black box. Instead, there he was, with a smile, a Zoom wave, and his Walmart uniform and nametag, calling from the front seat of his car on his break during his shift on a holiday. We talked about our assignment. He revised his citing practices, and I revised my negativities.     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 Lisa Lebduska, Professor of English and Director of College Writing at Wheaton College.   Observations As a grad student adjuncting at 3 schools, I always ran late. One rainy day, I flew into my office, changed into dry shoes, then rushed to class. When class ended, a student was waiting for me. "We just wanted you to know," she said, "that we noticed you are wearing two different shoes." I looked with horror from the beige wedge on my left, to the black pump on my right. "Why didn't anyone say anything?" "We thought it was another one of those exercises where you were trying to see if we were paying attention to details… We were."   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to  tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com!  See the  Tiny Teaching Stories Launch  for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

The following interview with Haleh Azimi and Elsbeth Mantler, Co-directors of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program, focuses on professional development for faculty teaching corequisite composition and was conducted via email in December of 2021. This is the third of four parts. David Starkey: Have you had strong institutional support for the professional development you are doing at CCBC? How has that manifested itself? Haleh Azimi: Yes, CCBC has offered institutional support for ALP professional development. The office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (PRE) at CCBC studies ALP pass and retention rates, and this data collection helps inform our decision-making about professional development needs. Our PD options vary depending on faculty needs. For example, we have an onboarding 2-day workshop for those brand new to teaching ALP. Our dean provides stipends for adjunct faculty who require this training. We also have embedded mentors for those new to teaching ALP, and this is something that we are very proud of. DS: You also have a Certified ALP Instructor Workshop Series. What happens there? HA: We provide ongoing professional development opportunities each academic year. There are specific requirements pertaining to this internal certificate program. Once an adjunct faculty member meets this requirement, they are given a stipend. Full-time faculty who meet the requirements of the Certified ALP Instructor Workshop Series can use this as equivalency credits for our internal promotion process. Finally, CCBC has always supported efforts to host our national conference, The Conference on Acceleration in Developmental Education (CADE). The institution provides the college’s resources to ensure a successful national conference. Elsbeth Mantler: Another thing that demonstrates CCBC’s commitment to ALP is the fact that our roles even exist as co-directors. If we did not have the embedded co-directorship then the program would not be as robust as it is. DS: You certainly have a commendable arrangement going on at CCBC. What recommendations would you give to faculty whose administrations aren’t currently willing, or able, to pay for faculty development? EM: I would really urge faculty to apply for grants. There are often institutional grants that are internal. When doing so, faculty should tie in the institution’s strategic plan and how funding for co-requisite professional development directly enhances the goals of the strategic plan. Likewise, I think that people developing PD opportunities should also apply for external funding. Often, when we are hired for external consultations, institutions inform us that they have secured funding through external organizations in order to fund our visits. DS: Good ideas! Any other suggestions? EM: You can make internal incentives that are free that help encourage people to participate in professional development opportunities – in other words, be creative in how you approach professional development. Are there ways to incentivize faculty involvement in PD that are not tied to stipends? For example, could you offer prioritized staffing preferences? If there are steps or levels for promotion, could this contribute to their promotion? Or, can facilitators provide tangible attendance documentation, such as a certificate for faculty to document on their CVs? Institutional support is absolutely critical in ensuring ALP’s success, but there are alternatives when there are creative faculty problem-solving ways to address professional development. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Sonia Feder-Lewis, a Professor at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Education.   Awakening It was a dream course assignment: a small upper-level honors class in Women’s Literature. A reward near the end of graduate school. Eleven students: 10 women and one brave young man, newly separated from the Army for carefully undisclosed reasons. The women treated him gently as we read Woolf, Morrison, Erdrich, Chopin. “The Awakening is the greatest book I have ever read,” he said passionately. Two decades later, he recognizes me in a coffee shop. Without pause, he tells me the course had been his favorite. And his hardest. I do not ask why.     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to  tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com!  See the  Tiny Teaching Stories Launch  for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

The following interview with Haleh Azimi and Elsbeth Mantler, Co-directors of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program, focuses on professional development for faculty teaching corequisite composition and was conducted via email in December of 2021. This is the second of four parts. David Starkey:   Why is faculty professional development so important for corequisite composition instructors in particular? Elsbeth Mantler:   In general, a lot of community college practitioners do not take classes in their own schooling that teach them anything about teaching. For example, a lot of English professors we have met with have backgrounds in literature or creative writing. Then, we add on the unique course structure of ALP. Many new faculty have never heard of the program, and have not received any formal training in education. I personally did not take a single education class in my past (not yet, at least!). DS:   So, the lessons you’ve learned about teaching have mostly been on the job? EM:   Yes, and through reading, researching, and learning from my colleagues. I really think it’s important to pay attention to what’s going on in the field. While I don’t have the formal education, Haleh and I make sure that we stay connected with research and best practices within the field. I have been attending the national Conference on Acceleration in Developmental Education (CADE) for over a decade. This conference provides an opportunity for colleagues doing this work together to present on important work in the field, and much of what’s presented includes tangible practical tools for the classroom. We also always keep up to date with other professional organizations such as the Conference on College Composition and Communications (CCCC), the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), and the Community College Research Center (CCRC). We do ongoing research on Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning (CRTL), belonging, and Integrated Reading & Writing (IRW), pandemic teaching, among many other topics. Oftentimes, when Haleh and I are conducting new faculty trainings, this is the first-time faculty are even learning about ALP, teaching College Composition or teaching Integrated Reading and Writing. These foundational professional opportunities help faculty prepare to meet student needs. Long-term, ongoing, and consistent professional development is needed to help sustain the unique structure of this program. Our longitudinal data validates ongoing successes with pass and retention rates. Much of this success is because of relevant and consistent professional development opportunities for ALP faculty at all levels. Haleh Azimi:   If we are asking faculty to support the students so deeply, we need to support the faculty with ample opportunities for professional development. DS:   In your minds, what constitutes a successful faculty development activity? Could you give me an example of a single activity, then discuss how it might connect with areas of professional growth that you hope to foster? EM:   We offer a series of workshops that occur once a month, but what makes this series sustainable is that we choose the topics based on organic needs and conversations that arise among our colleagues. For example, at the beginning of Covid, all of our face-to-face classes turned into remote synchronous classes overnight. This was a modality that had never been offered with ALP at CCBC. Some faculty struggled with how to translate what they would do in person into this new modality. We stepped in and identified a need for professional development in this new arena. HA:   Yes, everything Elsbeth just talked about regarding our various modalities and professional development is so important. The general approach to teaching ALP online is the same as teaching in-person. The online course should use backward design so that the Academic Literacy course is supporting everything done in Composition I. Low-stakes, scaffolded assignments should be present in both courses, and prompt and thoughtful feedback from the faculty member is imperative. Any way that you can encourage community in the online classroom is essential. This could mean discussion boards where everyone posts a video of themselves or synchronous drop-in office hours, or, even guest speakers to connect students to college resources. Elsbeth and I are by no means experts in all of the areas where we provide professional development. We serve as facilitators and identify others within areas that are the experts. So, as Elsbeth points out, when we transitioned to a new modality because of Covid, we helped develop PD to support ALP faculty. ... 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.   Student Teaching “Go wash your mouth out with soap!” And he did. The 8th grader returned to our grammar lesson in progress, raised his hand, and bubbled out the next answer. In Biology class, I distributed apples and asked, “Who can identify the internal parts you just dissected?” And they all did, delighted to eat their half apples. Rushing to my senior English class to discuss the Romantic poets, I passed a student at his open locker pulling out a knife. “May I have that, please?” And he handed it to me. Things were much different in 1965, I have learned.    Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to  tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com!  See the  Tiny Teaching Stories Launch  for submission details and guidelines.   ... View more

What’s your vision for an individual or small group writing conference with first-year and corequisite writers—especially when they have submitted drafts in advance? Do you see the conference as a predictable genre, one that will unfold according to a standard script? Or is it something else? This semester, I am working with a group of junior and senior writing fellows, all of whom are partnering with first-year and corequisite writing classes. In preparation for the fellows’ first week of interaction in their assigned courses, I wanted them to think about what a writing conference looks like. Ideally, we noted, first-year writers will approach fellows with a clear sense of the help they want and a set of questions to address. But in reality, that rarely happens: initial conferences between novice writers and novice fellows may lapse into stretches of awkward silence, and fellows may feel compelled to fill that silence with “you shoulds” and “you coulds.” Queries and suggestions may be met with shrugs, nods, or respectful “oks.”  I asked fellows to consider some sample drafts and think about how they would initiate discussion during the writing conference: what would their opening gambit be? They shared these initial moves—both questions and comments—with the rest of the group, posting anonymous digital sticky notes.   Next, I invited fellows to analyze those opening moves much like they would the introductory paragraphs of a text. How might these comments and questions frame the following discussion? What expectations would those moves establish for student writers? Did the comments and questions give prominence to the student writer, the writer’s process, the form or style of the text, the assignment, language, developing content, the fellow as reader, or something else? Was an invitation to dialogue articulated or implied? Was a stance taken? As we began to evaluate the questions and comments we had generated, I noticed a growing sense of concern among the fellows: “I think I did this wrong.”  In short, they experienced in our preparation session exactly what first-year writers often experience during conferences: what they hear in questioning is that they “did it wrong.”   Of course, the fellows weren’t “doing it wrong.” They had targeted significant concerns about these early drafts. But conference spaces, like developing texts from the first-year writers, are sites of “logogenesis”—the making of meaning—where participants are establishing identities, navigating relationships, testing understanding, and making sense of genre conventions. As experienced college writers, the fellows recognize the complexity of writing choices and the impact of those choices on the resulting text. I want them to see they can apply a similar thinking process to their choices within the conference. In student conferences, we of course want to work on the paper at hand. But with corequisite writers in particular, fellows may also want to affirm student writers as writers, develop empathy, encourage agency, practice metalanguage, and offer opportunities for play. Thus, their opening gambits might include these: What is the big statement you wish to make with this assignment? What’s your biggest struggle with this paper? What part of your paper do you like the best? Why? What part of the paper needs the most attention right now? Wow! What a story—that’s really powerful. I struggled when I first read this assignment. How about you? As the fellows imagined opening moves, they realized they wanted more information:  when they get student drafts for review, where will students be in the process? Will they have received any instructor feedback yet? Are these drafts going to be assessed by a rubric? How many additional revisions will students have? What is the instructor’s goal for the conferences between fellows and students? These questions framed the fellows’ next session, when they discussed logistics and expectations with their assigned instructors.  When the fellows meet with first-year writers for the first time, the conferences may be just as rough as the student drafts they discuss. But if the fellows can reflect on the conferences as texts, critically, they can revise or edit their conference strategies, even as they assist first-year writing students to do the same with their papers.  I am excited about what will occur in the conferences—both for the first-year writers and the fellows. I suspect their reflections will prompt me to revisit my own conferencing strategies. How about you? How do you promote conversation in your individual conferences?  ... View more

The following interview with Haleh Azimi and Elsbeth Mantler, Co-directors of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program, focuses on professional development for faculty teaching corequisite composition and was conducted via email in December of 2021. This is the first of four parts. David Starkey: First, I want to say how lucky I feel to be able to talk with the two of you about your role in faculty development for instructors teaching accelerated/corequisite composition. Can you tell me a bit about how you came to take on this role at the Community College of Baltimore County? Haleh Azimi: Peter Adams, the founder of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) designed the ALP leadership structure with our Dean of Developmental Education and the Vice President of Instruction. When ALP was instituted at CCBC in 2009, ALP was a co-requisite course sequence that paired Composition I with English 052 (Basic Writing). After Peter retired, Professor Susan Gabriel became the director of the program which shifted to an integrated reading and writing model (IRW). The configuration shifted in 2016 so that Composition I was paired with Academic Literacy 053 (ACLT). Critical reading instruction then became infused in the ALP support course. DS: So, you have a co-curricular model. HA: Yes, and that model influenced the leadership structure because this new course arrangement consisted of an English class and an Academic Literacy class. CCBC looked at this new structure to build the new leadership model, which is a co-directorship. DS: Haleh, you’re an Academic Literacy faculty member, and Elsbeth teaches in the English department. HA: We come from the two disciplines that form the ALP course. The best part of this co-directorship is that I get to work with my colleague, Elsbeth, on such a close basis, and both of us also teach an ALP class every semester. We think this is essential in leading this program because it gives us an opportunity to grapple with the same issues other faculty deal with on a first-hand basis. This has truly been the most collaborative partnership, and one of the most rewarding parts of our work is that we both learn so much from each other regarding discipline-specific practices. One example of this would be ways to address students’ grammar in context. Prior to collaborating with the English department, I would teach discrete skills that had nothing to do with what they were writing about. Now, I focus my efforts on providing just-in-time support based on individual student needs. So, if a student has a chronic writing issue, I will work with them individually with their own writing. Elsbeth Mantler: I’ve learned so much about incorporating critical reading strategies from Haleh and others in her discipline. Before I started collaborating with ACLT faculty, I would assign students complex readings with no context about who wrote it, when it was written, and what it was about. Oftentimes, students would come in having read the assigned reading but not understanding a lot of the concepts presented in the reading. Now that I have learned more about reading strategies, I spend a lot of time scaffolding the readings with pre-reading strategies. I have students research topics, authors, and publications prior to even reading an article. This helps students access prior knowledge, and it provides context for what they are about to study. This cross-collaboration between English and Academic Literacy is the reason why this partnership has been so successful – but I also want to reiterate that teaching as part of my co-director role is invaluable because I love our students, and I am able to remain current on ALP developments. The teaching provides an opportunity for both of us to put in practice new methodologies.  ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Michelle Graber, Instructor of English and Communications at Mitchell Technical College.   Superheroes Students sit six feet apart – eyes beaming up at me expectantly, masks askew. I’ve never noticed so many of my students’ eyes: shades of blue, brown, green, and hazel. I wonder what the rest of their faces look like, this sea of superheroes tolerating the mandated masking of their identities for the sake of public approval. Wow. I’m teaching superheroes. I face the class during the pandemic peak and push them through their studies. One student raises his hand to ask a question, and I find myself contemplating Charlie Brown’s problems understanding his teacher. She must’ve been wearing a mask, too. “A little louder, please,” I say, trying to resist leaning forward to hear better as I meet the grass-green orbs of the student whose name I can’t associate with a face and whose words I cannot hear.    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 Stuart Barbier, a Professor of English at Delta College.   Pension “Your Internet connection is unstable,” warned my computer during yet another Zoom. That’s not the only thing that’s unstable, I thought, unable to separate non-work life (gardening and PBS period dramas) from work life (freshman composition and workplace drama). Face-to-face, I taught all students at the same time, answering questions within the class well enough that students rarely contacted me otherwise. Online? Endless emails, texts, phone calls, and videos, assignments trickling in like water torture, twenty-four/seven, as I turn my computer on when I get up and off when I go to bed. Retire, a friend suggested. Alas, too young.     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

When many of us Baby Boomers and Gen Xers received our composition training, discussions of how to teach reading were an afterthought, if they were addressed at all. Fortunately, in recent years that has changed, and there’s currently a much-needed emphasis on integrating reading and writing in all composition courses, whether or not the word “reading” appears in the catalog description. While contemporary research about reading has begun to flourish (see the Works Cited and Suggested Reading List in the CCCC Statement below), in this post I’d like to focus on three especially valuable sources for supporting college level reading: the Reading Apprenticeship program, the essay collection Deep Reading, and the “CCCC Position Statement on the Role of Reading in College Writing Classrooms.” The Reading Apprenticeship program began in San Francisco in the 1990s and has become a robust and many-armed national entity. While enrolling in a Reading Apprenticeship class is not cheap—the 7-week introductory course costs $750—many institutions are willing to cover the cost for interested faculty. Moreover, much of the good sense and practical classroom activities covered in the courses are distilled in Reading for Understanding. The book and program employ an equity-minded, asset-based approach, building on students’ previous experiences as readers and creating a safe space for practicing common problem-solving strategies such as collaborative reading, chunking, inference, LINK (List, Inquire Note, Know), and the “Think Aloud” routine, in which a student reports to another student what they are thinking during the act of reading aloud. Throughout the book and courses, the emphasis is on metacognition, a conversation that is “both internal, as individual readers observe their own minds in action, and external, when readers discuss what they are noticing, what they are stumped by, and how they are solving reading problems” (89). Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom (NCTE, 2017) is a “celebration of literacy, intellectual generosity, and classrooms alive with deep reading and deep learning” (xxiv). In the book’s introduction, editors Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg and Sheridan Blau refer to Elizabeth Wardle’s theories of two distinct learning propensities: “problem-exploring dispositions” and “answer-getting dispositions.” Clearly, the latter is preferable for inquiry-based college reading, and yet legislators continually attempt to proscribe the “messiness of deep thinking,” which Wardle argues “can be understood as an attempt to limit the kind of thinking that students and citizens have the tools to do” (xvi). The editors cite another reason for the disconnect between reading and writing in higher education: much of the most vigorous work on reading has been “written by and for secondary school teachers,” which “has helped perpetuate the idea in our discipline that reading instruction is the concern of K-12 educators only and does not require the attention of college instructors” (xvii). Happily, Deep Reading offers a wealth of approaches to reading instruction from a variety of instructors. Among the important areas the collection addresses are the reading attitudes and practices students bring with them from high school to college, strategies for cultivating reading skills students already possess, and the necessity of teaching “rhetorical reading,” which Tinberg argues in his chapter is particularly important in peer review, where “any reading of another’s draft needs to take into consideration the situation that produced the draft and the criteria and set of expectations that helped shape the writing” (253). In March of this year, CCCC released its “Position Statement on the Role of Reading in College Writing Classrooms.” The statement “affirms the need to develop accessible and effective reading pedagogies in college writing classrooms so that students can engage more deeply in all of their courses and develop the reading abilities that will be essential to their success in college, in their careers, and for their participation in a democratic society.” Those familiar with the Reading Apprenticeship program and Deep Reading will find a number of familiar concepts in the statement, including the four central principles for supporting the teaching and learning of reading: Teach reading comprehension. Teach reading approaches that move beyond basic comprehension. Foster mindful reading to encourage students to think metacognitively about their reading in preparation for a variety of reading in different contexts Teach students how to read texts closely and focus on significant details and patterns. Helpfully, each of these principles is accompanied by five specific strategies for employing the principle in the classroom. And the CCCC Statement offers a pointed reminder that instructors are never too old or young “to develop reading pedagogies that serve ever-changing student populations and are responsive to the contemporary moment.” ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Heidi Rosenberg, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Business School.   Teaching in the Time of COVID Shana says she’s all right. How can I help? Each student is a square within a square I hold. She nearly pulled her finger off—it got caught so typing is one-fingered. She moved to her own place. She was pregnant, then not. The father of the never-born-baby smacks. I email, it’s her birthday—“happy birthday.” I am the only one who said that.  Her family—This is why I moved out. I say, You didn’t move far enough. She has a scholarship, job, apartment. We come to terms. One thing she asks: how do I stay when there’s nothing?     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to  tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com!  See the  Tiny Teaching Stories Launch  for submission details and guidelines. ... View more