Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by John Hansen.  John Hansen received a BA in English from the University of Iowa and an MA in English literature from Oklahoma State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Summerset Review , One Sentence Poems , The Dillydoun Review , Schuylkill Valley Journal , Eunoia Review , Litro Magazine , Wild Roof Journal , The Banyan Review , Drunk Monkeys , and elsewhere. He has presented on a variety of topics at The National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC—Regional), The American Comparative Literature Association, The Midwest Conference on British Studies, and others. He is an English Department faculty member at Mohave Community College in Arizona. Read more at  johnphansen.com .   Unknown Impacts: Be Kind Early in the Fall 2020 semester, I sent e-mails to several students who stopped participating in our developmental English course. Ben responded two days later apologizing. Hours later, I answered the phone - it was Ben. Small talk quickly turned to him revealing a recent divorce, eviction, and layoff (due to COVID-19). I chatted with Ben weekly. He became one of the better writers in class. Days before the semester ended, Ben sent an e-mail about how he would have ended his life if he didn't have someone to talk with that day. I've reflected on this and Ben every semester.   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 Eileen Curran-Kondrad, Teaching Lecturer, English, at Plymouth State University. Eileen has written her story as a poem.   About the Course   No birdies, no eagles no long drives I slink off the course after the ninth   On the terrace outside the clubhouse college tournament players mill around. I browse the tables brimming with golf swag.   A voice calls out a young man approaches. Remember me? I took your class last year. We read five books that semester. You turned me into a reader. I went on to read  David Copperfield. I just had to tell you.   I roll my clubs to the car chuckle to myself. Did I just get a hole in one?   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 Kyle McIntosh, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Writing at the University of Tampa where he teaches in the Academic Writing and TESOL Certificate programs.   Mirror “The professor always provides such useful feedback. I don’t know how he has time to read each paper so carefully,” wrote a student on my course evaluation last fall. “He never gives us any feedback,” wrote another. “He doesn’t care about students at all.” Suddenly, I wondered: “Are there two versions of me – one good teacher and one bad – who appear to different students in the same class at different moments on different days? And which one is the me who is reading these comments now?” Just to be safe, I shave off my goatee.   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.   The Big Reveal On the last day of the semester, the elderly bearded gentleman in my 200-student course on English language and linguistics approached me, smiling. “I have thoroughly enjoyed this class,” he said. “You’re clearly a dedicated and student-centered teacher.” As a newly-minted professor, I took his words as high praise. “You see, I’m retired,” he continued, “but I take one course each semester to keep learning.” “That’s awesome!” I said. “What sort of work did you do?” He smiled. “Until last year, I was the provost here.” Stunned, I realized that his gift was more than his praise; it was waiting until the end to disclose.   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 guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview This post is the third of 3 posts from the Generation Project Series. Students worked together on this project over the course of many weeks to understand the impact of generational and collaborative research (See the previous posts: 1) Generation Project Series Overview and 2) Popular Culture Artifact for details). Each student did their part to make up the totality of the team generational portraits in which they had to contribute, negotiate, compromise, create and collaborate. They learned how to represent their research through a variety of multimodal components including: interactive timelines, presentation, and a cross-linked interactive feature. The project engaged students in meaningful research and multimodal practices. For this last part of the project, each generational team drew upon their research to create a visual presentation that was delivered to the class to contribute to the larger conversation and understand the characteristics and expansive progression of the 5 living generations. Presentations involve discussion questions along with a think-tank discussion to make connections across the generations. Students complete the following final steps of the project through the Collaborative Presentation , Crosslinked Collaborative overviews and Project Reflection and Evaluation. The Collaborative Presentation Each generational group creates a slide presentation and an oral presentation. We use Google Slides to allow for dynamic creation and the ability to link to their own Google sites, but any presentation platform will do. I offer the following prompts/sections to provide consistency between the presentations but give students the freedom to design the presentation theme on their own terms. I encourage them to include interactive components and discussion questions to engage the audience. The presentations represent the collective team and individual research and include both the historical background and popular culture artifacts. It is their job to tell the story of their generation and substantiate their ideas with multimodal examples. All presentations include the following: Historical Overview of Generation Timeline Popular Culture Artifacts Ideologies, Values and Behaviors Generational Portrait Team Takeaways Interactive discussion questions References Sample Generation Project – Boomers Collaborative Project Overview: Interactive Feature Article For this component each student designs/composes an individual overview article about the project to showcase on their Google sites. They repurpose information from their presentation and organize it into an accompanying page/interactive article on their sites. This should be an engaging and informative overview of their work that can be viewed and understood by an audience outside context of the class. The purpose is to share their ideas, explain and represent the project, connect the parts, and reflect upon learning. Include the following: Overview of the project and Context Statement Explanation of their team’s Generational Portrait Explanation/Overview and links to Historical Context Focus year research from their group members (link to their site pages) Discussion on the impact of popular culture artifacts. Link to group members example pages. Timeline – explain and link to the timeline. Captioned link to the presentation. Reflections on the project – what they learned Include embedded links and multimodal components in the article. Use subheads to divide the topics for easier reading. Sample Collaborative Overview - Interactive Feature Group Process and Evaluation When it comes to evaluation of team projects, it is essential that students themselves are an integral part of the process. Although I can judge the products they produce, only they know what went on inside their group. This final writing 0pportunity asks them to reflect upon and communicate the inner workings of their group and the successes of the project. This reflection serves two purposes: it demonstrates the ways they understand the concepts and it provides a thoughtful evaluation of their work and teammates’ contributions. I am the only audience for these reflections, and they are submitted outside the framework of the team project. The Reflection/Evaluation involves the following components: Evaluation of the project and what they learned. Evaluation and explanation of their team processes, models and points of negotiation and success. Evaluation of their teammates’ contributions and roles (I have students assign a grade to all of their team members – including themselves – along with a justification. Reflections on the Activity The most interesting part of the project is when the students discuss the overarching ideas and takeaways from the generation project. I provide time for a think-tank discussion through which students reflect upon the impact and connections across the projects. Here are some of the comments from that discussion: We learned more than expected We learned about the things we take for granted in our own generations. All generations have this in common: desire for prosperity and improvement. The impact and development of technology. The ways popular culture and material artifacts both shape generations and reveal generational ideologies. Civil rights are not isolated to a particular time period but an ongoing fight. All generations experienced some kind of trauma that shaped their perspectives (911, WW2, School Shootings, etc.). History repeats itself even though the events are different. Trends and ideas weave themselves back in in interesting ways. Each generation affects the progress of the generations before and those to come. Shared experiences and popular culture bring people together to give them a generational identity. Overall, the project gave students a “personal view vs a stereotypical view” of people and helped them to understand similarities along with differences. Students also reported that the project helped them to understand “why they are the way they are” and that they felt less judgmental of other generations. Ultimately, this project promotes a sense of empathy and understanding. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Kelle Alden, an Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at the University of Tennessee at Martin.   Every Year, I Flunk a Decent Person During our conference, I showed my student the math. Regardless of his excellent attendance and participation, without his missing homework and essays, he would fail English. My student looked sheepish, gave excuses, promised to catch up. I no longer take it personally when students lie to me. I try to teach in the moment, to appreciate how my student smiles and greets me every day. Seeing the whole of him will help after finals, when I have to deliver my most difficult lesson. I will still smile for him next semester, even if he cannot return the gesture right away.   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. Leslie Werden, a Professor of English & Rhetoric and Department Head of Humanities at Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa. She teaches Persuasive Writing, Small Group Communication, Literary Theory & Analysis, British Literature, Page to Stage, and more.    Blaming Binaries The large post-it note, halved with a line down the middle separating a list of binaries, was left behind in the classroom. On one side: white, power, strength, leader, good. On the other: black, no control, weakness, follower, bad. The lone black student arrived in the classroom and cocked her head, glaring at the list, brows furrowed, lips tightly pressed together. “What. Is. This?” she asked her professor. A discussion about three different stories from the class before. “Thank God,” the student said. The binaries left behind, assume too much and remain misunderstood.   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 guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview Americans in particular should study their popular arts the better to understand themselves. The media inform their environment, make suggestions about ways to view themselves, provide role models from infancy through old age, give information and news as it happens, provide education, influence their opinions, and open up opportunities for creative expression. Culture emanates from society, voices its hopes and aspirations, quells it fears and insecurities, and draws on the mythic consciousness of an entire civilization or race. It is an integral part of life and a permanent record of what we believe and are. While future historians will find the accumulated popular culture invaluable, the mirror is there for us to look into immediately. [from Handbook of Popular Culture , M. Thomas Inge, ed. (1989)] 1955 15-minute Meat Loaf recipe https://clickamericana.com/category/media/advertisements This post is the second of 3 posts from the Generation Project series . Teachers can use this assignment as part of the series or on its own as a stand-alone classroom activity. This component of the project extends on student’s work in exploring the historical context of their assigned generation and asks them to locate and analyze popular culture artifacts to reveal ideas, values, and behaviors of their designated generation. They influence us, persuade us, and affect our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Popular culture is generally defined as “everyday objects, actions, and events that influence people to behave in certain ways” (Sellnow 3). In the past, popular culture took the form of print and traditional media, propaganda, and other material objects. Today we can include a variety of digital media texts such as Twitter, memes, Tiktok, and other social media artifacts. Popular culture draws on mass appeal and consumption behavior that shape cultural identity and generational tendencies. It is not difficult to look around and see that these everyday objects and media artifacts are everywhere in our daily lives both in the present and the past. We experience them through advertisements, music, television, and the Internet. Exploring and analyzing these artifacts engages students in thoughtful research beyond historical facts and defining moments and provides new lenses for understanding generational research. It helps them triangulate their ideas as they look at layers of influence and engage in meaningful rhetorical analysis of a variety of multimodal artifacts. Steps to the Assignment Although students interact with these artifacts every day, they might not understand why they are significant. I start the conversation by offering definitions and examples through background readings such as Sociological Definition of Popular Culture and the PBS Idea Channel’s engaging videos on the subject: Does Popular Culture Need to Be Popular? Next, I ask students to analyze artifacts from different time periods which gets them out of their own cultural moment and offers a comparative framework. I happen to have a hearty collection of vintage magazines that I bring to class but have also used online resources that are easy to search and access (e.g., “search: advertisements from the 50’s” or dedicated sites such as Click Americana that features “vintage and retro memories.” Each student (or together in groups) chooses an artifact to analyze and discuss. They look at rhetorical arguments, identifying ideologies, and visual messaging. I ask them to extend their thinking to the cultural moment of the time period and compare it to their modern culture to show how ideologies shift and change depending on context. Students present to the class by sharing the artifact and supporting their ideas through particular details, visual references and textual examples. Other students can contribute their ideas during the presentations. This step can also work as a discussion post in an online setting. Once they have a general understanding of how to analyze the artifacts, I turn them back to a generational time period. Their ultimate goal is to understand the ways these artifacts shape their generational research of the five living generations (See Part 1 for focus years) at a particular point in time. Each student locates and analyzes the following cultural artifacts for their focus years: Material/Commercial (advertising, products, etc.) Film Art Music Literature Language (slang, saying, phrase, etc.) Fashion Food Something of their own choosing Students create a page on their Google sites in which they include: a representative image for each artifact. image citations: Many of these images are in the public domain but students cite and link to the original source of the image. a short description/analysis/interpretation of the artifact in which they describe ideologies, values or beliefs they interpret from the artifact. In the final step of the assignment students write an overview in which they read across their collection of artifact sources and focus on ideologies, values and ideas that they discern from their collection. Through this, they will cross-link to the individual artifacts in their discussion. I require that they include at least 3 embedded links and multimodal components in this post. Note: Although I have students post to their Google sites as interactive documents, it is easily modified for other formats. Reflections on the Activity This popular culture activity promotes strong research practices including source location, analysis, and documentation. It expands notions of research as students learn to triangulate their perspectives and understand the importance of multimodal artifacts to reveal significant insights. By looking at artifacts such as film, advertisements, music, literature, and language, students begin to put together a more complete picture for their generational portraits. Students nurture a critical eye for understanding the artifacts they encounter every day and it helps them realize that popular culture artifacts are actually complicated reflections that reveal and shape life as we know it. Sellnow, Deanna D. The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts . 3rd ed., SAGE, 2018. Stay tuned – next post – Part 3: Generation Collaborations ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Lauri Mattenson. Lauri is a Lecturer with UCLA Writing programs.   Holding Zoom Space She’s sitting in her empty bathtub, laptop propped up on a stack of towels, because there’s no room anywhere else in the apartment. He’s in his garage using his neighbor’s wifi. She’s on academic probation and never submitted a draft. They are using a laptop with seven missing keys and a cracked screen. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in two weeks. She’s taking care of three little sisters during class. He’s the only Covid-negative person in a household of six. They are working 25 hours a week while going to school full-time. We’re weary, but we’re all here.    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 Jennifer Smith Daniel, Director of Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs at Queens University of Charlotte.   Restoring Your Tongue... Earlier in the Center, you’d encouraged a first-year with her assignment. Then sat in the comfy red chair of my office as essential oils penetrated our masks to cry out your anger at the professor who commented on your writing with his elitist, prescriptive perspective. He never learned the story of how your family stopped speaking Spanish at home because you didn’t get registered for preschool after migrating from Mexico. Later, I stood in the front our class as another white women teacher and offered you Anzaldúa. You found restoration in the new word - Chicana.   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 guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview [Generational] cohorts give researchers a tool to analyze changes in views over time; they can provide a way to understand how different formative experiences interact with the life-cycle and aging process to shape people’s view of the world. (Pew Research 2020) This post is the first in a three-part series through which I detail a rather expansive Generation Project with multimodal components and sub-projects. I broke down the project into concurrent parts that can also be used as stand-alone activities. Stay tuned as I present these assignments over the next couple of posts. In this first post, I present the project overview and the historical context , the second post I detail the popular culture component and the third is the collaborative presentations . These assignments are easily modified for all teaching modalities (online, f2f, and hybrid). Image of timeline between 1962 and 1966 with events placed This series demonstrates that we can integrate multimodal composition in thoughtful ways throughout assignments and processes and is not just about end products. In designing this project, I imagined something that involved students in deep research – both individual and collaborative – on a subject that is interesting and current. I wanted to offer opportunities throughout the project to engage in multimodal work – both the analysis and composition of multimodal artifacts. Students house the project on individual websites created through Google Sites to allow for composing and sharing of interactive and visual content. Generation Project Overview This generation project helps students move beyond their insular views and challenges them to understand the perspectives of others by immersing themselves in generational research. We live in a society with polarized discourse and this project will help students engage with ideas outside of their generational space. These ideas motivated me to design this generation project in which students work together to research one of the five living generations: The Silent Generation (born 1928–1945) Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) Generation X (born 1965–1980) Millennials (born 1981–1995) Generation Z (born 1996–2010) Students research both primary and secondary sources to define and create a portrait of their assigned generation. The purpose is to understand the historical context, popular culture artifacts, values, and cultural ideologies. Each student will individually research a couple of focus years within the generation and then contribute to a collaborative project in which they overview and interpret the generation. Sources: Students will locate and analyze the following scholarly and popular sources: Historical context (timelines, historical portraits, economy, values, important figures, oral stories, theoretical perspectives, etc.) Media and Popular culture artifacts (images, music, advertisements, literature, film, fashion, food, etc.) Defining Moments (Headlines, Articles) Ideologies, ideas, behaviors, and values of the time Anything else that might be meaningful Steps to the Assignment This first part of the assignment orients students towards generational research and introduces them to definitions of the five living generations. 1. Background Resources: Understanding Generational Research It is important for students to understand the nature of generational research and gain a general overview of the generations. This helps them understand the ways generations are constructed and the trends that affect them. I allow students to choose the generation research group they want to join so these background readings help them make those choices. Generation Research Resources: The Whys and Hows of Generational Research Pew Research Center (2020) Generations Throughout History – Buzzfeed Video (2017) Fast Facts: American Generations – CNN (2022) Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen X Labels: Necessary or Nonsense The Conversation (2020) 2. Online Discussion - Students engage in an online discussion in which they choose a passage, idea or related ideas from the generation readings. I encourage them to speak about the characteristics they observed along with assumptions and stereotypes they might have about the different generations. I require them to also post one representative image (from Creative Commons or other copyright free sources). 3. Choose a Generation and Focus Years – After the initial background work, students choose the generation that they want to research as part of a team. I try to make sure that the groups are evenly distributed to have the same number of members. Students assemble in their teams (online or f2f) and then choose a couple of focus years within their generations. The focus years give students responsibility for individual research that they will contribute to their research team to create a representative span of their generation years. 4. Research Historical Context: Students compose an Historical Overview of their focus years. They should include events, defining moments, trends, important figures and ideas, observations about politics, economy and values. I encourage them to go beyond just listing facts and interpret and synthesize their findings. They search for academic and popular articles and learn how to attribute their sources. 5. Interactive Feature Article : Students compose their historical overview of their focus years as an interactive document that includes specific references, purposeful embedded links, and captioned multimodal components (images, video clips, etc.) to tell their stories and contextualize their research. They create a page on their site to host the post. 6. Teamwork: Defining Moments: Students get together with their teams and share their research. Each team creates a Google doc in which they list the defining moments and significant events of their focus years. Together, they discuss the overlaps and the ways their focus years fit together to define their generation. 7. Interactive Timeline: Data Visualization: As a team, students select the most important defining moments from their extensive list and create a multimodal timeline. There are many open-source platforms for creating interactive and visual timelines. I give them some resources but allow them to choose their own. They will include the defining moments along with representative images for each entry on the timeline. They will also use this timeline as part of their collaborative presentation later in the project. Some timeline resources: Best Free Timeline Maker Tools for Students Timelines in Canva Adobe Timeline Creator Reflections on the Activities This generation project gives each student a research role and ways to contribute to the larger community knowledge on the subject. The level of individual responsibility creates genuine research teams that invite strong analysis and synthesis through collaboration. These activities engage students in a range of research, writing, and multimodal composition practices. I find that when students are asked to engage in meaningful curiosity and collaboration, they demonstrate a stronger sense of ownership and motivation. Stay tuned – next post – Part 2: Generations through Popular Culture ... 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

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Rhona Blaker. Blaker is an adjunct instructor of English at Glendale Community College, where she also serves as the Campus Coordinator for Contexualized Teaching and Learning.   From the Pantry Most mornings I stare at my own face next to twenty-five black squares. One Thursday, desperate for human contact, I begged the students to reveal their faces. Three students complied. Later, a young woman e-mailed to say she never turns her camera on because she takes class on a tablet while sitting in a pantry, trying to escape the ten other people who live in her apartment. I apologized for imagining English 101 was ever about me and rejoiced when she later wrote to say she had been accepted to UCLA after earning a 4.0 GPA in her community college closet.     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. 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