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

I’ve been following the work of Kaitlyn Tiffany and Kate Lindsey, largely in The Atlantic, on what they call “the Millennial Internet era” and its gradual demise, at least as they see it. And thinking about millennials got me thinking even more about the names or labels for such “generations” in twentieth and twenty first-century America. As my grandmother would have said, it’s a puzzlement. Millennials supposedly include those born roughly between 1981 and 1995, and this group falls fifth among the American “generations” usually acknowledged:  The Greatest Generation (1901-27) The Silent Generation (1928-45) Baby Boomers (1946-64) Generation X (1965-80) Millennials (1981-95) Generation Z (1996-2010) Generation Alpha (2011-25) According to this lore, I am part of the Silent Generation, though when I was coming of age in the sixties, I thought I was part of the Beat Generation, or the Civil Rights Generation: I don’t remember ever hearing “silent” applied to my cohort in those days and wouldn’t have recognized the label if I had. (I’m wondering which of these cohorts you belong to and what your own perceptions were and are of the accuracy of that label.) At any rate, Tiffany and Lindsey see the millennial view of the world and especially their experience of the Internet either “slipping away” or becoming cringe-worthy, relegating them to technological has-beens who must adapt to new ways of doing things or become obsolescent, and very quickly. As proof, Tiffany writes that the early file format “GIF is on its deathbed,” largely because “GIFs have gotten way overused” and are no longer reflective of creativity or innovation. And because Gen Z associates them with millennials. More proof comes from the prominence of the “millennial pause” (waiting a split second after hitting “record” before starting to speak), no longer necessary in the age of Tik Tok, and from the decline of Instagram and Facebook. The solution lies, the authors say, in learning to give up old ways of interacting and adapting—quickly! Of course we all have lived with shifting technologies all our lives, and many have become fairly agile at adapting to them—cross-generational adaptations, if you will. But I am still interested in and puzzled by the names of these generations and of how such titles tend not only to characterize people in a particular era, but stereotype them. In this regard, a writing assignment based on this concept of “generations” seems like a potentially useful one for students today. They might begin by interviewing grandparents (or great grandparents) and parents and asking them what they think about the “generation” their birthdates group them into. They can choose one of these “generations” and do research on it, finding out how it got its name, what its supposed characteristics are, major events that occurred during its span, and so on. Or they might do the same for their own “generation,” investigating its label and asking how well they feel that they fit, or don’t fit, into it. They can probe who is included in these “generations” and who is not: as I read about the “silent” generation, for example, it seems to me to include primarily white people, thus missing a huge and important segment of the population born during those years. Finally, students might compose a piece of oral history based on their conversations with family members or friends. They might write proposals for alternative labels for one or more generations, along with evidence and examples to support them. Or they might write arguments for or against the whole tradition of naming generations. And even if you do not want to engage students in such a formal assignment, the concept of “generations,” their titles, their inclusions and exclusions, and their alternatives can make for lively class discussion followed by a short writing on a focused question.  As to the “end of the millennial Internet era,” I’d love to hear what students in your classes right now think of that!   The image in this post, "Gen Z" by EpicTop10.com, is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ... View more

Throughout all the editions of Elements of Argument, the concept of the warrant has been the most difficult to teach. In fact, we recently started using the term assumption because it was a more familiar term. Instead of discussing what warrant underlies an argument, we speak in terms of what assumption you must accept in order to accept the evidence offered in support of a claim. The more examples we can draw from headlines, the easier it will be for students to find the assumptions that underlie the arguments they hear and read about in the media and to analyze the critical relationships among claim, support, and assumption. Identifying the underlying assumptions held by opposing sides in an argument can also help students see why it is so difficult to find a common ground. Look at how the terms can be applied to this argument: Claim: Abortion after sixteen weeks of pregnancy should not be allowed in our state for any reason. Support: Killing an unborn child after sixteen weeks is murder. Underlying assumption: A fetus of sixteen weeks is a person with the same protection under the law as any other person.   In order to accept the support as proof of the claim, you must first be able to accept the underlying assumption. On the other hand, anyone who cannot accept the underlying assumption will not be able to accept the claim. Consider these statements: Claim: It should be legal to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is not viable. Support: A non-viable fetus can never develop into a child that can survive outside of the womb. Underlying assumption: It should be legal to terminate a pregnancy that cannot produce a child that can survive outside the womb. This type of analysis can be applied to an argument on any subject. Claim: Voting by mail should not be allowed in our state. Support: Voting by mail increases the possibility of voter fraud. Underlying assumption: Forms of voting that increase voter fraud should not be allowed. There is nothing wrong with the form of this last argument, but of course, the support offered must be verifiable for the argument to be valid. The writer or speaker would have to offer convincing evidence that mail-in voting increases the possibility of voter fraud. So far, there seems to be little evidence to support that assertion of widespread fraud. Over sixty court cases have failed to prove fraud in the last presidential election. In a recent interview with Jon Stewart, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is currently running for Lieutenant Governor, defended her state’s decision to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Trans reporter and MSNBC Opinion Columnist Katelyn Burns writes, “In the interview, Stewart grounded his questions in fact, asking Rutledge what basis she had to overrule all of the major medical associations that have designed standards of care for trans minors over the last several decades. In the face of Stewart’s gentle pushback, Rutledge dissembled, remarking that she ‘wasn’t prepared to have a Supreme Court argument’ with Stewart at that particular time. The interview was notable because Stewart called out the attorney general’s arguments in real-time, such as when she tried to claim that 98% of all youth with gender dysphoria eventually grow out of it. ‘That is an incredibly made-up figure,’ Stewart replied, as Rutledge failed to name a single source for her claims.” When Rutledge does face the Supreme Court, she must be prepared to provide evidence to back up her claim and the assumptions on which she bases her argument. This is an important lesson about argumentation that we hope all of our students will learn. "Newspaper Collection, Three Headlines, July 2016"  by Daniel X. O'Neil is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... 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

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

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

**Content alerts for racist violence and sexual violence.**    On a recent Saturday in September, I attended a neighborhood street fair in Queens, New York. Since it was the day before the beginning of Banned Books Week, my local bookstore offered a table to support and sell banned books. The table included a selection of the most frequently banned books, postcards to support the authors and publishers of banned books, and a tablet with a link to the  PEN America's Index of School Book Bans (July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2022). There are 2,435 titles on Pen America’s list, beginning with Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé and ending with Grandpa Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate, from Farm to Family by  Elizabeth Zunon. The books are banned, challenged, and being investigated in schools and libraries across the United States.     In scanning the list, as well as the American Library Association’s lists of Top Ten Most Challenged Books, I found books I remembered very well. There were books I taught in my  first-year writing and literature classes, books I had given as birthday gifts to young relatives assigned by my high school teachers, and books I read for my doctoral comprehensive exams. The list also offered my memories of my first encounters with some of the books in question. At the street fair, I offered my first memory of realizing that book bans existed back in junior high in the early 1970s at my town’s public library in suburban Chicago.   One afternoon, I brought my books to the library’s front desk to be stamped with the due date, only to be met with resistance. “You can’t check those books out,” the librarian said. “Why not?” I asked. “Because these are adult books and children are not allowed to check out books from the adult stacks.” Again I asked why, but the explanation was vague and dismissive. I left without the books. But a few weeks later, I discovered them back on the shelves, and for many visits afterward I found cozy and secluded sections of the adult stacks, and I read the books I wasn’t allowed to read.    I could not stop asking why. Why did the library not allow a tween or young teen to check out books from the adult stacks? The books I wanted to read had no provocative pictures, no offensive language. Mostly I wanted to read history. There were gaps in the school curriculum that needed filling. For instance, there were no lessons about race, class, or gender, and no indication that our textbooks contained contradictory information.    For instance, I learned U.S. history from the perspective of colonizers, not the colonized. After the Civil War, the textbooks said, carpetbaggers and other outsiders from the North tried to change the way of life in the South, but ultimately the carpetbaggers weren’t successful. However, there was no mention that Northerners tried to eliminate a way of life that included lynching, convict leasing, and other forms of de facto slavery. My reading in the adult stacks was a revelation, and having to hide this reading from the librarians was deeply disconcerting.     In high school, there were limited changes, but still more censorship. The sex education classes focused on menstruation (for girls only), reproduction, and sexually transmitted diseases. The complexities of gender, and the basics of sexual assault, rape, consent, birth control, and abortion, if addressed at all, were perfunctory and confusing. But there were other means of discovering information, and this happened through several books that are now on the Pen America list. This discovery begins with Brave New World, an assigned reading for my first-year high school English class. I did not yet have enough background to fully comprehend Aldous Huxley’s dystopia, and the links between the disturbing images in the book, and the disturbances unfolding in the early 1970s. Because of this disconnect, I could not find a way to process the messages of the book.    However, another dystopian world was unraveling below my desk. Someone in the class had procured a copy of another banned book, Go Ask Alice: A Real Diary.  We carefully passed the text back and forth among students, underneath the desks and beneath the teacher’s line of vision. Alice’s diary dealt with sex and sexual violence, drug addiction, and rebelling against parental authority. Even as Alice’s diary turned out to be fake, the topics it addressed were deeply intriguing to me and, before the internet, scant information about them was available to me through my health classes, my family, or the public library. Our Bodies, Ourselves, yet another banned book in print at this time, addressed all these topics and more; . however, I was unaware of its existence until my sophomore year of college.    A few years after Go Ask Alice, I encountered I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the high school library. I still remember the front cover of that book. Showing through the clear protective plastic against a red-orange background was a blackbird soaring upward from the sun. Finding this book in the library was life changing, as it was the first book I ever encountered that centered Black lives. Angelou was part of the same generation as my parents and many of my teachers. Yet Angelou’s first memoir of racism, poverty, sexual assault, segregation, Black community, and Black joy was never listed as a text or acknowledged throughout the entirety of my schooling. I bought my own paperback copy and reread it often, even as the book is yet another entry on the Pen America list.   Destiny, an orange tabby cat, sits next to a paperback copy of a banned book: Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Photo by Susan Bernstein.   The lesson I learn from the experiences of reading all of these books, then and now, is that I could not rely on school for my education, because the parameters of what was acceptable, or what counted as literature, were narrow and opaque. Even as white privilege shapes my view, the current book bans, although not supported by a majority of people, attempt to replicate perspectives of everyday life that are as insufficient and constricted as the views I encountered in and out of school half a century ago. The banned books that lifted me out of that restricted thinking changed my world, and allowed me to understand two contradictory ideas: First, I was not the first young girl in history to suffer the tribulations of coming of age. Second, I needed and still need to interrogate my own privileges as I continue the lifelong work of building beloved community.   Read banned books, teach them, and absorb what they have to offer. The lessons might not seem immediately clear, but processing them over time and distance can open the heart and the imagination to new possibilities.   ... 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

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

  Semester system schools are already in full swing and quarter system schools are just about to start up. Fall 2022 is here, a new school year—one that brings us students who have been through the pandemic of the last two and a half years. Many haven’t been on campus in some time, haven’t been in classes with other students and teachers. Others have been fairly isolated, or isolated on phones, which is a special kind of isolation. For the last month I have listened to stories—as I’m sure you have—about mental health issues among young people today, and I’ve listened especially to those about college students and the difficulties they are reporting. Just yesterday I heard a first-year college student being interviewed: when asked what she had lost during the last two years, she answered, simply, “myself.” I know you can fill in similar examples from your own experience, maybe even from your own family. This has always been my favorite time of year: the new school year, the new class of students, the excitement of beginning college study, the excitement of meeting, and teaching, first-year students. My favorite. Time. Of. Year. But the last two and a half years have chastened and sobered me, as I’ve spoken with so many college-bound students who are feeling distress and even fear. In such a time, my steadfast belief is that teachers of writing/reading/speaking have a special opportunity and a special obligation. We may be teaching the smallest class our students will take. We almost certainly will be meeting students one-on-one more than other faculty, either in office hour sessions or in writing center sessions. We will absolutely be sharing writing with students, reading and responding to what they have to say and, we hope, establishing a two-way connection with them.  This year, more than ever, we need to make the most of these opportunities. But I think we need to do something more: we need to introduce students to the ludic nature of rhetoric and remind them of the crucial importance of play and playfulness to their learning and to their lives.  In this endeavor, I am guided and inspired by Lynda Barry, whose One! Hundred! Demons! I have taught for eons and whose comics and especially books on creativity (Picture This, What It Is) are always on my desk, along with her brilliant syllabus.  Barry is convinced that there is an artist in each of us and that playing—playing!—is the best way to let that artist emerge. And to release anxieties of all kinds and to become creators rather than recorders or responders only. (If you’ve ever had a chance to participate in one of Barry’s workshops, you’ll have seen the magic happen: if you haven’t, take some time to read about them or find out if she will be giving workshops anywhere near you in the coming months.) Barry says that when she is working with graduate students, almost always uptight and anxious and focused laser-like on one objective—she pairs them with 3 and 4 year olds: she says sixty to ninety minutes playing with these little ones loosens everything up, shifts patterns of thought, and leads to some brilliant problem solving. And when she says playing, she means playing:  down on the floor, making things together, defining things together, even just hanging out. While I don’t have access to a bunch of preschoolers (wish I did!), I can still introduce play into our classroom: activities where I ask students to listen hard for three minutes and then describe what they heard, or hand them objects they must describe and name without opening their eyes–you can probably think of more. And we can be playful with writing: trying for limericks or witty haikus; writing a very long sentence about the process of writing a very long sentence; trying for a sentence with the most double negatives, or the most metaphors or similes. Anything to be playful and to loosen up, to relax, and then to create. I would like to make all our writing projects more fun, with more potential for play—even a research-based argument; even a research project itself. I will write more about these possibilities soon. In the meantime, I am thinking of all writing teachers and students everywhere, and hoping that, together, we can have a healthy—and a healing—year.  Image used under a standard Adobe Stock license.  ... View more

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

  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 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