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

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

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

My recent thinking about this year’s new emojis, how they are used/abused, and especially the role they play in so much online communication led me eventually to several intriguing discussions of tone indicators, a letter or letters placed after a forward slash at the end of a phrase or sentence to indicate the tone (or feelings) intended. Also known as “tone tags,” such indicators are helpful in written communication, where body language or facial expressions can’t help convey tone and feeling. They have been especially useful for neurodivergent people who may not always understand tone or nuances of meaning. As you might expect (or know), they are widely used on social media like Twitter and TikTok. I was interested to look through a few “master lists” of tone indicators, only a couple of which I knew (my absolute favorite is /c for copypasta—look it up!). Here are some examples: /j = joking /hj = half joking /s or /sarc = sarcastic / sarcasm /srs = serious /nsrs = not serious /lh = light hearted As I thought about these “indicators,” I realized that they are not completely new. I knew, for instance, that Jonathan Swift had used special marks in the margins of his text, and that at one point an upside-down question mark had indicated a rhetorical question. (The illustrious British printer Henry Denham seems to have been the inventor of that one.). And I learned that a 17th century British philosopher, John Wilkins, used upside-down exclamation marks to signal irony. But the number and ubiquity of tone indicators in use today surprised me. While tone indicators are typically used at the end of a sentence, etiquette seems to call for including them at the beginning as well as at the end of a sentence when possible, and for never using them as a joke. Writing in Screen Shot, Malavika Pradeen says that [T]one indicators can be used anywhere over text be it personal chats, social media or even emails—absolutely anywhere the tone is ambiguous and hard to pick up on. But one disclaimer is to avoid using them as a joke. It defeats their entire purpose and strips a safe space from neurodivergent people.  So just what are these tone indicators? They're paralinguistic, certainly, but are they like punctuation marks? Or not just “like” punctuation marks but actual punctuation marks? How do our students understand their use—and how and when do they choose to use them? These sound to me like some very good research questions students might like to take on /srs. Image Credit: "Lighted Keyboard 1" by sfxeric, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

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

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

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 In my classes, I have always recognized the importance of observation and inference as students move back and forth between narration and exposition as they write. This is even more important for digital writers as they learn to read and render situations through multimodal composing. Observation and inference are generally practiced in scientific or social science settings to understand evidence, predict behavior, and generate conclusions, but students benefit from this understanding in composition classes as well. Click to view Observation and Inference Activity slide show.According to Key Differences, observation is “the act of carefully watching a person or object when something is happening.” Observation generally involves the senses and objective perceptions of what is presented. It is hands-on, in-the-present and requires “[attentive] monitoring of the subject under study.” Inference making is “termed as an act of deriving rational conclusion from known facts or circumstances.” It is generally subjective and involves making assumptions based on observations and often involves secondhand information. This is where we theorize, guess, and make connections. Since inference making is subjective, we often find that we can make many inferences based on a single observation. In a common example, we can observe that the grass is wet (senses) but we can make multiple inferences such as: it rained, sprinklers were on, it is in a flood zone, or a dog recently stopped by (among others). Or, we might notice that someone has a lot of food in their refrigerator and make the inference that they are a good cook or preparing for a vacation or that they are really hungry. Basically, these assumptions could all theoretically be true based on what we observe in front of us but could also generate alternate inferences that could be considered true too. In this assignment, I ask students to understand and apply the concepts of observation and inference and immerse themselves in a place where they take images of their observations and generate plausible inferences. They set up a visual, double-entry journal of sorts in which they include their images (observations) along with inferences to make meaningful connections. We then create a collaborative slide show to share their ideas through multimodal examples.   Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook – Ch. 9g, Thinking Critically about Visual Texts The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) – Ch.7f, Think Critically about Visual Texts EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 8, Reading and Listening Analytically, Critically, and Respectfully   Steps to the Assignment Help students define the terms observation and inference (see Key Differences article as a starting place). Once I have shared working definitions, I show the class a collection of my own images for an observation and inference making activity in which they call out inferences to practice this cognitive process. I encourage multiple responses to demonstrate the theoretical nature of inference making and ask students to cite evidence from their observations that lead to their conclusions. Next, I challenge students to find a location (outside of class on their own) to collect observations in the form of images (usually around 20). I encourage them to use their senses and get specific as they take pictures of objects, landmarks, people, buildings, landscapes, and other things that involve sensory observation. Then they choose 10 images and create a page in which they include the image (observation) and a short paragraph describing their inferences (meaning, assumption, idea). I also ask them to include an overview statement in which they speak to some of their connections and ideas (observations and inferences).   Once back in class together, each student chooses a strong example from their collection and submits the image and an explanation of their inference to a collaborative Google slide show. (This should just take a few minutes if they are prepared ahead of time.) We share and review them as a class and talk about examples.   Reflections on the Activity A humorous example of how inferences can change with context.I use this activity to get students to understand that the concepts of observation and inference- making are forever present in our lives and in processing our worlds. As digital storytellers, content creators, and writers, we recreate these experiences for our audiences through moving back and forth between observation and inference. I generally have students complete this activity early in the term as it creates a foundation for curation and creation in all the projects throughout the semester and sets the tone for critical reading, writing, and multimodal composition. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Patrick Morgan, Assistant Professor of English and Director of First-Year and Professional Writing at the University of Louisiana Monroe.   Tragedy to Hope It was my first semester teaching in the Deep South. Introducing a narrative unit to twenty-four freshman writers, I shared that apocryphal story about Ernest Hemingway betting a bunch of writers that he could compose a six-word short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I asked them to unpack the story. Twenty-three students offered the usual tragedies: variations on infant mortality and infertility. One shy student said, “Maybe the author is a shoemaker.” And just like that, tragedy turned to hope. This was the story of an enterprising cobbler carving out the market for new shoes.       Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Last week I had an opportunity to join a Zoom conversation with a group of Rhetoric Society of America fellows, organized by Rich Enos and facilitated by Krista Ratcliffe. I almost missed it: one of those days where both phones were ringing at the same time, my doorbell was chiming, and email was pouring in. But at the last minute I made some executive decisions, turned off phones, and clicked “join.” And my, oh, my, I wouldn’t have missed this discussion for anything! As Jackie Royster said as we were signing off, we had enjoyed a solid hour of intellectual stimulation that reminded all of us why we are in this profession in the first place and why we love what we do. For an hour, we listened as Ed Schiappa (MIT) and Ralph Cintron (UIC) talked about their current work, and what a listen it was: I was literally on the edge of my seat as I leaned in to the Zoom screen. Ralph told us about a project he is collaborating on with a colleague in law—one they’re estimating may eventually be a three-volume study. A history of ideas project, it is questioning the very foundations of thinking about life on Earth in general and on what it means to be human in particular. I will write more about this project but simply note now that it seems to me at basis to be a project about definitions and how they shape what we can know (or be, or do). Ed also talked to us about definitions, and in particular the definition of a disputed term today, “transgender.” Calling this his “pandemic project,” Ed spoke of the exigencies surrounding this term and then described the research he has carried out in the last 18 months or so. In short, he has immersed himself in the legal definitions of “transgender” in a number of different sites, from states that regulate bathrooms based on definitions of the term to sports teams, prisons, and same-sex schools. To say that he encountered a wide range and variety of definitions seems like an understatement, and the lack of any kind of coherence or consensus simply underscored how arbitrary the very momentous decisions that are based on these definitions are, decisions that affect real people in real circumstances and often in not just arbitrary but harmful ways. Once again, I thought of the power of definitions to regulate us in all kinds of ways, and of the need to engage students in examining definitional disputes, thinking through them, and considering how definitions impact their lives. As I listened to Ed, I also thought of times I’ve taught “definition essays” as fairly perfunctory, when they should be anything but. I also thought about the depth of research available to students who want to study a term’s definition, tracking it through time and looking at examples of it in various sites, as Ed has done with “transgender.” And I thought of the learning that could happen as a result of such investigations, the deepening understandings that could accrue. What I had learned in just half an hour hearing about Ed’s research made me want not just to read his book (and—wait for it—The Transgender Exigency: Defining Sex and Gender in the 21st Century is coming!) but to ask students to work together to examine the definitions that seem most important and problematic to their own lives. Image Credit: "Dictionary" by greeblie, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

Like many other writing teachers, I have spent much of the last pandemic year reading and learning about how to be more inclusive and equitable in our schools and universities and about how to practice antiracist pedagogy. It’s been a year of the most intensive learning I can remember. As an old(er!) white woman who grew up in the segregated South and came of age in the 60s, that’s saying something: in those early days I confronted my own racist background, my own racism. Or I thought I did. What I’ve learned in the last couple of years is that I have much more work to do and much more to learn about what being inclusive in thinking and teaching really means. Thanks to the outpouring of brilliant scholarship from so many Black scholars, Indigenous scholars, and other scholars of color, teachers of writing (and especially white teachers of writing) have a chance to adopt new practices of inclusion. One of the many scholars I’ve learned from this last year is University of Central Florida professor Esther Milu, whose advice as a member of our Advisory Board for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the 8th edition of EasyWriter was so invaluable that I asked if she would have a follow up conversation with me. She graciously agreed, and I remain indebted to her for her perceptive advice and insights. (To learn more about the advisory board, visit the EasyWriter catalog page and select “DEI Advisory Board” under the “Preview” tab.) So when I picked up the July issue of College English, I was excited to see an essay by Esther Milu as the lead article, and one that provides another example of the kind of groundbreaking scholarship I mentioned earlier. In “Diversity of Raciolinguistic Experiences in the Writing Classroom: An Argument for a Transnational Black Language Pedagogy,” she calls our attention to what should be obvious: that Black students are part of a very diverse group. Yet too often, teachers seem unaware of this diversity, assuming that if students are Black, they must speak Black Vernacular English. Milu offers multiple examples of African students who have no experience with BVE: Because US raciolinguistic ideologies are based on US-centric racial and linguistic formations, writing and literacy instructors tend to subsume all linguistic practices of Black students in one racial category—Black. (416) In Milu’s experience, this tendency to lump all students who are Black into one language category leads to unfortunate results, particularly for Black students who come from a very wide range of other cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Furthermore, as Samy Alim points out, the “sociolinguistic order of things” in the US works to maintain the status quo, with white middle-class English “at the top of the language hierarchy.” But this focus on English, Milu notes, “fails to account for how other imperial languages of Europe . . . have historically contributed to a racist and oppressive ‘sociolinguistic order’ globally” (417). Ironically, raising student awareness about the hegemonic forces at work in (white) US English may fail to alert transnational and immigrant African students’ to the way that their indigenous languages have been erased or suppressed by European languages. Milu then introduces us to five African students who “are not descendants of enslaved Black people,” and specifically to writing they have done about their experiences in a white US institution, writing that theorizes their language histories and identities and reflects on how those histories relate to their language development in general. Here is Osa, a second-generation Nigerian born in the US: Americans view me as a foreigner. As soon as the see or hear my name, they assume that I am not an American. They assume that I am from out of the country and that I cannot speak English. They always ask, “Where are you REALLY from,” like I did not just tell them I was born in New Jersey. Also as a black girl that speaks African American Language (Ebonics) people marginalize me to be the stereotypical black girl. People from the black community assume that when I speak Sandard English I am trying to be something that I am not. They think that I am trying to be white. (433-34) Osa’s writings point out the real complexity of her linguistic and cultural identity and underscore Milu’s call on teachers to recognize this complexity, with all its implications for our teaching. Texts like Osa’s are the heart of Milu’s essay, and I hope everyone will read the gripping stories these students tell.   Their stories, of course, are a large part of what leads Milu to recommend a move to a “transnational Black language pedagogy” (436), which she locates theoretically in the early research of Geneva Smitherman, with references to Smitherman’s own grounding in the work of Black scholars such as Beryl Bailey, Lorenzo Turner, and W. E. B. Du Bois. This pedagogy calls for “teaching slavery, colonialism, and racism together to better reveal how they contributed to raciolinguistic ideologies, racialization practices, and racist sociolinguistic order in US and various Afro-Diasporic contexts” (436-37). To do so, Milu says, writing teachers will have to “familiarize themselves with various approaches to language decolonization in Africa and other Afro-Diasporic contexts” and adopt translingualism as an “option to language decolonization in Africa . . . because languaging practices in post-colonial Africa, especially among the youth, are translingual” (437). In Milu’s view, a translingual approach to writing makes room for and values linguistic heterogeneity and “gives agency to users to draw language resources from their linguistic repertoire to achieve various writing and communicative ends” (438). Some will push back against Milu’s advocacy of a translingual approach, arguing that it does not focus strongly enough on race (Milu mentions April Baker-Bell as one who might make this criticism). Milu acknowledges the conversation in progress among those who theorize and advocate for translingualism, critical language awareness, and various forms of antiracist pedagogy. More importantly, her perspective—and her presentation of a transnational Black language pedagogy—add a great deal of substance to the ongoing discussion. Image Credit: "Black Student Leadership Conference..." by COD Newsroom, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

We know from our own experience, and from mountains of research (see Iowa State’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching to get a sense of what’s out there), that students need to feel like they belong in our classrooms if they are going to succeed. We foster this sense of belonging in everything we do: from the way we greet students on their first day in class to the way say goodbye on their final day.  For me, though, course design is the first area of focus that comes to mind when I think about how to ensure students feel they are an integral part of the class. We can help our students feel at home even before they arrive in our classrooms by carefully planning the fifteen weeks we will share with them so that our time spent together is equitable, clear, relevant, and reflective. The Course Design Equity and Inclusion Rubric available at Stanford’s Teaching Commons offers a helpful way to evaluate one’s own course content. The rubric features categories such as “Personal Connections and Relevance,” “Transparency of Content,” “Diversity of Perspectives” and “Diversity of Media” that will remind instructors—especially those of us who have been around a while—to take a fresh look at not only what material we are assigning but how we expect students to respond to it. The pandemic has reminded us how reliant we have become on technology to enable learning, but also how tentative our connections to that technology sometimes are. It’s vital, therefore, that while we take advantage of the learning resources that are at hand, we make no easy assumptions about students’ access to or competence in the technosphere. As Clint Smith points out in his 2019 Atlantic article “Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students That They Do Not Belong,” it is wrong to treat all students “as homogeneous…, as if they all navigate these schools in the same way.” Naturally, our course homepage and syllabus should be easy to read and easy to navigate. We not only model clear writing for our students in these documents, but we also ensure that our expectations and theirs are in concert. And it is here that we demonstrate—by assigning diverse authors and content-creators in varied genres—that we honor a range of ways of expressing ideas and opinions. Of course, students cannot succeed unless their basic needs are met. Even the most dedicated student will necessarily prioritize shelter and food over a problem-solution essay. Our awareness of our campus’s full resources, and our ability to guide students directly to the resources they need, is a clear sign that we believe all students belong in our classes. Instructors in every discipline take for granted the importance of their own field of study, but those of us in English probably feel that the importance of our subject is self-evident. It’s obvious to us that success in college will depend, to a large extent, on one’s ability to communicate clearly and persuasively. However, our discipline’s relevance may not be immediately apparent to a student planning to study Chemistry or Computer Science, and we need early and often to connect the value of effective written and spoken communication to success across the curriculum. In a study of college students from nonmajor sections of biology, psychology, and English, researchers found that students feel an increased sense of belonging to the course in which they are enrolled when they perceive that “academic tasks are interesting, important, and useful” (Freeman et al 205). Finally, we must plan time throughout the semester for students’ self-reflection. In my experience, these meta-conversations about college that students may initially feel are off-topic, may wind up being as important as any discussion of course content. Maithreyi Gopalan and Shannon Brady recommend creating an environment “that helps students feel connected to each other, to faculty and staff, and to the institution.” Among their suggestions for fostering this sense of belonging is foregrounding the idea that “certain kinds of challenges in the transition to college…are common, shared by many students from diverse backgrounds, and likely to abate over time. Such thoughtful outreach seems to be especially powerful for Black, Latinx, Native, and first-generation students.” Granted, Day One of any class is a crucial one, but “Day Zero”—the planning that takes place before the course even starts—is just as important. ... View more

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

Tiny Teaching Stories: Launch  Share Your Inspirational, Motivational or Funny Teaching Anecdotes With Us! Hello! I am excited to announce the launch of a new series on Bedford Bits: Tiny Teaching Stories, and to invite your participation.  What are Tiny Teaching Stories, you ask? See our introductory video or view our hub here:   To get us started, I'd like to share my own Tiny Teaching Story with you. We were small zoom squares, remote, distant, across 4 continents. In our online writing class, I talked about the need to create a classroom community; they filled the chatbox talk with fears about the pandemic, who had died, and who was in the hospital. Isabelle, in Vietnam, sprawled on her pink ruffled bedspread; Zara, in Pakistan, turned off her video to leave class for morning prayers. We understood that we would never see each other in person; we would always be at a distance, always in gallery view. And yet, when I missed class on the day my mother died, from across 4 continents they sent me poems of consolation and a bouquet of sunflowers.   Now, we want to hear from you. Send us your Tiny Teaching Story! Submit your Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com. Guidelines for submission: Stories should be no more than 100 words. Include with your submission the attached release form. Tiny Teaching Stories can be published anonymously or with attribution; please indicate your preference in your submission and include a brief one to two-sentence biography for non-anonymous publication. If you would like to, we encourage you to also submit your social media handles and a headshot (optional). Please change identifying names and details of students to protect their privacy.     ... View more

I have written before about DBLAC—Digital Black Lit and Composition—the organization founded by Khirsten L. Scott and Lou Maraj in 2016 as a digital network devoted to the support of Black graduate students and emerging scholars in the fields of literacy, composition, literature, rhetoric, and related areas. In the five years since then, this group has held transformative in-person retreats and sponsored highly successful virtual reading and writing groups. They’ve also sponsored panels at a number of national conferences. Professor Scott wrote recently alerting members and readers to the opening of the Fall 2021 writing sessions, the first of which was held just last week on September 15. DBLAC writing group sessions follow a similar format: participants register in advance and then are invited to join in on any or all of the slated activities, beginning with Pre-Writing Affirmations and Writing Goals, followed by a three-hour writing period (with a break roughly half way through) and then an hour of time for reflection. While I have not been lucky enough to be part of any of these groups yet, I continue to follow report of them and to think of them (and the equally interesting reading group sessions) as one of gifts that kept giving during the pandemic, since they were designed to be virtual. And I am especially interested in the pre-writing affirmations that participants do—a kind of activity I used to use in abbreviated fashion at the beginning of my first-year writing classes to settle us all down and get us focused. Here’s what DBLAC posted on September 15: Before setting our goals and beginning our writing activities, let's share positive affirmations about our writing intentions. Statements can vary in length and quantity. The goal here is to promote positive energy within the group. Pre-Writing Affirmations: Transformation of Silence into Action In the spirit of this theme, I turn to Audre Lorde's words in this chapter of Sister Outsider: “The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.” Lorde’s words seem to me to provide a good starting point for many of our writing classes, especially very early in the term. Reading that first sentence aloud in class, I can imagine looking directly and closely at my students, making eye contact with as many as possible, asking them to think about what it means to say “the fact that we are here” in this mid-pandemic time, and asking about what some of the silences and differences that stand between us are. And about how we might begin not just to recognize and name them but to bridge them. While I and my students wouldn’t have several hours to write, we would have 20 to 30 minutes at our disposal—along with some time for group discussion that could serve as a primer for later reflections written at leisure and brought to class the following day. I am not in the classroom (virtual or in person) this term, to my regret. But if I were, this is a prompt I would want to use—thanks to Audre Lorde and DBLAC. I believe it could well set the reflective, contemplative, interrogative tone I hope would guide our classroom deliberations throughout. If you should use this in your classroom, I’d love to hear about it and its results. And in the meantime, I recommend checking out the DBLAC website and signing up for their highly informational newsletter. Image Credit: "Pen and Paper" by kdinuraj, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

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