**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

  Elizabeth Catanese is an Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Community College of Philadelphia. Trained in mindfulness-based stress reduction, Elizabeth has enjoyed incorporating mindfulness activities into her college classroom for over ten years. Elizabeth works to deepen her mindful awareness through writing children's books, cartooning and parenting her energetic twin toddlers, Dylan and Escher.     For many years in my role as a professor at Community College of Philadelphia, I would dread “going over the syllabus” with students. I value the syllabus as a space to share expectations, desired outcomes and, of course, the assignment schedule. However, students were always bored when I read them parts of the syllabus, and I was bored too. Reading the syllabus to students did not help them retain information either. I know this because students would routinely ask about information covered in the syllabus all throughout the semester. There had to be a better way to present syllabus content. I tried having students present parts of the syllabus to their peers during the first class. There was nothing terrible about this, but trust was not yet built among students. As a result, presenting was a challenge, and many students felt anxious. It also took up too much class time to define presentation expectations and have students present their work. Back to the drawing board. Literally. I started to research ways to make the syllabus itself look more visually engaging. There are some amazing ways to do this, from font selections to infographics to cartoons! However, when I tried it, I couldn’t pull it off. For example, indicating the location of my office via a map with stick figures was now maybe more “fun,” but the overall document was less readable. Third time’s the charm? I created a scavenger hunt where teams of students would look for pertinent syllabus information to win stickers—college students love a good sticker. Unfortunately, this activity started to become more about trying to win than learning content. Students bonded, but they remembered very little about the class requirements. The activity that works for me now happened purely by accident. I sent the wrong version of the syllabus to our copy center and decided not to pass out a syllabus until I could get students the correct version. So on one first day of class there was no syllabus. On the fly, I asked students to pair up (or work individually) and write down three questions they had about the class. I gave examples. This could be anything from “what’s your attendance policy?” to “what are three topics we will study?” to “do we have a lot of group work?” or “how much homework is there?” Then students shared their questions with me. Did they ever share! I learned a lot about their main academic concerns and emotions about taking the class in addition to questions they had about the syllabus. Some I didn’t know the answer to, but their queries forced me to reflect about my teaching. Am I a hard grader? I wondered. Is this my favorite class to teach? Like my students who had to be courageous and vulnerable in asking questions, I too had to be courageous and vulnerable in answering. The shared experiences connected us. And because students didn’t have the syllabus in front of them, there was no shame in asking about something that may have already been on it. Furthermore, when students are the ones asking the questions, their brains are ready to receive and integrate the answers. This phenomenon was definitely at play. Students listened eagerly to what their peers wanted to know as well, which resulted in a foundation of safety and trust among students. And, importantly, no one was bored. I’m a professor who has always been attracted to complex, multisensory activities. However, 15 years into teaching at the collegiate level, I have found that sometimes relatively simple plans like this one can be the most engaging.  Now on the first day of class, I complete this syllabus Q and A activity with students, and only afterwards do I pass out the print syllabus. We take five to seven minutes to address any content that didn’t come up during the activity. This also works in the online format; I simply open a discussion board about class expectations and the syllabus before I post the course syllabus for students to review. Students are equally communicative in the discussion board for this activity, and in addition to receiving my responses, they often will receive syllabus information from their peers. As the semester goes on, it’s a very rare occasion that someone asks me something I’ve already defined in the syllabus, and starting with day one of class, my students are more prepared and a lot happier.   ... 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

I wrote in my last blog about a major overhaul to grading in my FYC/corequisite course this fall.  What have I learned four weeks into the semester?  All course activities need to align with the grading strategy—assignments, online discussions, feedback, and peer review. I am committed to peer review in my FYC courses, for reasons shared by many of you:  when well-designed, it encourages close reading, audience awareness, and attention to writing choices.  But in corequisite classes—particularly when students come from a variety of language backgrounds and classroom experiences—it can be an exercise in frustration.  Students come without drafts, and those that have drafts may resort to cheerleading and repetition of pseudo grammar rules (Don’t start a sentence with “because”), despite explicit instructions and instructor modeling of more appropriate feedback.  To address these concerns, I’ve used rubrics to assess peer review, and I’ve provided feedback on the feedback.  But with corequisite students in particular, the gap between what I envision and what actually happens remains significant.   So did the alternative grading make a difference? To receive process credit for the first peer review, students needed to meet basic specifications: prior to class, they had to watch a short video about peer-review and read Richard Straub’s classic, “Responding, Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing.”  For both the video and reading, I gave short verification quizzes online (to be completed at home, with open resources).  Students also needed a draft of at least 750 words for their literacy narratives; most students had completed this draft during class the week before.   On the morning of the scheduled peer review, all students had an acceptable draft, and 16 of 18 students had completed at least one of the two preparation assignments; 14 completed both.   In class, students received written instructions before meeting with their groups: they were to add three specific questions to their drafts for their reviewers to address, and for each paper in the group, they were to provide 3 to 5 in-line comments or questions, using the comments feature in Google Docs, and offer short answers to the three questions posed by the author.  Comments had to be written, but they were welcome to discuss as a group as well.   I allotted a full hour for the groups of three to work; I did not participate in their discussions unless they explicitly invited me to do so.  Because students knew the specifications for process points, I did not hover or insist that they stay “on task” the whole time; groups that lost focus for a few moments eventually got back on track. After class, I skimmed through the comments on the drafts.  Despite the preparation and my encouragement to focus on thesis, development, and considerations of a reader’s experience, there were still many comments related to grammar and mechanics in snappy directives: Capitalize this!  Run-on! Don’t start with and!  There was also a considerable amount of cheerleading: Good job! Your story’s great! Fantastic. But there were also hints of deeper engagement with the content:  more specific encouragement (This part was really amazing), questions and information requests (Could you tell me more about…?), and thoughtful suggestions (Would it help to talk more about how you felt at that moment?).    I recognize how unfamiliar this style of peer review is to my corequisite students.  Despite that unfamiliarity, this semester, students made reasonable efforts to meet the specifications I had set before them.  Nearly all had prepared.  The grading scheme seemed to have made a difference—so process points were awarded. A desk with a lamp, laptop, and books on top of it. Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash. In the following class, I asked students to complete a reflection to earn additional process credit:  Which comments from peer review (and the instructor) were most helpful, and why?  They also needed to identify what information or resources they needed going forward.   Students had about 15 minutes to complete the review, in class, to earn points for the activity.  And the results were eye-opening: Some students admitted, honestly, that they had not received useful feedback.  They had specific questions but did not get answers to them.  Others acknowledged they got encouragement from students, but they were not sure what to do with it. A few students mentioned specific comments that helped them narrow their focus or hone their thesis. It was clear to me that the peer review itself fell short of what I had envisioned.  At the same time, student reflections demonstrated that deeper purposes were accomplished: students recognized possibilities (if yet unrealized) in peer review, they saw the power in a thesis, and they identified the types of comments that would not help improve a paper (whether given or received).   I won’t chide students who only gave grammar corrections or cheerleading.  I won’t use a rubric to assign grades for the peer review.  Instead, we will review their collected comments as part of the assigned preparation for our next round.  I will ask them to reflect on what they need from peer review and take the initiative to make sure they get it.  Students who meet the specifications will receive their process points.   Has my alternative grading scheme transformed peer review with corequisite students?  Hardly.  But I had full participation in the process for the first time in many semesters, with progress towards more strategic engagement for many.  I’ll take that. What’s working for you in corequisite peer review? ... View more

  If you haven’t gotten a chance to look at the March 2022 issue of College English, I recommend it: every article is well worth a read. I call attention here especially to Elizabethada A. Wright’s piece, “The Colonialism and Racism of the “English” Department: A Call for Renaming” (College English, Vol. 84 (4), pp. 356-375). I can’t say that I agree with all of Wright’s assumptions or conclusions, but I admire the historical context this article provides in the move away from classical languages and toward vernaculars and the careful analysis of the effects that names have: naming is indeed important. I do not assume that language departments in general (Spanish, German,  Chinese, etc.) are by nature colonialist and/or racist, nor that a similar department devoted to teaching writing, speaking, and reading in English would necessarily be colonialist or racist. Rather it is the attitudes that surround such teaching that create the basis for the charge brought by Wright (and many others).  In any case, I am all for renaming departments of English, having first suggested that approach some forty years ago—and repeated in 2020—to the Department at Ohio State.  I did so then and so now primarily for the major reason Wright puts forth: the title “English” does not convey what it is that such departments are doing here in the first quarter of the 21st century.  Of course, teachers of writing and rhetoric began recognizing that fact decades ago: hence the separation of those groups from Departments of English and the founding of new departments, such as the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas, the department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State, the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Utah, or the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State. And, as Wright points out, some renaming of English Departments is already occurring, as at Oregon State where they now have a School of Writing, Literature, and Film.  The efforts to clarify what we are doing—not to mention why we are doing it—when we teach writing, reading, and speaking in any language is in my estimation an important and necessary move, especially in terms of probing our assumptions, preconceptions, and biases. And that goes for examining and re-examining what it is we call or name what we are doing. What’s in a name? is a crucial question. And it’s one our students should be engaged in answering, from students in first-year writing and rhetoric classes I taught at Stanford, to graduate students in writing, rhetoric, and literacy programs like the one I used to participate in at Ohio State—along with students at many other departments of English and of writing and rhetoric at colleges throughout the country. It’s worth asking our students what they think they are studying—and why—and also what they would call/name it if given the opportunity. What might students at North Carolina A&T say? Or at Diné College? Or at Mt. Holyoke, or a hundred other places, where students bring with them many languages in addition to English as well as many different Englishes? As Wright points out, at this time of movement toward adopting transnationalism and transnational dispositions and what Maria Lugones called “world traveling,” it seems especially timely ro examine the names we use for what we do with special care and urgency. Were I given a chance to name (and create) a department, its name would have “rhetoric,” “writing,” and "media” in it—though I’m not sure in what order or what else I might include. I would assume that I have some things  to teach but also many things to learn from those in my classes, and that we will do so using and sharing a variety of Englishes, at the very least. And so—what would you like to call the department you belong to? How would you describe its parameters and goals?  While you contemplate these questions, you might take a look at Elizabethada Wright’s essay as well as James Slevin’s amazing 2001 book, Introducing English: Essays in the Intellectual Work of  Composition.  I think you’ll find Jim was asking many questions that consume us today—just some twenty years earlier. "Close up of lessons on the chalkboard" by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ... View more

I don’t know when we’ll start an academic year without reflecting on the impact of the pandemic, but this is not yet that year. This semester is the first time since March 2020 that I have taught without a mask in a classroom, and it still feels odd. I keep forgetting to floss after lunch and before teaching. (Masks had ancillary virtues!) While many of our incoming first-year students had some semblance of a “normal” senior year of high school, they still seem to be stumbling through social interactions. I asked my new students how many of them consider themselves to be introverts, and every single person raised a hand. I waved my arms like a conductor, inviting them to take in the data in the room. “See? We’re all in this weirdness together.” They laughed, nervously. How can we, in our writing classrooms, best rise to this occasion? Our campus theme for first-year students seeks to address this challenge: “You belong here. You can do this. We are here to help.” Those sentiments may feel too pat—too easy. If you are reading this, however, you are likely someone who is thoughtful about putting those claims into action for your students. "'Get to Know You' Bingo," Photo by April Lidinsky, Sep 2022Given the pandemic’s atrophying impact on our social skills, I have worked with the peer mentor in my classroom to design strategies in building empathy, connections and, dare I say it, occasional consensus. We’re starting with very low stakes. For example, we created a “Get to Know You Bingo” activity for the first day (pictured), which invited empathetic connections right off the bat. “You’re a singer/cat person/only child/etc., too? That’s cool.” The vibe was fun. (OK, I’ll admit I may have sweetened the stakes with a prize for the first “bingo” — a set of new highlighter markers.) In our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing, co-authored with Stuart Greene, we introduce students to the “Rogerian” approach to argument, based on psychologist Carl Rogers’ theories. Rogers guides us to reduce the sense of threat in a conversational encounter in order to open the possibility of finding common ground. For writers, this means: Conveying to readers that their different views are understood; Acknowledging conditions under which readers’ views are valid; Helping readers see that the writer shares common ground with them; Creating mutually acceptable solutions to agreed-on problems. When students practice empathetic encounters in classroom conversation, we help them see that their voices matter, that they will be listened to, and that they belong on our campus and in academic conversations. Practicing Rogerian moves helps students see these moves in other writers’ texts, and helps them use them in their own writing. Certainly, I hope we are also offering students skills that are much-needed far beyond our classrooms. While we’re already a couple weeks into our semester, we continue to start class with connection and conversation activities, such as having students count themselves off into different small groups and asking them to find 3 or 4 traits in common in 3-4 minutes (extra props for the more unusual commonalities). These not only serve as ice-breakers, but also help students see the value of finding common ground. I’d include here the value of communal laughter, as students discover they share a love of the same flavor-blasted snacks, brand of hot sauce, or number of tattoos. Sure, these activities “take up time,” but they are an investment in the whole semester (and beyond, as friendships spark). These conversations are a reminder that when we write, we write for real readers who want to be persuaded, not bullied or lectured, and with whom we might have much in common. What strategies work for you as you help students see the value of empathy and finding common ground as we help them settle into yet another weird year? ... View more

The divided nature of our country makes arguments a common topic in the daily headlines. People argue about whether the FBI was justified in searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, whether the throne of England should have passed directly from Queen Elizabeth to Prince William, bypassing King Charles, whether there should be any exceptions to the abortion ban passed by many states recently, and whether the structure of the Supreme Court should be changed. These days we argue about anything and everything. You’ve probably been in arguments where you were pretty sure no one was going to “win” because each side was wholeheartedly sure that they were right and no one was really listening to the other side.  So why study argument? Let me add a bit of emphasis: Why STUDY argument? Doesn’t arguing just come naturally to people? Yes, but recognizing and building good arguments are skills that can be learned. You may not convince everyone even with a sound argument, but at least you will know that your case is a good one. Elements of Argument and other argument textbooks teach you what the pieces of a good argument are, from clearly stating your thesis—called a claim in argument—to supporting that claim with good, sound reasoning, to linking all ideas into a coherent whole that considers the audience.  The role of the media has been seriously compromised ever since then President Trump convinced his supporters that he was the only one they could believe and that the media is the enemy of the people. He alone, however, did not move us away from a time when news reporting used to be objective. There has been a slide toward bias in the news which has made it difficult to identify whether networks and news sources are liberal or conservative. Now we must find a way back somehow to a place where the person making the argument is less important than the truth of the argument; the future of our democracy depends on it.  The more you read or listen to other people’s arguments, the more you will be able to analyze them for soundness, to recognize flaws in the logic, and to explain their faulty reasoning. You may even find yourself shifting your own thinking when you try to justify your opinions and find the proper evidence lacking. Sometimes there is common ground in the middle that makes compromise possible, but the more firmly beliefs are held, the more inflexible the believer will be. Firmly held beliefs can be a good thing, but examined beliefs are easier to defend.   Photo: "Couple fight each other"  by Afif Kusuma is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... 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

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

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

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

  Brittny M. Byrom (recommended by Michael Harker) is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition and serves as the Associate Director of Technology and Finance of the Georgia State University Writing Studio. Her primary research focuses on the intersection of theories of rhetorical empathy and beauty and justice. Her work in writing center research concentrates on developing balanced practices between tutor emotional labor and collaborative learning environments. Brittny began teaching in 2017 and began working in writing centers in 2015.     What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? The most important skills I aim to provide students are self-reflection and critical analysis. I design my course with ideas of Rhetorical Empathy (Lisa Blankenship & Eric Leake) and justice (Elaine Scarry). My primary goal is to provide diverse materials and design engaging activities that help students communicate their reactions to content while making space for fellow students to communicate their own reactions. Understanding why we react in certain ways to certain material and discussing how we each respond to similar material differently demonstrates how to read and interpret texts from distinct perspectives and lenses. I believe such reflexive practices prepare students for productive critical analysis discussions. By knowing how we reached a conclusion and discussing different perspectives, students can more thoroughly and thoughtfully explain their arguments and the rationale backing up their stance.  The most common issue I have found students struggling with is figuring out what they want to say about a topic. They come with some facts and details; however, they struggle to say anything about the mound of evidence provided. I hope that by helping students develop self-reflection skills they can figure out what they want to say and why they want to say it.  How do you ensure your course is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive? Georgia State University serves a diverse population who come from a wide range of backgrounds. In order to engage students and create an inclusive classroom, I intentionally diversify the course’s reading list so it includes content creators of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender and gender identities, sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and persons with disabilities. By having course materials representing different identities and backgrounds, students can—hopefully—find someone with whom they identify and someone they have never before encountered. Routinely adjusting the reading list and mindfully making space for diverse creators demonstrates the thoughtful practices and skills I want my students to develop. Given that my students are from diverse backgrounds—often folks from minority groups and systemically disenfranchised backgrounds—I acquainted myself with my university’s abundant student resources. I provide students with a list of additional resources in the syllabus and through our online learning system with up-to-date information, and we spend a day reviewing those resources. I practice the adage, “you cannot write when you have a leaky roof.” Life happens; hopefully, we can provide access to resources that support students’ needs. What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program?  I have enjoyed being a part of the Bedford New Scholars program! As a fifth-year PhD student, I encourage incoming graduate students to create community among each other in our department; however, the longer I’m in my program the more I recognize the importance of meeting scholars outside of my university as well as meeting the publishers who work in our fields. While this recognition is obvious to seasoned academics—especially since these meetings are common activities occurring at academic conferences—many current graduate students have not had the opportunity to participate due to pandemic concerns. The connections we make as junior scholars are crucial for graduates completing their programs and heading into the job market.  Thankfully, the BNS program provides such opportunities while accommodating travel concerns. This program has provided me the opportunity to meet with fellow scholars who are as excited about teaching, join workshops with leading scholars in my field, and learn about the publishing process. Additionally, the BNS program afforded me opportunities to work on projects that align with my academic and teaching interests.  What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? During the “Assignments that Work” presentations, I learned creative ways to teach students common concepts. For example, Laura Hardin Marshall presented how she teaches MLA formatting using a menu. She designed two menus—one using typical menu formatting and one with that formatting removed—to demonstrate to her students the importance of formatting! It is easier to teach the importance and use of formatting by having students read through and respond to a common item that has a lot of detailed formatting that has had that formatting removed. Creative visuals such as Laura’s example are valuable teaching tools that aid students see the importance of the concepts that we instructors try to teach. Talking students through each step of MLA formatting is not as eye catching as a menu with no formatting. It is those interesting and visually jarring pieces that can lead to productive conversations about the day-to-day concepts students need to learn.  Brittny’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Brittny’s assignment. For the full activity, see Photo Essay. I presented my “What is Beauty: A Photo Essay” assignment during the Assignments that Work workshop. The assignment requires students to identify something they consider beautiful—I typically theme my courses, and this particular class was themed on beauty—and they take photos of that person/place/thing. The main requirements are that students must take the photo themselves (screenshots do not count) and organize their photos and caption-style paragraphs in a narrative form. This assignment establishes the topic students will research for the rest of the semester, so clarity is essential. The goals of this assignment are to (1) get students thinking creatively about their research topics, (2) get students reflecting on what emotionally moves them and why, and (3) get students utilizing, often overlooked, campus resources such as borrowing camera equipment. I developed this assignment because I was tired of grading essays about perfunctory and, frankly, boring topics. In order to complete the photo essay assignment well, students are pushed to be creative and thoughtful about their noun that represents beauty since they will be researching that topic for the remainder of the course. My students enjoy the challenge! Find Brittny on Twitter and Instagram @brittnybyrom. ... View more

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

  Rachel Marks (recommended by Angela Rounsaville) is pursuing her PhD in Texts and Technology with an emphasis in Digital Humanities at the University of Central Florida, where she expects to defend her dissertation “On your Left!”: Exploring Queerness, Masculinity, and Race in the Marvel “Captain America” Fandom in May 2024. She currently teaches the first-year writing course Composition II: Situated Inquiry of Writing and Rhetoric and has taught Composition I: Introduction to Writing Studies in the past. She has also served as a consultant at the University Writing Center and as a student editor on Stylus: A Journal of First-Year Writing. Her research focuses on LGBT representation in popular media, fan interaction and critique on social media platforms, and how fans respond to representations of queer characters in the media. How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid?  I normally teach face-to-face classes, and I like to balance the time I’m lecturing with hands-on activities, particularly activities that get students thinking about their semester-long research projects. These activities include quick-writes or brainstorming activities, where students spend 5-10 minutes writing about their thoughts on a reading or on an upcoming paper. I also have group activities, where students can collaborate in order to apply something we’re learning in class to a real-world situation. One example is my rhetorical situation activity, where students evaluate the rhetorical situation in a video discussing the creation of Pandora at Disney World. While I do spend some time in each class lecturing, I try to hold student attention with visuals like slides, example papers, and videos relating to that day's topic. On days when we’re preparing for a major paper to be due, we have peer review sessions as well as workshops where students can receive feedback from their peers, discuss their papers, implement feedback, and ask questions. I also hold “one-on-one” conferences each semester, where in lieu of class, every student individually can bring in their work and discuss their research projects with me, getting feedback on their writing in real time.  What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students?  I want my students to gain a deeper understanding of how writing works in the world, as well as gain writing and research skills that they can take into their majors and career. I first want my students to realize that there is writing all around them, in everything they do, whether that’s posting on social media, applying for a job, or taking notes for classes. Then, for their research projects, they choose a community that they're involved in and study how writing and communication helps that community to function and meet its goals. I then have them take the research they collect from both their communities and our library database to create a research article in the style of an academic journal. This gives them awareness of both common academic genres and scholarly research, as well as everyday writing that occurs in their communities. Many of the students going through the composition program, particularly at my university, are in the sciences or in engineering and don’t particularly “like writing.” I want them to realize that writing is an important skill to have, both in and outside of the classroom, even if you aren’t in the humanities disciplines.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? This program is a unique opportunity to be able to hear from scholars and professionals in the composition and higher education fields that are outside of my university. So far, I’ve really enjoyed being able to collaborate with other composition instructors and share teaching ideas, work with the editorial team to learn more about instructional materials, and hear from composition pedagogy experts. Our Bedford New Scholars summit allowed us an open environment to talk about new teaching ideas and learn about interesting course materials, both textbooks and digital tools. I’ve been surprised at how much I have in common with other composition instructors in both the challenges associated with teaching as well as the rewards.  However, I’ve also appreciated how many different approaches to engaging students I’ve been exposed to that I wouldn’t have been otherwise.  How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? The Bedford New Scholars program has given me a greater appreciation for higher education publishing and the possibilities for interactive materials that can be incorporated into my courses. I plan to take better advantage of the variety of rhetoric and composition textbooks Bedford offers, as well as supplemental materials like classroom activities, assignment ideas, and multimodal texts like videos. This program has also encouraged me to think “outside the box” when it comes to my teaching and lesson planning. I have seen the kinds of assignments, lessons, and conversations with students that are possible and am excited to incorporate new ideas and approaches to my practice. The “Assignments that Work” workshop encouraged me to share my own assignment ideas with others to get feedback and also provided me with an archive of assignment ideas that I can potentially adapt for my own course in the future.  Rachel’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Rachel’s assignment. For the full activity, see Peer Review Worksheet. My assignment that works is a worksheet used for in-class peer review sessions. For this, students bring in their rough drafts, swap papers with a partner, and give each other feedback while they are together and can collaborate. However, when I first did peer review in class, there wasn't enough structure—students didn’t know how to respond to their peer’s papers, so they would either comment on sentence-level errors or make generic comments like “good job” or “interesting topic.” They now complete a peer review worksheet which is based on the rubric for their major papers. For each section of the rubric, students say whether their peers completed that component, what they did well, and what they can improve upon or clarify. At the end, they give summative end comments with overall impressions of the paper and questions for their peers. This not only helps students focus on the goals of the assignment and the most pertinent parts of the paper when giving feedback, but also helps them review the requirements of the assignment for themselves. Lastly, since I base my feedback on the rubric, this peer review worksheet helps students give their peers feedback in a similar way.  Find Rachel on Twitter @RachelKatMarks. ... View more