During a visit to St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA, I had an opportunity to observe some student Writing Advisers (a.k.a. tutors) working with fellow undergraduates on their writing. These Advisers work in the Center for Writing Across the Curriculum (CWAC, which on this campus is pronounced “quack” —hence the little rubber duckies everywhere!). The day of my visit, the Advisers were working with students on an upcoming essay assignment, and they were using a strategy CWAC refers to as post-outlining: “the art of analyzing a work that’s already written, whether yours or someone else’s.” These sessions started with the Adviser asking the student to read the opening paragraph(s) aloud, and then to identify the thesis or main purpose. (In one instance, the student could not identify one and so set to work to draft one on the spot and jot it in the margins.) Next the Adviser asked the student to describe the function of the paragraph(s)—what role it or they played in the essay and how well it/they were doing. This process took some time, as the student writers articulated their major purposes and talked about how satisfied they were (or not) at this point in the draft.   The Adviser then moved systematically through the rest of the draft, paragraph by paragraph, listening as the students read them aloud and then asking them to identify and mark the main idea(s) in each one, noting unclear passages or ideas to come back to. The focus throughout was on the ideas, the major points, and their relationship to one another and the overall structure of the essay and the coherence of the developing argument.  At some point in the session, each Adviser asked the student to return to the prompt for the assignment to see if the draft was fully addressing it and considering how each paragraph contributes to that goal. If time allows (in the hour-long session), the students read the introduction and conclusion aloud to see how well the first leads to the second and how they create an “argumentative arc.” Finally, they asked the student writers to spread the entire draft out on the table (and at this point, I realized why they had asked students to bring drafts printed on only one side) to look at the entire structure, look for parts that might be out of place, check for transitions, and for “flow.”   When I heard Tereza Kramer, Director of CWAC, describe “post-outlining,” I thought it sounded a bit cut and dried, a paint-by-the-numbers strategy that could easily become rote and deadly dull. I still think that is a possibility. But the Writing Advisers I observed were definitely not plodding inexorably through this exercise in revising and rethinking a draft. Rather, they posed questions tailored to the specific draft a student was working on, making time for students to articulate and elaborate on their points while keeping their eyes on the big picture—what the draft is trying to accomplish and specifically how it is doing so. The student writers seemed pleased with the process, marking up their drafts, jotting notes to themselves in the margins, and essentially talking their ways through the entire piece of writing. I estimated that the students did 75% of the talking—and I was struck once again by the crucial importance of talking to writing development. In fact, one of the students remarked at the end of the session that she was beginning to think she could “do this on my own.” “But,” she continued, “it’s better to have someone to talk to.”   I had to agree—it is better to have someone to talk to, and a well-trained, experienced undergraduate Writing Adviser—at this college at least—fits that bill very nicely.   Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 3196481 by Aymanejed, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

We are wrapping up our semester, and as I have done for the past several semesters, I am asking students to reflect on their beliefs about writing, reading, and grammar—and how our writing and revising during the term has shaped those beliefs. Students submit this reflection just a few short days after the final portfolio.   In the first few reflections I have read this week, several themes have arisen: a growing awareness of the power of genre, a realization that a single high-school pattern would not suffice for all academic writing situations, and an increased willingness to seek and use feedback to revise writing. These broad reflections suggest that students are thinking carefully about their writing experiences. At the same time, however, these reflections still show a lack of development based on specific examples from written work produced during the course. The reflections are insightful, but without detail.   I’ve written about ways of promoting reflection many times : “The Fabric of Reflection,” “A Time to Reflect,” “All’s Well That Ends Well,” and others. These posts discuss instructions for reflections written after specific assignments are complete, as well as the final reflection assignment. But they don’t address strategies for helping students organize their own writing as data to support their final reflections.   In my first-year composition courses, students practice organizing information as part of the writing process, particularly in the development of a researched synthesis essay. We talk about collecting, sorting, connecting, and framing information as a paper takes shape, and students explore various technologies for accomplishing these often messy but creative tasks. They may use paper, sticky notes, and colored pencils; they might make digital charts and embed links. But in the end, they have a framework for writing.   What they are doing in this process, in fact, is illustrating a lovely Greek word that often shows up during Advent readings. That word comes from Luke 2:19: “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (NIV). The word translated “ponder” is συμβάλλω , a verb that combines the preposition σύν (“together with”) and βάλλω (“throw”); basically, “pondering” is the process of throwing information together for consideration.   While my pre-portfolio assignments assist students with this “ συμβάλλω ” process, the students don’t have similar support for the final reflection. The technology I use in the class, in fact, may work against the process. Early student drafts are not separate documents; students do all drafting on Google Docs, so to access early drafts requires reviewing the document history online—a process that may be difficult to navigate, particularly when there have been multiple revisions over several weeks. In addition, students frequently resolve comments as they work through feedback. The comments can be accessed again, but doing so again requires finding and searching through the entire stored comments thread. How can I help them find and manage data from their own writing in support of their final reflections?   In writing this post, I used a tag filter on the Bedford Bits site to find my content related to reflection. Searching by tag made the task of finding posts written over a period of nearly three years easy and straightforward.    For next term, I’d like my students to have a searchable revision log or journal to help them work through the “ συμβάλλω ” process in preparation for the final reflection. The log might include a simple entry format, like the one that follows, for use after each draft (initial, post-peer review, post-conference, and post-written feedback):   Date/ Paper Process Stage or Source of Feedback Focus Areas of Revision Aha moments, Questions, and Notes Tags                   Students will manage their journals in an online document that we update regularly in class, using a student-generated list of tags (audience, evidence, capitalization, comma splices, topic sentences, stance, engagement, etc.). Students can then use these logs at the end of the term to craft writer’s memos for the individual pieces in their portfolios, as well as organize their thinking—and their evidence—for the broader reflection piece.   In doing so, they may find it easier to identify salient aspects of their own writing development, and by searching the document tags, identify specific drafts or comments as support for their insights and conclusions.    How do you encourage your students to reflect broadly over an entire semester? Have you used logs or journals? If so, I’d love to hear what has worked for you. ... View more

As accelerated composition courses become more widespread, the co-requisites attached to them have inevitably come to take many forms. Co-requisites may be mandatory or voluntary; assessment-driven or open to anyone; held in the same classroom as the college-level course or convened in a different space; computer-assisted or reliant only on pen and paper; taught by the college-level instructor or someone else entirely. And that’s just a sampling of where things have gone so far.   Granted, flexibility is one of the strengths of the co-requisite. However, whatever the course format, there are certain pitfalls instructors are likely to face. While my two previous posts discussed what an ideal co-requisite might look like, the following advice, generated once again with the help of my Express to Success Colleagues at Santa Barbara City College, offers some warnings about what to avoid.   Don’t Make the Co-requisite Feel Like an Obligation As more and more states eliminate assessment restrictions for college-level composition courses, enrolling in co-requisites may become a choice—as it is at SBCC—rather than a requirement. And students who are compelled to enroll in the courses may feel punished in comparison to their peers who aren’t. Therefore, as former ESP director Kathy Molly notes, it is crucial “that teachers approach the co-requisite class in a positive way and that they help their students see this course as a huge advantage for them.” Sarah Boggs agrees, believing that “the co-req should be framed as a special, valuable opportunity to be more successful” in the college-level course.   Obviously, no matter what the course, we always want our students to feel as though coming to our classes is a stroke of good luck, but that can be extra-difficult with the co-requisite, which may feel like one more hoop students must jump through. Consequently, we should try, like Jennifer Baxton, to encourage students to see co-requisites as a chance “to grow their skills and for instructors to serve as coaches for students. To that end, instructors should frame the function of the co-requisite with speech that is intentionally asset-based, rather than a deficit-model approach. That way, students…can be agents for their own growth.”   Don’t Approach the Co-requisite as Though It Were Just a Shorter Version of the College-Level Class While some co-requisites do include all the students in the main course, most co-reqs are made up of students who can benefit from extra writing practice. Bonny Bryan takes advantage of the smaller number of students to provide individualized instruction. Her goal is “to attend to each student, one-on-one, during each class.” That’s an ambitious objective, but it does speak to the fact that the co-requisite is a space for sustained personal interaction with students.   I like to make use of the smaller roster by giving students short writing assignments related to their essay prompts, then going around and reading each response—an activity I wouldn’t have time for in the larger class. In fact, I’ve found one of the best ways to envision how to spend time in the co-requisite is simply to ask myself, “What can you accomplish here that the restrictions of the larger class preclude you from doing there?”   Don’t Fall Back on “Skills and Drills” Barbara Bell points out that “skills and drills should, of course, be avoided in any writing class,” but the brevity of the co-requisite may make rote work “more tempting” as instructors look for short, easily quantifiable uses of classroom time. To make the co-requisite instruction as accessible and relevant as possible, Bonny Bryan relies on “student writing to shape course content,” as does Sandy Starkey, who warns against “any kind of work that is not directly related to the writing the students themselves are doing for the course.”   Don’t Move Too Quickly Experienced instructors take advantage of the extra time offered by the co-requisite. Bonny Bryan believes that “s lowing down enables you to be thorough in your instruction and gives the students the time to both process the information and practice what they are learning.” For Bonny, slowing down means being more thorough with every aspect of instruction: “For instance, rather than looking at two examples of effective quote integration, I focus on multiple examples. I have students locate examples in their assigned reading, ask them to generate examples in their own writing, then have them share their examples with each other and with the group.”    The speed at which new material comes at accelerating students can be daunting; it’s the reason too many of them bail out before they’ve had a chance to realize that they are, indeed, capable of handling the work. It’s important, therefore, to create a sense of the co-requisite as an oasis, a place where students can catch their breath, and catch up on what they’ve missed.   Don’t Be Too Hands-Off While the co-requisite should provide a safe space to ask questions and take risks, the comfortable atmosphere shouldn’t lead to a sense that it’s okay to goof off. Even as they encourage students to delve more thoughtfully into their own work, professors need to keep an eye open for those who can benefit from an intrusive instructor presence. As Jennifer Baxton notes: “Ideally, the instructor should set up each class session in terms of what goals the students can achieve that day and help make their progress transparent.” Yes, variety is the spice of any co-requisite, but students should feel responsible for achieving some tangible outcome by the end of each class. ... 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 I recently attended the Conference on Community Writing in Philadelphia. This wonderful conference recognized many community engaged projects in which students move beyond the walls of the classroom to contribute to the greater good of their communities through writing. The vision of the Coalition for Community Writing supports: Writing as a mindful, creative, and social practice, forged in community partnerships, to promote socially, economically, and environmentally resilient communities. We are reimagining how communities write themselves; how writing is used as a tool for public awareness and expression, for dialogue across difference, and for community building; and how higher education and communities can collaborate toward these ends. We envision a transformation of higher education to encourage impactful curricula and research as essential outputs of institutions that serve as a vital part of their communities. I attended many thoughtful, passionate sessions in which teachers from a variety of institutions presented on writing projects that focused on immigration, homelessness, social justice and other important community partnerships. I was moved by understanding the impact we can make through including these kinds of hands-on learning opportunities in our writing classes. Many universities now include community engagement and service learning to promote this kind of involvement for their students as part of their institutional missions. Digital writing and multimodal composition provide many opportunities for students to create artifacts that contribute to awareness campaigns for all kinds of community engagement. Students can work with their campus communities, community partners, and participate in online conversations through social media campaigns and participatory journalism. Some of these projects are ongoing and supported by our institutions and others are one time, limited projects that support an immediate community need. I have included examples in the resources section below for consideration and brainstorming. I have worked with many types of community-engaged projects (large and small) throughout my career that focused on different populations, organizations and community issues. Sometimes I have students come up with projects on their own and other times I come to them with established partnerships. Here is one example of an ongoing partnership in which, over the past couple of years, my students have worked with an organization, Rescue Dog Games that brings awareness to the importance of pet adoption: Rescue Dog Games brings these strong pet rescues and organizations together to bring awareness to the need in the Atlanta area “to adopt—not shop.” This group works together with local and national rescue organizations to create partnerships and promote awareness for pet adoption along with an annual festival that “shines a light on the importance of pet adoption and encourages people to get outside and PLAY more with their dogs.” For this project, my students collaborated with Rescue Dog Games and 20 of their community partners for a rescue dog event to promote awareness and create community connections between rescue organizations. Students created digital content for each organization to tell the stories of the organizations and to promote the festival. Each student created an interactive feature article and a digital story. The students worked in content design teams to organize, edit, and manage project components. These stories now appear on the Rescue Dog Games website story page and are used by the partner organizations to showcase their stories and to promote their goals. This relationship with this organization has gone beyond this single class and semester as subsequent classes created digital stories of the event day and have started a digital story archive for adoption stories that feature individual dogs that have found their “fur-ever homes” in new families. Background Readings and Resources Students Doing Good: Top 10 College Service Projects Do Something Change.org CCC Statement on Community Engaged Learning   The St. Martin’s Handbook : Ch 11e: Conducting Field Research – Conducting Interviews, Part 7- Ch 32: Documenting Sources- MLA Style The Everyday Writer (also available  with Exercises 😞 Ch 10h: Conducting Field Research Appropriately, Ch 54: The Basics of MLA Style Easywriter   (also available  with Exercises ) : Ch 11f: Doing Field Research, Ch. 15: MLA Style Assignment Overview: Goal: To work with a community partner to create a human/dog interest digital story and interactive feature article written and produced to be used on the Rescue Dog Games website and in the Rescue Dog Games social media and other media outlets.   Interview and Visual Content Curation: Each student coordinates an interview with the community partner to research the group and curate visual content for the story.   Compose, Revise and Edit feature articles and digital stories   Content Design Teams will work together to give feedback, revise and edit the content to deliver to the client. Teams responsible for organizing communication, tasks, goals and deadlines. Teams create a Google drive team space to keep minutes of their meetings, curate images, storyboards, scripts, peer response and final deliverables.   Note: All content must adhere to professional communication practices including citation and attribution, sourcing of images (that are not original) and the use of copyright free music. Reflections on the Activities I have found that when students work with real-world community partners, their sense of engagement and ownership is increased. Not only are they contributing to larger conversations about important issues, they also get the opportunity to work in real professional settings that require them to shape strong professional communication and work ethics. They learn about deadlines, client feedback, style guides and professional collaboration. This kind of work also moves their classroom work into public spaces and allows them to create showcase pieces in their developing writing portfolios. More than ever, employers are looking for the kinds of skills students gain from these kinds of projects. What better use of our classroom time than engaging students to use their writing skills to contribute to the greater good? ... View more

Salena Parker (recommended by Katie McWain) is pursuing her PhD in Rhetoric with a concentration in World Literature at Texas Woman's University. She expects to finish in December 2021. She teaches Composition I and II and serves as an English Professor at Collin College in McKinney, TX. She has also taught College Readiness Writing, Introduction to Humanities, and ESL abroad. Her research interests include post-modern literature, rhetorical agency, contemporary global literature, memoirs, rhetoric & composition, photography, and feminist literature.  Is there an instructor or scholar that helped shape your career in rhet/comp? How?  Although my time with her was short, Dr. Katie McWain shaped my entire outlook of rhet/comp. With her teaching and advice, I’m able to see rhet/comp as a more fluid, yet intricate area of research that I can mold with my many, many interests.  Katie was the epitome of professionalism, adaptability, and grace; she instigated and worked with us to contribute to meaningful conversations about the gaps in research that exist in rhet/comp, as well as how we can integrate aspects like multimodality, transfer, and embodiment in our research/classrooms. Katie went beyond knowledge and skills and really listened to our questions and problems and did her best to help us in every way she could. When we had Focus Fridays (Professional Development opportunities), Katie put her all into giving us tips, advice, and information that we can adapt and use inside and outside the classroom. Her hard-working mentality kept me motivated and eager to do more. I’m humbled that she chose me for this program, and to have worked with her as a GTA. Though she’s gone, I will strive to keep Katie’s light and enthusiasm with me as I teach my scholars and encourage others to do their best.  What is the most important skill you aim to develop in your students?  I’d have to say agency, for sure. Free will is a privilege, and as adults we should all have a form of agency in education and the working world. However, I don’t know if I provide agency for students; I’m thinking that I instead provide the opportunity for scholars to investigate—and sometimes wrestle with—their own sense(s) of agency. There were a few moments in my undergrad career where I was able to sit down and really think about how I handle different academic situations, especially stressful ones. My goal is to give those kinds of introspective opportunities to my scholars; identifying one’s sense of agency is hard, and using agency is even harder. Yet, I think we all need to be aware of how agency functions in academic environments and communities. Having that “a-ha moment” where a scholar finds their agency and how they want to use it—that’s what I’m hoping and looking for each semester. Sometimes, those moments happen, and other times they don’t. Either way, I’m going to keep working to give scholars opportunities to search for and wrestle with their self-awareness of agency.  What’s it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program?  The Bedford New Scholars program is all about learning, sharing, and growing as emerging scholars of our fields. Each member of the program has stories and experience(s) to share and learn from—our collective Assignments that Work are testament to this fact. We’re given opportunities throughout the year to lend our voices and ideas to projects that will directly affect student learning, adjunct/instructor/professor workload, and best of all, we can share this knowledge with our respective communities across the nation.  At the Bedford Scholars Summit in Boston, we were able to interact with members of the Marketing, Editorial, and Media departments and get insight into the teaching and academic support instructors receive from outside the college/university. We collaborated with one another on current problems/lacks of research in our field(s) as well as how we can grow to be more inclusive, more diverse, and more engaged inside the classroom. There were fun times to be had, too—touring the Boston Public Library and traversing bustling Boston streets gave all the Scholars the chance to increase the strength of our friendship and shared mission to be the best scholars and teachers we can be.  What do you think instructors don’t know about educational publishing but should?  I think instructors should know that there is a lot of adaptability to be found in educational publishing. Instructors can contribute to student success in academe by using educational publishing as an opportunity to hone skills used in college/university teaching; interpersonal communication, content development, multimodal inquiry, and hands-on experience are just a few skills that can be explored. Using Bedford/St. Martin’s as an example, instructors can also have numerous (possibly more) opportunities to expand network communities in places that they might not have thought of before, like content marketing, publishing operations, and application management. There are innovative, different ways to build on content expertise and educational practices besides instructing in a classroom; educational publishing is one of the options instructors can take to diversify themselves and their pedagogies.  Salena’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 Salena's assignment. You can view the full details here: Research Project Paper  The main goal of my Research Paper assignment is to assist scholars with balancing their writing processes with rigor, patience, and enthusiasm via a research-based assignment.  The assignment centers on a process of invention, investigation, editing/revision, and—most importantly—communication. Each scholar is allowed to research a topic they find to be impactful to their livelihoods or education and show their audiences why their topics and research matter inside and outside the college classroom. The Research Papers are created through brainstorming activities, writing days, and Workshop Days, with Workshop Days being the most important part of this assignment. Everyone comes to class on that day with copies of their work and pre-made questions to discuss as they communicate with one another about what works, what doesn’t work, and what can be improved upon in their respective papers. Most of my scholars appreciate Workshop days the most because it’s communication and research in action; they can share their frustrations, preferences, and “lightbulb moments” with one another in a productive, generative space. After they turn in their Research Papers, they have the opportunity to reflect on the process, if they wish, and tell me what worked and ways I can improve the assignment for future courses.  Learn more about the Bedford New Scholars advisory board on the   Bedford New Scholars Community page. ... View more

I’m writing this post at a time when first-year programs across the country are being questioned. Unfortunately, same old, same old: these challenges come in cycles, every ten years or so, and they come to first-year writing courses because they (we) are often seen as “just remediation” that universities should not have to offer, or as sources of money that the university could use elsewhere on other, “sexier” programs. During my career, I’ve faced these challenges at every turn and at three universities: it’s pretty much always the same story. As I write this, my university is involved in a review of undergraduate education, and while I believe that under the brilliant leadership of Adam Banks and Marvin Diogenes the Program in Writing and Rhetoric will continue to prosper and to offer essential knowledge to our undergrads, I have watched as other parts of the University put forth programs that could “substitute” or “count for” PWR. Might sound good at first, but scratch the surface and you’ll find that these “substitute” programs are not grounded in rhetorical theory and practice and are not writing courses. And so it goes, as writing program directors and faculty continue to do work that, in poet Marge Piercy’s words, “is real.”   In fact, first-year writing programs have never been more necessary, more crucial to our students and to public discourse than they are today. Speaking to The Academic Minute, John Duffy, Director of the Writing Program at Notre Dame, notes the dismal state of public discourse so apparent everywhere, and goes on to argue that we have at hand the remedy for an onslaught of toxic rhetoric in—wait for it—the first-year writing course: “First-year composition is more than an introductory writing class,” he writes. “It is a course in ethical communication, one that offers students and the rest of us a hopeful alternative to our debased public discourse.”   I am grateful for John Duffy and for this “academic minute.” It sums up in just a few words the reason I define the rhetoric I teach as “the art, theory, and practice of ethical communication.” It’s why I put emphasis on ethical considerations in all of my classes, in my writing center work, and in all of my textbooks: because these considerations lie at the heart of what it means to be an honest communicator today.   Writing program directors and faculty know this in their bones. But we need to make this case more strenuously and persistently, making sure that our students understand it and that we are spreading the message throughout our campuses, especially among policy makers.   In the meantime, you can hear (and read) John Duffy’s “academic minute” here.   Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 3052244 by Studio32, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

By the time of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, America had just concluded a bad decade. Watergate, Kent State, rampant inflation, the abject failure of the Vietnam War, Soviet adventures in Afghanistan, and the Iran hostage crisis had all taken their toll on the national morale, and people were feeling rather down and morose. So, when a young and inexperienced American hockey squad defeated the defending- champion Soviet team in what wasn't even the gold medal round, the country seized upon the occasion as grounds for a national celebration. One would have thought that America had just won the First and Second World Wars combined to judge from the level of elation and patriotic pride that greeted the victory, as "going for the gold" became the unofficial national motto for what would soon be known as the Reagan eighties.   America, of course, isn't the only country that treats international sports victories as surrogates for military success—after all, that is what the original Olympic games were for—but it does make the most movies about such events. And it is in this context that we can understand the enormous popularity of the recently released Ford vs. Ferrari. So, let's have a look.   Ford vs. Ferrari belongs to a genre of sports movies—often "based on a true story"—in which the protagonist beats the odds to achieve some kind of athletic triumph or another— a genre that includes such fictional films as Rocky and Breaking Away, and such real life movies as Fighting Back: The Rocky Bleier Story and Rudy (Chariots of Fire is a British version of this sort of thing). The key thing about these movies is their focus on an underdog, someone (or an entire team) whose eventual triumph serves as a kind of parable of the American dream. At first glance, then, Ford vs. Ferrari would seem to belong to a very different kind of sports film, pitting the gigantic Ford Motors corporation against a boutique Italian race car manufacturer, but by pitting two ageing driver/designers against the Ferrari legacy of track dominance, the movie manages to create a David vs. Goliath scenario after all, with Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles playing the role, in effect, of America's Lake Placid hockey team, and Ferrari standing in for the Russians.   Which explains why such a film would be conceived and produced now, and why it should be such a success. Because America is having another bad decade. Increasingly divided along ideological lines, still suffering from the after-effects of the Great Recession, watching the war on terrorism turn to an infinity war, and nervously monitoring the rise of China to superpower status, Americans are badly in need of a good shot in the arm. Enter Hollywood, right on cue, with just what the country needs, remaining true to the slogan that in America when the going gets tough, the tough make movies.   Now, if only they could come up with something to make us feel better about the global climate crisis that our love affair with the internal combustion engine has helped create. Hmmm. I wonder if Greta Thunberg plays hockey. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 152088   by OpenClipart-Vectors, used under   Pixabay License ... View more

I recently had the chance to visit a former student who now teaches at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, where we spent an evening talking about the research his students have been doing to study important local issues. In one of his classes, he engaged students in studying the cruise industry and its relationship to Juneau, noting that this small city of 32,000 receives “about one and a half million cruise ship passengers” every year. (I have been such a passenger; you may have too.) Most of his students took this state of affairs for granted and were grateful for the jobs created by the industry; most said they’d never thought much about it. That was before, however, they began their own research. Working in small groups, they began to gather data about the history and impact of the cruise industry on their city—on air and water quality, on quality of life, on employment and education, even on homelessness. They began to trace the web of connections between the desires of the cruise companies and local government policies.   As the progressed in their research, the students made use of Historypin, a not-for-profit organization that partners with cultural and civic organizations to help build better and stronger communities. According to their website: We collect, curate and structure stories to bring people together, one story at a time… Through our projects we bring communities together. We get people talking. About shared experiences. About their connections with each other. About the places they’ve lived, worked and played. About the history that’s alive in the buildings and spaces around them. If you run our programme in your local café, library or museum you’ll unlock new connections and understanding. We can also help you present the stories on our interactive mapping platform historypin.org The students used this platform to “map” the connections they were finding, creating a dense matrix that began to reveal certain trends and facts about how their city was being affected—in ways none of them could have begun to imagine just a couple of months before. As their teacher remarked, “The act of ‘pinning’ constitutes a visual special tactic in that they make visible sites and experiences that are often invisible, unknown or disregarded.” In short, these students were becoming powerful researchers, creating new knowledge that could be of great importance to their community.   Their teacher, Richard Simpson, is at work on a long essay detailing this classroom project even as he plans for a new project on a new subject for the coming term. I will write more about it when this article is published. In the meantime, if you do not know about Historypin and its many programs, checking it out may give you some great ideas for local projects your students could take on.   Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 2650303 by piviso, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

A late Thanksgiving this year has created a difficult end-of-semester calendar: a week off for Thanksgiving, one week of class, and then finals. Moving from mid-term into early November, I watched the students in my first-year composition courses slump—literally and figuratively. Before the Thanksgiving break, students needed to complete a draft of their research synthesis projects and stay on top of revisions to portfolio pieces, which are due just before finals begin. By the end of the first week of November, my students (particularly those in the corequisite section) seemed a little lost and uncertain.     Based on what I was seeing, I did some shifting in the syllabus.    First, we spent a day mapping writing tasks into a schedule over which they would have control. I gave the students a small chart with a list of the writing tasks and due dates for our composition course, along with space to add other responsibilities. Students identified their priorities, and targeted when they wanted to address each task and how much time they could spend. I touched base with each student individually, and we discussed whether they had allotted sufficient time for the tasks at hand, particularly research tasks. We also negotiated some revised due dates, based on their schedules.  Once priorities were set, I gave students class time to work through their plans. A simple half-sheet of paper with blanks was a surprisingly effective tool; students were still checking that plan sheet two weeks later.     Next, for the second week in November, I slotted almost two hours of “Shut Up and Write” time, modelling the class sessions on a program designed to help faculty focus and finish writing projects. Students selected the writing task from their priority planning sheet, and they spread out across our classroom to write. While I suspect a couple of students spent the time on social media, most students commented that the time was valuable—and productive. During this week and the following, students also met in small groups with our writing fellows to discuss their drafts and revisions.    Finally, I scheduled writing conferences for the week before Thanksgiving. There was no class, and I met with each student individually for 20 minutes, looking through their drafts and talking about what they were learning through the research process. I asked the typical questions: Do you know what you want to do with this piece next? Do you have what you need? One student’s comment was telling: “Dr. Moore, I really like ‘Shut Up and Write’ and then conferences. I think that’s the best way for me to learn.” Conference week was long for me, but students had only their 20-minute conference with me (and for some, an additional 30-minute conference with a writing fellow).   To celebrate the beginning of Thanksgiving break and the holiday season, my family and I went to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a film about how an interview—and subsequent relationship—with Fred Rogers changed a cynical reporter’s life.     The film moves slowly, offering extended moments of deliberate silence, just as the children’s television show did—both for me as a child and for my children. The movie affirmed what I had seen in my classroom in the previous three weeks: as cognitive and emotional creatures, we need to move slowly sometimes, and we need times of silence so that we can process our thoughts and feelings. We need unhurried space for the work of making initial choices and revisions. Unfortunately, a hectic final week of class often obscures or eliminates such spaces.   Taking my cue from Mr. Rogers, I’m setting aside the final week of class this semester to give students at least two full hours of “Shut Up and Write” time, with mini-conferences with me as needed. I will let you know how it works out.   What are your strategies for ending the term? How do you help corequisite and ALP students manage end-of-semester stress? ... View more

KAREN TRUJILLO (recommended by Lauren Rosenberg) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at New Mexico State University. She teaches Rhetoric and Composition, Business and Professional Communication, Technical and Scientific Communication, and the Rhetoric of the Horror Story. Karen also serves as a Writing Program Coordinator, Writing Program Mentor, and she has spent three years as a Writing Center Coordinator. She has taught both face-to-face and online in English and Education Leadership and Administration Departments. Her research interests include feminist theory, pedagogy, dissident literature, expressions of emotion, and enactments of resilience in the composition classroom. She expects to graduate in December 2019. What is your greatest teaching challenge? The challenge of knowing that a handful of students in my English 111 – Rhetoric and Composition won’t return after their first year of college is one of my greatest. New Mexico grants new graduates with a Lottery Scholarship that requires 2.5 GPA while taking 15 credit hours (5 classes). These requirements can be stressful for first-year students who have outside obligations and struggles that are unseen by teachers. Each move I make begins with the knowledge that each writing prompt, essay, and project is an opportunity to give students resources they can take with them, whether they stay in college or not.    I often think about Pegeen Reichert Powell’s Retention and Resistance: Writing Instruction and Students Who Leave and the recognition that there is not one single thing that universities can do to reduce attrition rates. Powell further asks that administration and faculty focus on the students who are enrolled at present, rather than working to try to assure that they do not leave. Keeping this in mind, I consistently work to create and maintain a space in which students are given opportunities to write often, and to write about present interests, experiences, and what they feel are relevant topics, rather than preparing them to transfer learning to the next courses leading to graduation.   How does the next generation of students inspire you? The next generation of students inspires me in a way that speaks to my position as a nontraditional student. While I recognize that there is not an ideal classroom, my students bring behaviors and perspectives that I didn’t often see when I first attended college in the early 1990s. The classroom was a quiet place for me. I did not choose a rhetorical silence but chose not to speak because I didn’t feel included. I am inspired by the next generation of students who I believe are and will become more accustomed to actions that are inclusive and to choosing words that unite with the efforts of dedicated composition teachers. If the next generation of students that becomes more accustomed to conflict, the composition classroom can be a place where students learn to share experiences of difference in ways that I don’t feel would have been comfortable when I took first-year composition. With time, practice, and facilitation of thoughtful composition teachers, the next generation gives me hope that we will spend less time searching for things we have in common, and spend more time acting as listeners, thoughtful speakers, and those who choose to and are comfortable with others’ silences.   What's it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program?   Anyone who has written a dissertation, prepared for, or joined the academic job market search knows that it can be a scary time. Although committees and peers are reassuring, it can be a lonely process. Being part of Bedford New Scholars reassured me that there are others who not only understand the struggles, but are also there to listen, give advice, and become cheerleaders. I have to say that, undoubtedly, each of us is from unique learning and teaching experiences, which I think ended up being what drew us together. With each new activity, I found that it was our differences that encouraged unpacking of new ideas and provided opportunities to step outside our usual line of thinking and onto a new track. Being part of Bedford New Scholars is like having someone hand select a support system for you and give you the gift of new friends at a time when you had no idea you needed it most.    What did you learn from other Bedford New Scholars? I sometimes need to be reminded that teaching is what I am called to and I can’t imagine doing anything else. The Summit at Bedford St. Martin came on the heels of a trying semester during which I had just completed the first chapters of my dissertation. At the risk of drenching you in sap, receiving responses such as, “I totally get that,” or “Ugh, I’ve felt that way too,” renewed my energy and hope. I gained a reading list from Nina Feng, a reading response assignment from Misty Fuller (that I used this semester), love for Canva (and hopes for creativity) from Caitlin Martin, and a new approach to rhetorical analysis from Marissa McKinley. Along with these contributions, I learned that no matter where we are coming from, we all share the experience of being a “Border” university of some type. I learned that while my experiences are unique and valuable, I have a diverse support system who will do their best to listen and give meaningful, well considered feedback. The Summit was the best possible place I could have taken time out to learn that the loving energy of my peers is only a few clicks away.     Karen’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 Karen’s assignment. You can view the full details here: Advocacy Project  My Assignment that Works is a four-part assignment titled, The Advocacy Project. Originally, this project was created by Dr. Christopher Burnham. After working as a research and teaching assistant using this assignment for six years, I modified this project for my own use in first-year Rhetoric and Composition. This is a social justice project that can be scaffolded over the course of a 15-week semester, culminating in a final exam in the form of a project. The final project consists of a written portion, a handout, and a presentation using the media that best serves the aims of the project. The assignment itself is broken into an exploration, local research, global research, and numerous other considerations such as stasis, and concessions and rebuttals on one’s position. The big idea is that the student will find something that they are passionate about, will research, and will advocate action or policy to further the passion. Each semester, I find myself re-writing this assignment in small ways in response to my teaching reflections and student responses. I love that it’s a living document that seems to be growing up alongside me on my journey toward completion of doctoral studies. Learn more about the Bedford New Scholars advisory board on the   Bedford New Scholars Community page. ... View more

This Thanksgiving week, 2019, I have been thinking of the students I have known over so many decades, of their triumphs and tribulations, and of their writing, so often, about things that matter deeply to them. And I have been giving thanks for every one of them, and for every one of their teachers. This is a week to name our blessings, to count up and write down what we are thankful for.   In addition to students and their teachers, I added to my list: The moon, sun, and starlight The redwood fairy circle near my home The lapping of waves in my little cove The smell of bread from the oven The voices of my beloved family and friends, often far away My list goes on and on, as I realize how very fortunate I am to be alive, to be able to work at my local food bank and volunteer at our arts center, and to walk along the ocean bluff and listen to birds who seem to be singing just to me.   I’m also grateful for language, for writing, for the ability to communicate with one another, and, this week especially, for poetry. I am grateful for our United States poet laureate, Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee/Creek nation and a consummate artist. You may know her poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” in which she gives thanks for the kitchen table. “The world begins at the kitchen table,” she writes. “No matter what, we must eat to live. / The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. / . . . At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks. . . .”   Perhaps all of our worlds, as Harjo says, begin at the kitchen table. I hope your table is sturdy, laden with good foods, and surrounded by good friends.   Happy Thanksgiving! Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 3719247 by JillWellington, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In my previous post I began discussing English 89, the accelerated composition co-requisite course originally developed for Santa Barbara City College’s Express to Success Program. I noted that while the course is still offered in a diminished form, ESP itself has been discontinued. Therefore, this post, like its predecessor, toggles between past and present tense as I document—with the help of my colleagues—those elements of our co-requisite that I believe are most worthy of emulation.   Support from Peer Tutors and Academic Counselors In an ideal co-requisite, the instructor is not alone in supporting students. SBCC is fortunate to have a robust peer tutoring program, with student tutors normally attending class and holding additional tutoring hours outside of class. As a result, peer tutors are an integral part of the course. They not only know the writing assignments, they also know which students are engaged, and who seems to be checking out. ESP tutors were nearly always former accelerated composition students, which gave them an additional insight into the material and, frequently, the instructor.   My previous post emphasized the importance of building community, and peer tutors are instrumental in that process. Form ESP instructor Bonny Bryan, who now directs SBCC’s composition program, recalls: “ When the tutor and I worked with students individually, students nearby would often lean in and participate. That cohesion resulted in an unusual efficiency.”   Reflecting on the strengths of the co-requisite during its Express to Success incarnation, one of my tutors, Matthew Garcia, commended the “mellow and low-pressure environment for students to work on their assignments,” which “made students feel comfortable about interacting with the professor and [the tutor] whenever they had questions or needed help.” Tutor Anna Kaavik offered similar comments, describing the ideal co-requisite as an “additional resource” that provided students “more time, in a smaller class with more concentrated attention on writing from both the professor and the tutor.” According to Anna, “Having that extra time boosts their confidence in writing, and in a smaller class, they feel more comfortable asking for help, which is something most students are scared to do.”    To ensure that students saw their composition course in the context of their long-term college goals, ESP also assigned an academic counselor to each section. Counselors visited the larger class twice a semester, and they were particularly “intrusive” and proactive with the “accelerating” students in the co-requisite. All Express to Success students were required to plan their next semester’s work with a counselor, and ESP counselors were on campus throughout the week so students could drop in with last-minute questions and concerns. Too often, meeting with an academic counselor feels optional to students; ESP insisted that it was not.   A Combination of Full-Class and Individualized Instruction The small size of the co-requisite makes it perfect for reinforcing instruction in the college-level class that didn’t quite take. Often, for instance, as I read through student drafts, I would find that their thesis statements were not adequately responding to the prompt. In these cases, I would pause individual work and use the computer projector to review not just the basics of composing a thesis, but how those basics applied to the current assignment. Then full class instruction would end, and the tutor and I could briefly meet with each student to discuss their revised theses.   Indeed, to my mind, the single most useful function of the co-requisite is that it ensures instructors have extra time to spend with students and their writing. This is particularly helpful during the revision process, when the gap between what an instructor is looking for and what the student believes needs doing can be tremendous. As Sandy Starkey points out: “Many times, students don’t know how to prioritize your comments. Naturally, they’d rather correct that one wrong word you circled instead of addressing the issue of a lack of analysis in the essay. But when you’re working one-on-one, you’re able to tell them, ‘Yes, it’s important to correct that small error, but it’s much more important to address the global issue.’”   Just-in-Time Remediation When the co-requisite is humming along smoothly, much of the classroom time will focus on just-in-time remediation, with instructors teaching specific skills that students need right then, when they are practicing them. As its name suggests, just-in-time remediation requires instructors to be open to their students’ needs and willing to change plans on a dime. Say, for instance, that the college-level class finished with a heated discussion of what constitutes a credible secondary source, with many students still unclear about how to locate and assess the sources needed for their essays. It would make sense that the focus of that day’s co-requisite—even if it was supposed to be a pithy lesson on argument—would instead concentrate on research.   In ESP, scheduling itself emphasized the close connection between what was happening in the college-level class and what would take place in the co-requisite: English 89 classes were generally held 10-15 minutes after English 110. ESP director Kathy Molloy believed moving almost directly from one class to the other meant “students were able to start on their essays immediately after class and get individual help from their teacher, the class tutor, or their classmates.”   Curricular Collaboration and Flexibility Clearly, it’s important for co-requisite instructors to have common goals that reflect those of their composition program. In ESP, we met monthly to discuss how successfully our classes were meshing with these larger goals. It was also a time to share what Stephen North calls “practitioner lore,” talk about the nitty-gritty of what was working well in our classrooms, and what wasn’t. Like my colleagues, I found this lively back and forth nearly always improved my next day’s teaching.   While it is vital to ensure that every co-requisite is serving departmental goals, it’s equally essential that instructors have control over what happens in their own co-requisites. As indicated throughout this post, curricular flexibility is necessary to serve the actual—as opposed to the ideal—students in our classrooms. Their lives are complex, and the co-requisite can be an important tool helping to accommodate that complexity.   [In his next post, David Starkey will reflect on some of the challenges in enacting a model co-requisite.] ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.   For many people, the fall and winter months are full of holidays--complete with traveling, gifts, family gatherings, and catching up with friends. They’re also known for their potential for stressful conversations. We hope these suggested podcasts and assignments--about misinformation and disinformation, evidence, redundancy, and apology--can help your students go into the holidays stress-free!    Podcasts have been around for a while, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.    LaunchPad   and   Achieve products include assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. If you’re teaching a lesson about prepositions or find your class needs some more help with the topic, you can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit   Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.    If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts."   If you are using Achieve, you will find a "Quick Start Guide: Grammar Girl and Question Bank" in your Welcome Unit. You can also find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course."   Podcasts about Evidence, Redundancy, and Apology The Difference Between Disinformation and Misinformation [3:50] What Does It Mean to "Have the Receipts"? [5:22] Are You Annoyingly Redundant? [5:30] When Is It OK to Be Redundant? [6:40] How to Write an Apology [8:55] Assignment A: In class, discuss the words “disinformation” and “misinformation.” Ask students what they think each word means or what they think the difference between the two words is. As part of this, the class might list other words they know that start with the same prefixes--”mistake,” “misfortune,” “dishonor,” “discriminate.” Then, listen to the Grammar Girl podcast “The Difference Between Disinformation and Misinformation ” and talk about any new facts they’ve learned. Ask students if they’ve seen any examples of disinformation or misinformation in the news or in discussions with friends.   To follow up, explore how sources can be used to support claims. Listen to “What Does It Mean to ‘Have the Receipts’?” and discuss how this newer usage of “receipts” is similar to and different from academic use of sources.   Assignment B: Everyone will need to apologize at some point. Whether it’s eating the cookie you didn’t know your roommate was saving or realizing you were wrong in an argument, knowing how to apologize is a great skill to have.    Ask students to listen to “How to Write an Apology” and the two podcasts about redundancy for homework. Then, using the advice from Grammar Girl, they should write a letter apologizing to a roommate for walking over the new living room rug in muddy shoes. In class, have students peer review their apologies, keeping an eye out for any elements of the “nopology,” “unpology,” or “fauxpology,” as well as appropriate and inappropriate use of redundant language.   Credit: Pixabay Image 581753  by vivienviv0 , used under a Pixaby License ... View more

At the 12 th Biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference at James Madison University on November 13-16, I attended many inspiring panels and, as I always do, learned so much from scholars in our field. This meeting held special significance for me because it honored the memory and legacy of Nan Johnson—and awarded a number of Nan Johnson Graduate Student Travel Grant Awards. So I very much wanted to be there, along with nearly 500 other participants, and to meet with the Board of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, a group Nan helped to found more than three decades ago.   Reflecting now on the conference, I realize how much important work remains to be done just to understand the enormous contributions women/feminists have made to every field of study and every walk of life. I learned about Virginia Penny, who wrote an encyclopedia (!) of women’s work in 1863, about Fannie Barrier Williams, the first African American to serve on the Chicago Library Board and who, like all other African Americans (except someone impersonating Aunt Jemima and flipping pancakes) was excluded from the World Colombian Exhibition in 1893 even as she continued to give eloquent speeches. I learned about Nell Donnelly Reed, who created a huge and hugely successful garment manufacturing business begun in her own home, who hired women and supported and paid them well—but who resisted unionization. These complex stories need to be told, and need to be analyzed and studied. There is so much more work to be done, by us and by our students, to document and understand and celebrate the work of women.   Several sessions at the conference brought disability studies into sharp focus. One especially memorable panel featuring Professors Jennifer Nelson and Tonya Stremlau focused on ARTavism, Deaf art and poetry, and more. Nelson described the work of De’VIA (Deaf View/Image Art) and the Surdists, groups that promote artavism “by any medium necessary.” Surd, which is French for “deaf,” puts emphasis on the viewer rather than the hearer, who is so often privileged in our culture (the key rhetorical element of “audience” after all is based in sound). You can read the Surdist Manifesto, which calls for full recognition and celebration of Deaf creation, here.   Nelson referenced the 17 th century work of John Bulwer, whose Chirologia and Chironomia presented a study of hand communication and gestures (pictured above)—a manual rhetoric. Bulwer’s books have long been studied in courses on rhetorical history as examples of visual communication. Nelson pointed out Bulwer’s personal connection to these works, noting that Bulwer adopted a daughter who was deaf and wrote extensively on educating people who were deaf. Arguing that rhetoric is not necessarily about the spoken voice, Bulwer insisted on the “miracle of human eloquence” through signs and signing. Noting that there is currently no print version of ASL, Nelson explained that bits of such a version are beginning to appear, as in the work of Adrian Clark, who uses a written ASL signature. “How can we make English more visual,” this panel asked, and wouldn’t doing so benefit all?   These panelists got me thinking hard about these questions and also about how a constant privileging of sound is deeply disadvantageous—indeed dangerous—for people who are deaf. Stremlau read from her first published short story that shows, in graphic detail, how a wife who is deaf is ignored, even dismissed, by her husband if she won’t “talk.” She went on to describe the danger faced by deaf people who are harmed or even killed by police who are giving them orders they cannot hear.   They also convinced me I need to work much harder at bringing artivism and Deaf culture into my teaching. And to try to make prose more visual (perhaps through the use of drawn signs, emojis, or other symbols?). These efforts, too, would benefit all.   Image Credit: Chirologia,  1644, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons ... 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 Although we can do a lot to teach writing, most of us know that it is ultimately through habitual practice that students become better writers. We can structure activities that make our classrooms more conducive for learning, but it is the act of writing itself that promotes experienced learning. This kind of ritualized practice is the same for multimodal and visual storytelling. I use visuals and images in my classes in many ways: I have students include them in their compositions as visual rhetoric, use them for invention activities, and to teach rhetorical analysis. I have students tell stories with and through images, text, sound, motion and incorporate them in many other multimodal texts and projects. While I promote visual activities throughout my classes, the semester-long Image-A-Day Challenge engages students in the ritualistic habits of visual storytellers along with metacognitive activities through active reflection. There are many other similar “challenges” of this sort that involve participants in ritualistic creativity. For example, Project 365 challenges participants to take a photo every day for a year, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) encourages writers to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days, or Inktober, where every October artists all over the world take on the drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. Famous artists such as Monet and Van Gogh valued ritualistic creativity and craft through painting and repainting the same haystacks (and other subjects) to extend their skills and better understand the shifting details one learns through practice and reflection. This multimodal assignment is simple to integrate into any classroom structure and operates in the background along with other assignments in a class. I ask students to participate in the “Image-a-Day” Project in which they capture an original image every day of the semester. Students must compose the images themselves rather than pulling them off the internet or from other sources. This daily image work keeps them focused on the in the present and the reflective activities (on at midterm and final) asks them to look back and make meaning across the whole collection through connections and patterns. The images can stand on their own or can present as associated sequences. Ultimately, the images should engage their audience and tell their stories for the required period of time – the semester. Background Readings and Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook : Ch 4: 4m – Reflecting on your writing The Everyday Writer  (also available  with Exercises 😞 Ch 8: Reflecting Easywriter  (also available  with Exercises ) : Ch 5: 5b – Reflecting on your work   Steps to the Assignment Designate a place for students to archive their Image-a-Day galleries. My students curate them on course blogs in which they archive all their work in the class but they can also collect them through other photo sharing apps or websites, Google Drive, or even in Word documents. Teachers can choose the location and application that works best within their existing framework. Have students compose and store an image a day for every day of the semester (including weekends). I require them to compose, curate and digest the images each week and include purposeful captions on all their images. They should take into account visual narration, visual rhetoric and design aesthetic. I encourage students to compose in both in naturally occurring environments through an observational perspective and to try their hand at composing particular, intentional meanings. I give them credit for completion each week for accountability and as an incentive for ongoing participation. Students share their developing collections with others or choose one to contribute to a full class slide show (see previous MM post Grab and Go Galleries ) to give them ongoing opportunities to share their emerging stories. Midway through the semester, students reflect, in writing, in which they read across the series and look for patterns, ideas and connections between the images. These reflections ask them to move beyond the images in isolation and look at the ways the collection reveals something about their lives over a time. For their final reflection, they create a cross-linked reflection in which they once again reflect, in writing on the patterns, ideas, meanings over span of the whole term. They explain, to an outside audience, their processes and the meanings their collections reveal about their journey, their worldviews or ideas during this time. Within the reflective narrative, they present (or link to) associated images that also tell their story through a visual narrative. In addition to the written narrative, students create a self-advancing digital slideshow (2 minutes with accompanying copyright free music) in which they select and present representative images from their collection to tell their story. They include an engaging title and can include text to communicate layers of meaning and transitions. Conclude with a gallery showcase in which students briefly explain their narrative and what they have learned and play their slideshows. Here, I've included a digital slideshow of the kind students produce, displaying representative images from my own Image-a-Day project: Video Link : 2495   Reflections on the Activity At first, students complain about having to complete the assignment every day but they lean into it, as it becomes a habit. I include a daily reminder on their weekly schedule to keep them on task. They enjoy sharing their stories with others and learn about curation and selection as they compose and categorize their images. Like most reflective writing, they come to understand the connections between things that they might not have otherwise noticed. They also leave the class with a tangible catalog of a particular time in their lives – a virtual, multimodal slice of life. Video Images by Kim Haimes-Korn ... View more

Carrie Wilson (recommended by Bret Zawilski) is wrapping up her MA in English this May 2019 at Appalachian State University. She has taught Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum and Expository Writing. Her research interests include psychology and gender representation in American Gothic fiction; postmodern South American literature; feminist, genre, and cultural studies in the Rhetoric and Composition discipline; inclusivity in the first year composition classroom; information literacy and archival librarianship; and accessibility of public and academic library materials. She is applying to MLIS programs for Fall 2019. How does the next generation of students inspire you? From what I have witnessed in my so-far brief run as a graduate teacher of Rhetoric & Composition, post-millennials' adaptability to increasingly multifaceted digital technology is simply astounding. While my generation (at least from what I have personally observed) seemed to utilize social media as a linear method of curating an online personality, my students trend towards using these platforms as much more complex rhetorical tools that include many forms of multimedia strung together to communicate a rich story about their life and even their identity. Many are inclined towards online activism as well; they use the Functional Rhetorical Appeals Project (a.k.a. FRAP; discussed below) not simply as a fun creative outlet, as would have been permitted to them, but instead as an opportunity to tackle complicated questions politicians struggle to answer on televised Town Halls. There is a level of fearlessness with which they express their opinions about key national and international issues that I respect and admire, especially when it comes through so clearly in projects with digital deliverables that have a lot of moving parts to manage. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? When back in 2016 I read that a report from the Stanford History Education Group demonstrated how students struggle with vetting online sources of information , it became my personal objective to pursue information literacy as a career to not only make said literacy more accessible to all students, but also to tailor my lessons to address the current digital environment. With a sprawling online environment that provides us with multiple sources of daily media input (as anyone with one social media account likely has at least one more ) comes an increased difficulty for being selective about where we choose to receive crucial information about our sociopolitical interests. We're all aware of the current stakes of increased use of online platforms for staying up to date on current issues: fake news is multiplying; we've entered the "post-truth" era. Parsing out informational reporting from personal opinion (both of which have their place, of course) is starting to require an increased level of proficiency in media literacy than was previously standard. While this proficiency is necessary for all age groups who participate in online platforms, honing the media literacy skills of current and future generations is my goal in all that I do.  What do you think instructors don't know about educational publishing but should? Prior to joining the Bedford New Scholars program, I was largely clueless about the process of developing and publishing educational materials like those produced by Bedford. The extent of my knowledge was largely limited to the appearance of the finished product and its contents. I never considered how much thought goes into not only compiling and editing the materials included in a textbook, but also how the finished product is packaged (e.g., how the cover looks and what details to include on a back cover summary). The amount of feedback received from current professors of Rhetoric & Composition regarding these materials was also an unknown variable to me in the overall equation of educational publishing. While I cannot speak for all instructors, I can say for myself that I appreciate knowing more about the amount of attention given to making sure that the materials produced will be tailored to the needs of the teachers. What's it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Being a part of the Bedford New Scholars program has been educational and inspiring. It opened the door for me to develop a network of colleagues in the field of education to which I otherwise would not have had access. At the Boston summit, we were able to collaborate on a variety of pedagogical approaches as well as propose ideas for resources that should be made more accessible to Rhetoric & Composition professors and their classrooms. Through access to the Bedford Bits Blog as well as in-person, interactive learning experiences, this program has also given me the opportunity to advance my understanding of inclusive education and what that looks like practically in the classroom, which is a valuable asset to any educator. Additionally, I have had the opportunity to provide feedback on projects and materials currently in development at Bedford, not only giving myself and my colleagues a voice in the development process of educational materials, but also showing me where the field of educational publishing is heading in the near future. Carrie’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 Carrie's assignment. You can view the full details here: Functional Rhetorical Appeals Project (FRAP)  The Functional Rhetorical Appeals Project (FRAP, for short) is a project I proposed and then developed in partial collaboration with my cohort of graduate teachers at Appalachian State University. It is a collaborative major assignment around which I scaffolded my unit on visual rhetoric, digital literacy, and presentation. The goal of this project is to teach the always-collaborative process of composition, even in seeming isolation, as well as the rhetorical mobility granted by digital media. Ultimately, the project takes the form of an issue-oriented campaign communicated through two complementary deliverables—one digital, one tangible. The group decides together on their central issue, submits a proposal for their project about how it will take shape, drafts the individual components over the course of a couple of weeks, and finally submits a metacognitive analysis of their project that is essentially an inward-facing rhetorical analysis essay. This project worked surprisingly well when I debuted it in my First Year Composition classrooms in place of the more typical rhetorical analysis essay because it got the students creating and analyzing their own texts, thus developing a richer understanding of the structures, visual and textual, within which rhetorical appeals work to mobilize arguments. Learn more about the Bedford New Scholars advisory board on the   Bedford New Scholars Community page. ... View more

No, this blog is not going to be about that wildly popular video game and movie franchise; it’s about Twitter and some very distinct signs of life in the USA that may be found there in some rather unexpected places. So here goes.   Actually, I almost wrote on this very topic last year during the horrendous Woolsey fire outbreak in Southern California, when Sonia and I faced a mandatory evacuation from our home—along with a lengthy power outage—during which we received most of our emergency information from a battery-powered laptop computer. Since I was already aware then that in the digital age the most up-to-date and accurate news in an emergency situation is likely to be found on such social media sites as Twitter, rather than from the traditional mass media news outlets, I stayed tuned-in to Twitter during the entire ordeal, following a string of hashtags as an endless stream of postings flooded the site. But even as I pored through post after post to get the latest information on the fire, I noticed a lot of things that set off a number of semiotic sirens that I planned to write about when the smoke, quite literally, settled.   When it was all over, however, I decided that maybe writing about my observations was premature, and that it would be better to wait and see what further signs I might detect that could be entered into the semiotic system within which they could be interpreted. Frankly, I rather hoped that I wouldn’t experience such an opportunity again and that I could just let the topic go. But now, exactly a year later, with fires breaking out all around me and Twitter, once again, being my best source of information, I find that everything I noticed last year is being repeated, only more so. Hence this blog.   I first want to make it clear that my analysis to follow is not a critique of Twitter. Twitter is just the medium here; the message lies in the human use of that medium—what I referred to in my last blog as the behavior that cultural semiotics interprets. And here’s what that behavior reveals:   First: even in an emergency situation, when lives and property are at stake, people are going to take to social media to promote their own personal agendas. I’ll call the phenomenon “hashtag spamming,” and it runs the gamut from people who have something sell (and this includes sex workers) to people with a political axe to grind (which during the current fire emergency has included someone who could most charitably be described as an Armenian Genocide-denier).   Beyond the hashtag spammers are those who view a natural disaster as a good time to start or get into a fight about Donald Trump, or global climate change, or any other particularly divisive topic. One sees this, of course, everywhere on the web, where America’s ideological divisions are continuously on display in an ever-escalating fashion, but it is striking to find it going on in the midst of a natural disaster.   The way that some people keep retweeting information both from official emergency services sources and conventional news media is something that is also worth noting. In almost every case, such re-tweeters evidently mean well, but what they do is repeat information that can be dangerously misleading because it is completely out of date during a fast-developing fire outbreak. Thus, one finds the same dramatic fire images that commercial news sources feature in order to fan the flames, if you will, of viewer attention, repeated again and again, when those images are no longer accurate representations of the most current conditions—this sort of thing, of course, is exacerbated by television news reporters who use Twitter to promote their stations.   There is also a sentimental set of signifiers to consider. These are the posts from people who also mean well, but who clutter up the page with expressions of their emotional responses to the catastrophe. When one is in a hurry to find out exactly what is happening in a fast-moving situation, such posts are actually counter-productive, and can get in the way of the truly informative posts in which individuals supplement the official information about emergency services (including evacuation center locations and assistance with moving pets and large animals out of the fire zone) with tips and offers of help of their own.   You put all of this together and a very profound signification emerges about the power of interactive media. Quite simply, we find here the enormous desire of ordinary people to have a voice in a world where wealth and power are otherwise being consolidated in ever-shrinking enclaves of geopolitical privilege. Sometimes that voice is used for selfish, and even pernicious, purposes, and sometimes it reflects genuine altruistic, and even heroic, ends. To paraphrase Dickens' famous opening to A Tale of Two Cities, Twitter, like the Internet at large, presents us with the best of times and the worst of times. It is at once of essential utility and plagued with behaviors that—to cite Nietzsche this time—can best be described as "human, all too human."   It is easy to take the new realities of the digital era for granted, but the ability to participate directly in the world of mass media is still a very new thing in human history. The hierarchical, top-down structures of the past have been deconstructed, and people from all over the world are rushing in to fill the spaces that were once denied to them. The effects of this new capability are beginning to appear in the form of an increasing political polarization that can be found worldwide, for the moderating influence of the traditional commercial news media, which skew to the center in order to promote optimal audience share, is being lost. It was once assumed that this change of affairs would most benefit left-of-center politics, but so far the evidence is that politics-by-Twitter has been more effectively employed by the right. The pendulum may swing back as we look to the 2020 election, but either way (and here comes my last literary allusion) it is the center that cannot hold. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1917737   by geralt, used under   Pixabay License ... View more

I just spent a weekend with high school and college students from seven sites in the U.S.: Lawrence, MA; Santa Fe, NM; Middlebury, VT; Aiken, SC; Atlanta, GA; Window Rock, AZ (on the Navajo Nation); and Louisville, KY. These students were gathered as part of the Next Generation Leadership Network, a project sponsored by the Bread Loaf Teachers’ Network and Andover/Bread Loaf, a program with a thirty-year history of working with community leaders and public school teachers. We talked together, performed together, and wrote together to “invitations” (the word FEBO, a hip-hop/rap artist who led us in a fabulous workshop, much prefers over the more sterile and regimented “prompts”). We were invited to continue this sentence: “I am ____,” and later to continue “I do it for ____.” Here’s what one teacher from the Santa Fe Indian School had to say: I do it for my students, who have changed my life more than I could ever express. So at least once a day, during a project, a lesson, a field trip, a simple assignment, they know they are loved, appreciated, and able to create beautiful and powerful writing. Listening to teachers and students talk about what motivates them and gets them out of bed every morning gave me a lot to think about, and a lot to be grateful for. I wrote “I do it for myself, to stay alive, to stay sane, to make the connections that keep me going, to learn more about who I am through what students teach me.”   During one long afternoon, the students and teachers met in their home groups to discuss/brainstorm about the problems facing their communities and their ideas for addressing them. What followed was one of the most intense listening experiences I’ve had, as group after group described the challenges facing them. There were differences, to be sure, but what struck me most forcefully were the similarities. Over and over, they identified the same problems: food insecurity, water and air pollution, physical and mental health issues—diabetes, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, opioid addiction, smoking, obesity, trauma associated with abuse—and lack of resources, lack of access to health care.   These young people present a microcosm of the country and of the issues that are facing students today, issues that are, as these students told us, worrying them a great deal. What kept me from feeling the deepest despair, however, were the young people themselves: they were, as I later told them, clear-eyed, realistic, compassionate, resourceful, imaginative, and DETERMINED. Seldom have I met a more determined lot. And they have plans to address these issues—from forming community coalitions to carrying out tests of local water sources, to building community gardens to supplement and improve diets (we learned that in the 27,000-square mile Navajo Nation there are only a dozen grocery stores—think about it), to developing tutor programs (that’s my word—they refer to “writing leaders,” which is much better!) and so much more.   The problems identified by these young people are not unique to their communities. Today we know that colleges and universities include a number of students who are homeless and food insecure; in my area of California, food pantries are springing up exponentially. So I am once again reminded of something the inimitable Maxine Greene used to say: when you look at the students in your class, they may all look just fine. But they aren’t just fine, you just cannot see the burdens they are carrying, the problems they are struggling with, the challenges that bear down on them.   No time like the present then to listen—and listen hard—to the students we are privileged to work with. Ask them to write about what they are most worried about. Ask them to complete this sentence: “I feel ____.” Or “I need ____.” Or “I do it for ____.” These are trying times, but especially for young people and students. We need to listen and to help them discover ways to find agency and to take action.   Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1879453 by quinntheislander, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

I have been talking with my students about how we talk about science, particularly as non-scientists. After all, whether or not they understood the fine details of climate science, energized students from our campus and area high schools, like many students in your communities, showed up for local Climate Strikes in September, certainly persuaded by scientific claims. In class, we discussed Greta Thunberg’s ethos-shifting claim before Congress:  “I don’t want you to listen to me; I want you to listen to the scientists.”   Some aspects of climate change are in-our-face evident, such as the  fires ravaging California. Other aspects require the non-scientists among us to trust the experts, as in the new analysis of satellite data that has resulted in even more dire calculations of coastal flooding predictions for 2050.   In writing classes that focus on claims, evidence, and persuasion, it is worth lingering with our students on the problem of how and why non-experts (which is to say, most of us) are persuaded, or not, by experts. Since science is on my students’ minds, I am going to recommend a few readings that have sparked helpful discussion in my classrooms about claims, evidence, and persuasion in science writing intended for the general public. I would appreciate hearing your recommendations, too.   In Andrew J. Hoffman’s essay, “The Full Scope,” from his book, How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate (2015), he describes his own uncomfortable experiences holding discussions with climate-change skeptics who sometimes shut down because they anticipate judgment and condescension from scientific experts. Hoffman argues that these conversations would be better served if we stop focusing on the extremes in the debate and instead aim for consensus-building with those in the middle who are at least open to discussion. Rather than assuming that more data will persuade skeptics, Hoffman suggests understanding where skeptics are coming from and listening for the other issues climate change discussions might trigger. Then, we can frame our responses around these concerns, such as health, national security, economic competition, or another issue. This advice might be timely before we all spend time with family members over the winter holidays!   Psychologist Robert Gifford’s essay, “Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers that Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaption” (2011), enumerates and explains the many psychological barriers that keep us from changing our behaviors in response to climate science. Like Hoffman, Gifford seeks to help us understand the nature of resistance, from optimism bias to financial investments to social comparison (among the many “dragons” to slay). Recognizing these barriers — and the ways they are often nested — is essential, Gifford argues, for devising responses that address these worries and empower people to see the value in doing the admittedly hard work of behavior-change.    Journalist Dahr Jamail’s book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption (2019) , takes a different approach. Jamail’s concern is not analyzing the rhetoric of climate science debates but, rather, modeling the ethos of an effective citizen-learner. In his eloquent chapter, “The Fate of the Forests,” Jamail demonstrates the ways ordinary citizens often bear witness to climate change in our very own front yards but just as often fail to grasp the import of what we are seeing. His accessible interviews with scientists model an interdisciplinary approach to asking questions and framing answers. This entire chapter speaks to Hoffman’s hope for building consensus and Gifford’s reminder that resistance to climate data takes many forms.    Should the writing classroom be the place to discuss climate change? Given the polarized nature of the public debate, the skills students are learning with your guidance about effective persuasion, and the reminders from our students that they will live with the consequences of these conversations, I am convinced that the answer is yes. Photo Credit: April Lidinsky ... View more

Some time ago I wrote about a forthcoming book about a food literacy program ongoing at Fern Creek High School in Kentucky, and about the truly dramatic difference that program has made in the lives of students there. Now, at last, the book is out! Entitled Say Yes to Pears: Food Literacy in and beyond the English Classroom and written by Joe Franzen and Brent Peters (with a foreword by the inimitable Dixie Goswami), this book is now available from NCTE as well as from Amazon and other venues.   About this book, I said: Readers should pull up to this remarkable book as though it were a table, a table laden with mouth-watering savories, with cooking experiments, with homemade donuts, with radishes that pop up “like lollipops,” and with the wisdom of two visionary teachers and scores of deeply committed and imaginative students. Dip in to any page and you will find a story worth listening to and lingering over. You will hear voices that will echo in your ears for years to come. And you will get to know the power of young people with a purpose, who “say yes to pears” and so much more as they become increasingly powerful thinkers, readers, and writers. So turn the page, dig into this feast of possibility, and learn how food literacy has shaped the lives and communities of those you will meet here. In these pages, you will meet Ivy (right), whose grandmother’s 50 pounds of pears provided a way to launch the class, as they made pear butter, pear chutney, pear sauce, dried pears, and pear apple almond muffins and began the series of experiments that would lead to so much discovery and learning. You will meet shy, reticent Milo, whose food map (below) and narrative makes a powerful connection between his dying “father figure I never managed to call Dad” and “the guilt of biscuits and gravy” (20). You will meet Camdan, Pearl, and Don flipping pancakes early on in a Food Lit class, about which one of the authors says: The students thought they were making pancake batter. What we actually did was break the conventional dynamics of the classroom. I put them in charge. I offered risk with an authentic reward. I made them teachers for one another. Then they defined what the class would be. For the rest of the course, I will be only a guide. (p. 92)   As the Food Lit class blossoms into a food club, a garden, and many other activities, the students bring in their parents and friends, the community comes to embrace the program, and the students get better and better not just at gardening, not just at cooking, as meaningful as those arts are, but they get better and better as students, and particularly as writers. As a result, the school, once labeled a “failing school,” began to gain its footing and its identity—and test scores began to rise. As Franzen and Peters put it, “What the food studies program has been able to do is blur the lines between home and school, individual and community, learning and fun, disciplines and reality” (162). Reading Say Yes to Pears has made me think about the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford, with its themed first and second year courses: we can be sure that if we offer courses with themes related to food, they will attract a wide and broad group of students. Now I think we should begin such classes asking students to draw the kind of food maps featured in this book: We ask students to go to the places in their memories that show their full selves, and we ask simply that they list the ingredients of their memories—the sounds, the people, the dishes, the places, the failures, the lessons, the favorites, the confessions, the gross encounters, the losses, and the celebrations they have had around food. . . . We write the word “food” in the center of a piece of paper and then we list all the things that surround this word. (p. 17)   A pretty simple assignment, at first glance. But the explorations it has engendered, the learning it has enabled, the students it has inspired all speak to its power. Might be worth making a food map of your own—I am about to sketch one right now!   Image Credit: Andrea Lunsford ... View more

I love to show short videos in class. A brief and lively video often sets the right mood in class, creating a communal moment, providing a shared language and new perspective to answer students’ questions about academic writing. When students are confused about how to analyze a source, for instance, and tired of seeing my comment on their drafts— “too much summary; not enough analysis”—I know that I need Plan B—a good “how to” video to help students visualize how to balance summary with analysis. But most videos designed for composition classes are boring, another talking head or a slide presentation, narrated by a remote voice, distant and unrelatable. And as my students say, “they are cheesy.” So I started thinking about the potential of videos to help students succeed as college writers, and my editors and I decided to try our hand at creating an engaging suite of videos around three major assignments: analysis, researched argument, and annotated bibliography. Consider the case of annotated bibliography, one of the most important assignment steps in writing a research paper. We know that students are often stumped about the why and how of constructing an annotated bibliography, and especially stumped about what it means to be in conversation with other writers and thinkers and what it means to reflect on a source’s contribution to their project. They ask important basic questions—what is a research conversation? How do I enter it? What is an annotation? What is the difference between summarizing and evaluating a source? And how do I figure out how a source fits into my project? We wanted our videos to capture the types of questions real students ask at each stage of the process, so we created four videos, each around two-minutes long, to show students how to understand the expectations of the genre, how to enter a research conversation, how to write an annotation, and how to understand the differences between summarizing a source and evaluating a source’s contribution to their research project.  I have included live links to two of the annotated bibliography videos here. Enjoy! I would love to hear your impressions, especially how you might use them with your students. What is an annotated bibliography? How to enter a research conversation How to write an annotation How to evaluate a source Editor’s note: Your Bedford/St. Martin's rep can give you access to the full suite, including the additional two annotated bibliography videos as well as the videos for analysis and argument (four in each cluster). All of the videos are available in LaunchPad Solo for Hacker Handbooks and LaunchPad for A Writer's Reference, Ninth Edition. ... View more

In my last blog, I wrote about the frustrations of dealing with difficult student questions (“So what are we doing?”) and the possibilities for instruction embedded in those questions. Similarly, I’ve addressed the challenge of responding to student comments comparing current instructor practice with their experiences in previous courses.   An unfiltered response in both these scenarios might be snarky or rude at worst, and unhelpful at best. As I wrote before, these difficult comments and questions can be teachable moments—both for the student and for myself—if I can filter the initial knee-jerk reaction and think through what I could say to engage the student for deeper thinking. Can I open what Jesson et al. (following Wegerif) have called a “dialogic space,” where “the teacher’s and students’ contributions serve to drive thinking forward” (157)? If my response shuts down the conversation, that space contracts—or disappears altogether. Moreover, those unfiltered comments do not invite the kind of on-going development of talk about writing and language—meta-talk—that I want to foster, explore, and evaluate in my classes.   Recently, I encountered another of these difficult interactions. A student (who had already conferenced with me and received feedback concerning a developing text that did not address the parameters of the assignment) submitted an intermediate draft without any substantive revisions to content. When I asked the student about notes from our conference (since the work submitted for review did not reflect thoughtful response to the comments I had made), the student replied that one of the upper-level writing fellows working with our class “said it was good,” so the student assumed no revisions were needed.   I have heard such comments before: someone else—a writing center tutor, a friend who is an English major, a high school teacher, a parent, or even another instructor—read the paper and said “it was good.”    What would your knee-jerk response be? “That other person didn’t write the instructions.” “That other person isn’t going to be grading this paper.” “That other person doesn’t have my degree.” “That other person may not have been honest with you.” “I don’t care what that other person said…”    I suppose our response would depend on the context—first, intermediate, or final draft, for example, and what we thought the student was hoping to achieve by reporting on someone else’s assessment of the piece, generally a more positive assessment.   In considering my own response to the student (which was to ask for a conference during office hours), I began to wonder what a thoughtfully-filtered response that opens dialogic space might look like. I considered the talk-encouraging questions I might ask:   What specifically did the writing fellow tell you was good about the paper? Did you take notes? If not, would it be worth asking her to discuss it with you again? What did you ask the writing fellow to look at when you went for your conference? Did you discuss my comments with the writing fellow? Did the writing fellow make any specific comments or recommendations we could talk about? Why do you think different people sometimes give different feedback? How can you handle the differences, as a writer? How would you define good when it comes to writing? How does context affect our understanding of what good is? Could our comments about the piece actually both be reasonable evaluations of it? What do you like about the piece as it stands now? Are there parts of the paper that you can build on for revision? What did you hear when I gave you feedback during conference? Knowing that the paper does not currently meet the requirements of the assignment, what information from me would be most helpful to you? What sorts of things could you tell the writing fellows to help them target their feedback on the next draft?   I recognize in myself a tendency to allow frustration to stop conversations. And yes, some of the frustrations arise from student apathy, laziness, or forgetfulness. They have told me as much: they didn’t take notes, they forgot what we discussed, they wanted not to have to write again. And at times, especially for some of the students who find themselves in my corequisite sections, the problem stems from the overall culture shock of college. But perhaps those students need me to filter my responses the most—and they need an opportunity to talk about the writing a little bit more.    What comments and questions from students cause you the most frustration in your corequisite writing courses? What strategies have worked for you in responding? ... View more

Leah Beth Johnston (recommended by Elías Domínguez Barajas) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Arkansas. She will finish her degree in 2022. Her research focuses on First-Year Composition administration and Marginal Rhetorics, and her dissertation is a book that explores the intersection of the two. A former faculty member at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, Leah Beth hopes to return to Texas upon finishing her PhD.  How do you hope higher education will change in the next ten years? I hope that in the next ten years, higher education will change drastically. We will always be operating in a system whose foundation was built on white supremacy and exclusionary tactics, but I hope that white educators, in particular, will begin to interrogate their own biases and privileges in a way that positively changes higher education as a whole. Teaching at a PWI has illuminated for me how far we still have to go before educational equity will exist, and has also reinforced my respect for the many folx on the margins of universities creating small but equitable spaces for historically oppressed identities.  Is there an instructor or scholar that helped shape your career in rhet/comp? How?  My current advisor, Dr. Jo Hsu, has significantly helped to shape my career in Rhet/Comp. I learn a lot from their example of showing up, showing grace, and doing small but great things. Many faculty members in higher education view teaching as something they do to exercise their own research agendas, but Jo has always been excited and encouraging about their students’ own research, and their genuine love of teaching is obvious in the classroom. I hope to someday be half the teacher they are.  What's it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Being part of the Bedford New Scholars program has been such an honor! That feels cheesy to say, but spending this year having insight into educational publishing, being able to offer input on texts that may show up in classes I teach, and traveling to Boston to network among top scholars in my field has been the privilege of a lifetime. The workload throughout the year was structured in such a way that my own research and teaching did not suffer, and the overall support provided by the Bedford/St. Martin’s team has been amazing.  What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? During our New Scholars Summit in Boston, I learned something from each and every fellow scholar, whether it was a new author to read, a technique for lesson planning, or an idea to incorporate digital elements into the classroom. I especially enjoyed a team-building activity where we each wrote our priorities as teachers on a large piece of paper, then had the opportunity to review one another’s answers. I found that many of our priorities, concerns, and triumphs overlap, which gave me a sense of where Composition is as a whole right now, insight that is invaluable for my career and my own pedagogy.  Leah Beth Johnston’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 Beth's assignment. You can view the full details here: Emoji Revision Assignment.  For this lesson, review what emoji is and make sure everyone has a working understanding of how to access emoji on their device. Then, pass out movie title slips individually or into groups of 2-4, depending on class size. Ask students to revise not the movie title, but the movie plot, into emoji language. This may require some research if they are not familiar with the movie. Remind students that even if they have seen the movie, they may want to review the main themes before revising the plot into emoji. As each student/group finishes their revision, they will take a screenshot of the “sentence” and email it to the instructor. Once all revisions have been sent, the instructor projects them at the front of the classroom, and the entire class discusses them one by one to guess which movie they are referring to.  After completing this assignment, students will have a basic literacy in emoji language and digital discourse. Students will be able to conduct internet research, and apply this research to summarizing texts. Students will also be able to understand the concept of a multimodal text, and will be able to connect the activity to their own revision processes. Learn more about the Bedford New Scholars advisory board on the   Bedford New Scholars Community page. ... View more

When Sonia and I began working on the first edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A. in 1992, semiotics was still regarded as a rather obscure scholarly discipline generally associated with literary theory and linguistics. It also was quite literally unheard of to attempt to employ semiotics as a model for critical thinking in first-year composition classes, and Chuck Christensen, the Publisher and Founder of Bedford Books, was rather sticking his neck out when he offered us a contract. To help everyone at Bedford along in the development process of this unusual textbook, he asked me to provide a one-page explanation of what semiotics actually is, and I responded with a semiotic analysis of the then-popular teen fashion of wearing athletic shoes—preferably Nikes—with their shoelaces untied. That did the trick and Sonia and I were on our way.   As you may note, the focus of my semiotic explanation for the Bedford folks was on an object (athletic shoes), with the intent of demonstrating how ordinary consumer products could be taken as signs bearing a larger cultural significance. This was quite consistent with semiotic practice at the time in the field of popular cultural studies, which frequently analyzed cultural objects and images. But even then I knew that the real focus of cultural semiotics in Signs of Life was human behavior as mediated by such things as fashion preferences, and with each new edition of the book, I have been further refining just what that means.   And so, as I work on the tenth edition of the book, I have come to realize that the semiotic analysis of cultural behavior bears a close relationship to the science of artificial intelligence. For just like AI, the semiotics of human behavior works with aggregated patterns based upon what people actually do rather than what they say. Consider how the ALEKS mathematics adaptive learning courseware works. Aggregating masses of data acquired by tracking students as they do their math homework on an LMS, ALEKS algorithmically anticipates common errors and prompts students to correct them step-by-step as they complete their assignments. This is basically the same principle behind the kind of algorithms created by Amazon, Facebook, and Google, which are designed to anticipate consumer behavior, and it's also the principle behind Alexa and Siri.   Now, semioticians don't spy on people, and they don't construct algorithms, and they don't profit by their analyses the way the corporate titans do, but they do take note of what people do and look for patterns by creating historically informed systems of association and difference in order to provide an abductive basis for the most likely, or probable, interpretation of the behavior that they are analyzing—as when in my last blog I looked at the many decades in which the character of the Joker has remained popular in order to interpret that popularity.   Now, to take another fundamental principle of cultural semiotics—that of the role of cultural mythologies in shaping social behavior—one can anticipate a good deal of resistance (especially from students) to the notion that individual human behavior can be so categorically interpreted in this way, for the mythology of individualism runs deep in the American grain. We like to think that our behavior is entirely free and unconstrained by any sort of mathematically-related probabilities. But it wouldn't bother a probability theorist, especially one like Sir David Spiegelhalter, a Cambridge University statistician, who has noted that “Just as vast numbers of randomly moving molecules, when put together, produce completely predictable behavior in a gas, so do vast numbers of human possibilities, each totally unpredictable in itself, when aggregated, produce an amazing predictability”.   So, when we perform a semiotic interpretation of popular culture, we are on the lookout for that probability curve, even as we anticipate individual outriders and exceptions (which can themselves point to different patterns that may be equally significant in what is, after all, an overdetermined interpretation). But our goal as semioticians is to reveal the significance of the patterns that we find, not to exploit them, and thus, perhaps, modify those behaviors that, all unawares, are doing harm. Photo Credit:   Pixabay Image 2587756  by Stock Snap, used under   Pixabay License ... View more

On this Halloween, I am in Lawrence, MA, joining the Andover Bread Loaf group of teachers from Lawrence’s public schools and the students who act as writing consultants throughout the city. Founded, inspired, and led by Lou Bernieri, a genius if ever there was one, Andover Bread Loaf has changed the lives of disenfranchised inner-city students and their teachers, as well as those of students attending the super-elite Phillips Academy (Andover). We are here celebrating the work of these students along with high school representatives from several Next Generation Leadership Network sites, each of which aims to engage young people in taking on leadership roles and in writing and speaking their way into, and then shaping, public discourse.   I will write more about this thrilling meeting in a week or so, but right now I am about to ask the students here what or who they might want to “be” this Halloween. I’ve thought a lot about this question this year. Everywhere I look I see greedy, craven, corrupt people: no one out there to emulate. No one to look up to or admire unless I look very locally, to people like Lou or the fabulous teachers he works with. But then I thought again. And I was sure: if I were to “be” someone today, this Halloween, someone who represents the best of us, well, I’d be Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the “notorious RBG.”   In a Times editorial published a few weeks ago, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote of going to the opening concert of the National Symphony Orchestra: At mid-concert, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, David M. Rubinstein, came out to greet the audience and the V.I.P.s. He welcomed the different ambassadors, then he went through the cabinet members present and then the Supreme Court justices. He introduced Justice Samuel Alito, who got a smattering of applause. Then he introduced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seated in the balcony. First many women in the audience stood up to applaud. And then everyone stood up. And then everyone applauded. And then everyone applauded more. And then some people cheered. And then some whistled. And it went on and on and on. It was extraordinary. I’ve been to a lot of Kennedy Center concerts, and a few when the president, sitting in his official box, was introduced. But I’ve never witnessed anything like the reception for Justice Ginsburg. And this was not a totally liberal audience. There were many older G.O.P. donors and corporate types there. This was a spontaneous, bipartisan expression of respect for, and longing for, a national leader of integrity and humility — after three years of a president utterly without shame, for whom no ethical red line has been too red to cross. There is still a civic pulse in this country. (New York Times, Oct. 1, 2019)   If Friedman is right, if there is a “civic pulse” in the country and if there is truly longing for a “national leader of integrity and humility,” then I agree with him that Justice Ginsburg is such a person. On this Halloween, she’s my hero and the person I’d most like to “dress up” as. And not just that: she’s the person I want to hold before me as a steady, reassuring force for honesty and fairness and, yes, humility—and then try as hard as I can to “be like RBG.”   If you’re teaching today, ask your students who they would most like to “go as” on Halloween and why. This could be a fun writing prompt that leads to an interesting discussion!   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 1838545 by Pexels, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.     Has the United Kingdom or Brexit come up in your classes lately? If so, this is a great opportunity to use Grammar Girl podcasts to learn more about another form of English!   Podcasts have been around for a while, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.    LaunchPad   and   Achieve products include assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. If you’re teaching a lesson about prepositions or find your class needs some more help with the topic, you can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit   Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.    If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts."   If you are using Achieve, you will find a "Quick Start Guide: Grammar Girl and Question Bank" in your Welcome Unit. You can also find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." Comparing British and American Englishes with Grammar Girl Names of Groups: British versus American English Usage [3:46] American English versus British English [4:36] Why Are British English and American English Different? [6:06] Assignment: Choose one or more of the above podcasts and listen as a class; remind students they can also read along using the transcripts. Ask each student to take notes on their general thoughts and observations as they listen. After, discuss as a class: What did they learn about British English? About American English? Was anything surprising or did they know this information already?   Tip: If you want to focus on a specific aspect of English using these podcasts, you can. For subject-verb agreement, listen to “ Names of Groups: British versus American English Usage.” If you want to discuss word usage and pronunciation, listen to “ American English versus British English.” To discuss spelling differences, listen to “Why Are British English and American English Different? ”   Have you used podcasts to discuss different Englishes in class? Let us know in the comments!   Credit: Pixabay Image 203492  by Ichigo121212 , used under a Pixaby License ... View more

I’ve just been reading Nancy Bou Ayash’s Toward Translingual Realities in Composition: (Re)Working Local Language Representations and Practices (2019). It’s a bit of a struggle for me—fairly dense in places, but I’m very glad I’m reading it. I was drawn to it by the cover (pictured above): who wouldn’t want to turn the page and find out what’s inside?!   The case Ayash makes for “translingual realities” is compelling, based on her own research in Beirut and in Seattle; the book is brimming with examples of translingual practices throughout. Because I know Seattle pretty well, I have especially enjoyed reading about the research conducted there, and one paragraph sparked my imagination in all kinds of ways. It’s long, but I think you’ll enjoy it: On the walls of one of Seattle’s breakfast locations known for its twelve-egg omelets, the decorative collection of illustrations and accompanying textual descriptions patrons have playfully designed while waiting for their food as they mix languages, Englishes, language varieties, and visualization elements . . . portrays the city’s blending and bending of resources and practices. The flow of customers as they come and go, enter and exit that particular space has significantly expanded that canvas all the way to the restaurant’s entrance where the front door is now covered with graphic and textual creations. Bringing southern barbecue and brew to Seattle’s hip Ballard neighborhood, a counter service joint in a former barbecue wasteland is known not only for its smoky fall-off-the-bone-style ribs but also for the availability of writable chalkboard walls in its restrooms, with customers mobilizing meaning and language resources as they move in and out. At another jam-packed restaurant large enough to accommodate only ten tables, its whiteboard side wall is an open invitation to its primarily Spanish-speaking clientele usually on a one- to two-hour wait to grab black markers, search for blank surfaces, write, and draw on that fluid canvas. Covered with dry-erase paint, the interior walls of this Mexican steakhouse are adorned with Spanish, English, and Spanglish used in an interwoven mix to depict local experiences of and connections with the transnational migration of the culinary gene pool of the northwestern Sinaloa region across the US/Mexican border all the way to the Pacific Northwest region. (105)   Wow, what a scene! I love thinking about these restaurant-goers becoming authors and artists on the spot, mixing it up with languages, dialects, drawings—expressing themselves with fun and evidently with flair. Now I am going to be looking for examples of these open spaces for writing in public places like restaurants, writing that definitely strays outside the “lines” of a page or screen but is not graffiti (or is it?). I can also imagine sending my students out on field trips to gather additional data first hand: I can see them fanning out across San Francisco’s Chinatown or South of Market, around Oakland’s Jack London Square and other places in the East Bay, in search of “translingual realities” and bringing them to class to examine together and to use as a means of understanding translingualism—and not just understanding it better, but practicing it ourselves. And to go further, asking how these translingual realities relate to the writing they are doing in college and to ask how such realities might work to engage and influence that writing.   So thanks to Nancy Bou Ayash for taking me on this ride: I am now looking for “translingual realities” everywhere!   Image Credit: Andrea Lunsford ... View more

If I surveyed composition or IRW instructors about the student questions we find most frustrating, I am sure there would be considerable overlap in our responses. I would love to say that I am so calm, so focused on student support and student learning, that I am never flustered by student questions, and I am never tempted to give a snarky reply. But of course, this is not the case. Certain questions trigger my irritation, and more than I’d like to admit it, some rather unhelpful responses.   I got one of those questions last week. My students are writing rhetorical analyses of arguments about writing (choosing chapters from Bad Ideas about Writing as the focus of analysis), certainly not the easiest of tasks for beginning writers. To prepare for the assignment, I lead students through activities sequenced to scaffold instruction: first we practice summary, then recognition of argument components, then identification of various stylistic devices related to tone, stance, and engagement. In each case, we move from a large group discussion to a group or paired practice, and then individual practice.  The week before students begin working on their own drafts, they collaborate with others to practice parts of the assignment: summarizing the article, noting key elements of the argument, and crafting a thesis statement. We review these collaborative pieces as a whole class, discussing what works and what doesn’t.    After the weeks of preparation and three preparatory “check-points” (summarizing the article they had selected for analysis, making a bulleted list of key rhetorical strategies, and drafting a thesis), I set aside a class period for drafting. About ten minutes into that class session devoted to drafting, a student came to me and asked me that question:  “So, what are we doing?” This student had been present for all the previous classes. This student had access to the handouts, the instructions, the samples, and the collaborative exercises—and the student had selected and summarized an article. But the student was completely lost when it came to drafting his analysis. “So what are we doing? Am I just supposed to write what I think about this topic?”   Snark filled my mind: what did the student think we were doing? Talk about a failure to transfer – how much nearer could writing situations be? And yet there was a failure to connect the previous three weeks, the collaborative practice and the checkpoints, to the current task. And in the moment, I am pretty sure I widened my eyes (but refrained from rolling them). The student must have noted my reaction.   I remembered my own teaching goal: build writing-talk so as to support metacognition, reflection, and transfer. I encouraged the student to get the assignment instructions, and we talked through what we had already done in preparation. The student nodded and went back to the computer. Still, it took some time before the draft began to take shape.   This week, the students in that class met with me in groups of four for review conferences. The questioning student came with a draft that did not address rhetorical analysis in any way, despite the review we went through on drafting day. During the conferences, we projected drafts one by one onto a screen for group discussion. And during this student-led discussion, the student had a breakthrough: “So that’s what we’re doing. I need to go back and re-think my thesis.” Other students made suggestions and gave encouragement, and the student left with a focus for revision.   “So what are we doing?” I need to remember the grammar embedded in this question.  “So” is a discourse connector; the question doesn’t appear in a vacuum. Part of instruction in meta-talk is helping students make connections to our previous discourse, to see the cohesiveness of the instruction up to that point. And it’s “we” – not just “I.” I have told the students we are a community, and answers often arise in collaborative work, just as they did for this student in our group conference. Finally, the question is in present progressive: a work in process. The process includes what we have done (present perfect) and what we will do (future), and each part is tied together. From the present moment, especially from the student’s point of view, the process as a whole can be terribly difficult to see.    “So what are we doing, Dr. Moore?” This terribly annoying question can be a powerful teaching moment, if I will let it.   What questions annoy you in the writing classroom? How are you handling them? ... View more

Long before California Assembly Bill 705 went into effect, making accelerated composition the de facto first-semester composition course in my state, I was privileged to be part of a group of educators and counselors working for Santa Barbara City College’s Express to Success Program (ESP).    Similar to the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) pioneered by Peter Adams and others at the Community College of Baltimore County, ESP “mainstreamed” a cohort of students who assessed below college-level into our first-semester composition course, English 110. In addition to taking 110, which met twice a week for a total of two hours and forty minutes, students in the cohort also met twice a week in English 89, a 50-minute Pass/No Pass co-requisite. Class size for English 110 was a manageable 24 students, with approximately half the students enrolled in the co-requisite.   Under the leadership of Kathy Molloy, ESP received the 2012 Chancellor’s Award for Best Practices in Student Equity and was chosen as a 2014 “Example of Excelencia” by Excelencia in Educa tion, and was presented with the 2018 California Community Colleges Board of Governors Exemplary Program Award.  It was a program with which both students and faculty were proud to be associated. (If I write at times in the past tense about the Express to Success Program, that’s because it was dissolved in May of 2019, a few months before AB705 went into effect.)   I’ll address the thorny issue of co-requisites and funding in a later post, but for the moment, I’d like to offer ESP’s co-requisite as a model for other colleges. What I found most valuable about English 89 was that it provided extra writing practice, built community, was supported by a peer tutor and counselor, combined full-class and individualized instruction, offered just in time remediation, and allowed for curricular collaboration and flexibility.   I’ll discuss the first two of these significant—and replicable—elements of the co-requisite in this post, and address the others next month. In doing so, I will be drawing not only on my own experiences, but also those of my colleagues in what was always a highly collaborative enterprise.   Extra Writing Practice Writing is hard work, even for experienced writers, and growing as a writer requires lots of opportunities to fall flat on your face. Therefore, among the most important benefits of writing in the co-requisite is that students can experiment, take risks, and make mistakes that don’t affect their grades. Meeting twice a week allows for more of this low-stakes writing, and more time for instructors and tutors to talk students through different ways to best approach the assignment they are working on.   Sandra Starkey, my wife and ESP colleague, was always keen to make sure students generated at least some text during the fifty minutes they were in class. “ The co-requisite,” she says, “gives students a chance to actually engage in writing. I tell them they’re like journalists: they have a deadline—the end of class—and they’re going to have to turn in a draft of a paragraph for the essay they’re working on. It may not be perfect, but it’s something they’ll be able to take home and work on further.”   As a writer myself, I loved the frenzy of drafting and revision that went on when the co-requisite was humming along. Students looked more closely at their texts than they were used to doing; they argued with one another—sometimes passionately—about the best way to express an idea. At its best, with everyone fully engaged in the complexities of the composition process, English 89 sometimes reminded me of a graduate writing workshop.   Building Community Peter Adams and others are right to laud the benefits of the “cohort effect.” When students spend time together in the same small group over the course of a semester, they can’t help but come to cheer each other on. Bonny Bryan, now SBCC’s director of composition, found that what she most appreciated about English 89 “ was the quick sense of community that emerged. Given its size and the fact that it was located in a computer lab, students quickly moved between working as a group of twelve to collaborating as triads and pairs.”   The small size of a co-requisite makes faculty members more accessible—and less threatening—to students, and provides instructors with opportunities to get to know their students as three-dimensional human beings. Jennifer Baxton, who took over coordinating English courses in ESP’s final semester, valued the way “the co-requisite workshop served as a way to further strengthen the connection between faculty and students, as well as students with their peers. As a group, the [co-req students] were invested in their success, working together toward the refinement of the skills taught in the composition class.”   Indeed, Kathy Molloy notes that the co-requisite students were often so enthusiastic about “the advantages of the support class…many of the students who weren’t assigned to the co-req asked to come as well—they clearly saw how helpful the extra support could be.”   Appropriately, it’s that growing sense of dedication to the act of writing that seems to create a sense of community. Enthusiasm is contagious, and with everyone in the room working towards a common goal, students begin sharing with one another their too-often untapped wisdom and kindness.   [More details on a successful model for the accelerated composition co-requisite are forthcoming in David Starkey’s next post.] ... 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 The idea of using music in my classes sounds simple enough but has had an amazing impact on my teaching over the years. Music and audio are important (often under emphasized) components of multimodal composition and digital content creation. Today, I want to talk about some of the ways I have used music in my classes and describe a particular assignment: The Class Playlist.  I often ask students to analyze music as literature, look at lyrics through critical lenses, and interpret context, intention, and impact as social artifacts. For example, I have asked students to analyze “protest songs” and look at their place within particular historical and social contexts. With the availability of videos and lyrics online, this project is easily shared with others, so students can not only read the lyrics but also hear the actual music and analyze other components of this multimodal genre. My classes also often involve digital community engagement for real-world projects that promote awareness or advocate for social change. Years ago, I stumbled on this wonderful organization, Playing for Change , who identify themselves as “ a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. ” I introduce students to the organization and present them with one of the first songs in their series, a version of Stand by Me performed by musicians all over the world and then reworked into an international tapestry of their voices – a format replicated by the organization over the years. This song is familiar to most people, has an uplifting melody and message, and demonstrates a great example of the ways we might create engaging multimodal content through and with music. Video Link : 2465 By happenstance, I was presenting at a professional conference and had to test my technology before my presentation. I pulled up this same song to test the audio and immediately noticed that it drew people into presentation and that it changed the mood of room, opening up my audience to hear what I had to say in ways that sitting in silence did not. I decided to continue to play it as participants entered as we gathered and set up the presentation. It challenged our notions of what we expect in these settings and used the multimodal component of music to affect the impact of the presentation. Since that day, I have often used this simple technique before I present.  It was this experience that that led to my latest exploration of music in my writing classes – the Class Playlist. I currently teach a course that emphasizes digital storytelling and want to make sure students consider sound and music as important components of their multimodal composition processes. In class, we focus on students’ rhetorical and ethical use of music in digital contexts and the music itself as a storytelling genre. We all love our playlists that allow us to curate songs in different ways. We can organize them around particular events, activities, or themes. In this class, since we focus on digital storytelling, I asked students to choose two songs that tell either a story (through lyrics and music) or that remind them of a story from their own lives (teachers can easily adapt this idea to their own course content). I have students submit songs to a collaborative Google document and then a move them to an online playlist app (Spotify). Each time we meet, I play one of their songs as students are settling into the room and I am taking roll and getting organized. Once the song is finished, I ask the student to explain a bit of context for the song, including why they chose it for our playlist. Background Readings and Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook : Ch.  7: Reading Critically; Ch. 18: Communicating in Other Media The Everyday Writer (also available  with Exercises 😞 Ch. 7: Critical Reading; Ch. 20: Communicating in Other Media EasyWriter  (also available  with Exercises ) : Ch.  7: Reading and Listening Analytically, Critically, and Respectfully   Steps to the Assignment Introduce students to the importance of music as a multimodal and storytelling component. Present examples and/or have students work with their own examples to discuss in small groups or as a full class. Discuss ethical and professional ways and resources for using music in multimodal projects including copyright-free music sources and citation practices. (See more about Encouraging the Use of Public Domain Assets .) Ask students to submit two songs (along with links) for the class playlist – you can organize the playlist around a course theme by content or genre. This gives the playlist a cohesive goal that reinforces class content.  Move the playlist to an online app (e.g. Spotify) that curates and organizes the songs. Play selections from the list at the start of each class each day. Have students explain a bit of context for the song, including why they chose it and connect it to course content. Reflection on the Activity The class playlist activity takes a short amount of time and energy to incorporate into my classes. It allows me to focus attention on the importance and significance of music for multimodal composition and has the additional impact of altering the mood of the classroom to open students to a better atmosphere for learning. It takes them away from other distracting thoughts, helps focus attention on the class ahead and provides an alternate way of extending upon and enriching class content. It also provides a sense of ownership and agency in the class, in which students collaboratively create a playlist for our particular situation – another digital literacy skill. Many hear songs they have not heard before and add the playlist to their own collection as a memory of the class and these contributions. It sounds so simple but I am humbly impressed by the impact of this practice.  ... View more