In today's "What We've Learned" video, Barclay Barrios (@barclay_barrios), author of Emerging and Intelligence, discusses the complications of planning for and setting up online classes, and of accounting for factors outside of student or instructor control - such as the weather's effect on internet access.  ... View more

Josh Scheidler (recommended by Brian Gogan) is pursuing his MA in English with an emphasis on Medieval Language and Literature at Western Michigan University (WMU). He expects to finish in May 2021. He teaches WMU's first-year writing course, Thought and Writing, as a graduate teaching assistant. His research interests include ethics and politics in medieval literature, first-year writing pedagogy, rhetorical analysis, and new materialist environmental rhetoric.   What is your greatest teaching challenge? Right now, connecting with students the way I could face-to-face is proving to be challenging. There are often delays in internet connection that create a distance between students and their peers, and students and me, which also proves challenging. Right now, I’m working with students to help them become familiar with online spaces and how to navigate that learning curve; I know it took me a period of time to become acclimated to the online infrastructure we use in our program. But the work I’m doing with students to familiarize them with our online platforms and the resources we are using for remote instruction has allowed some connection with students. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that students have reached out to me, and one even called me early in the semester. Making connections online is challenging—especially considering we are working from a distance and with seemingly indiscriminate internet lag—but the vast amount of energy needed to build and sustain relationships requires us to be all in. How will online or remote learning affect your teaching? Remote learning is slow. The first two class sessions I have in Fall 2020 are 75 minutes each, but time has seemed to just disappear with these classes. It’s almost as if class is over just as soon as we’ve started. So, I am trying to give students exercises and activities that don’t ask them to traverse the various online platforms we are using so their time can be spent writing rather than navigating unfamiliar places. Remote teaching has truly highlighted the necessity of a writing instructor, or indeed any instructor, to demonstrate everything, give clear instructions, and explain what is being asked of students simply and thoroughly. The many ways to miscommunicate or misunderstand with online learning underscores the need to continue practicing with and developing written communication skills. Remote learning is making me work harder to ensure my students are given instruction and practice that will help them develop useful skills for the future. What projects or course materials from Bedford/St. Martin's most pique your interest, and why? What is exciting to you about Achieve and why? I think Achieve is really cool. Being able to view a timeline and visualize progression through the peer review process is extremely helpful and can give students a way to plan their homework more efficiently. Having to finish one step before moving to the next step is critical in making sure students take the time they need to complete one task before moving to another task. Most importantly, though, the timeline functions as a visualization of a writing process, which is crucial for those who think writing is nothing but a product or a paper turned in for credit. It can demonstrate writing to be something that is shaped by place, time, iteration or need.  The depth of the revision planning in Achieve is absolutely fantastic. I enjoy there being a built-in reflection too. That there is an entire process for writing that is streamlined in this way — with revision plans built from peer reviews and a means for clearly tracking the changes from one iteration of the writing to the next — is incredibly useful for gauging student progress, development, and need. Having all of this integrated with an online learning platform or LMS is awesome to me. It really deals with the problem that I’ve encountered where students are being asked to go from one platform to the next, with peer review in one place and assignments submitted for a grade in another; this back-and-forth gets confusing for students and takes valuable time away from writing and developing successful writing habits. The activities that students have to do online should not obscure their endeavor to learn writing.    Josh'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 Josh's assignment. For the full activity, see Paragraph Cohesion Activity. This activity asks students to consider how paragraphs work with one another at the sentence level. The goals of the assignment are two-fold: I want students to practice working with another to solve writing problems, and I want to play an enjoyable game in class with students to give them individualized instruction when they need it. This activity approximates the peer review students will engage in with each other to determine what works in writing. It also lets me practice working with students somewhat individually, despite being in groups. This activity is something I do near the beginning of the semester as students are still developing relationships with one another and with me, and it has helped students to become comfortable working with one another.  ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, April Lidinsky (@april_lidinsky), one of the authors of From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader , reflects on instructor support communities, being available for students, and take care of oneself. ... 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. There is never a bad time to reflect, and there are endless topics on which to do so! The end of the semester is a natural time to ask students to consider how their writing has improved or what they’ve accomplished over the past few months of class—and you can use Grammar Girl podcasts to aid you in a reflection assignment. 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 collections of assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. 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 can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Using Grammar Girl Podcasts in Reflection Assignment A: This activity will ask students to review how they’ve improved in their writing over the course of the semester. First, ask each student to review their first draft or first essay for your course. Using the instructor and peer review comments they’ve received, each student should identify the area in which they struggled most. You may wish to give students some common areas of concern to choose from, such as citations, organization, topic sentences, comma usage, and active/passive voice. Students should submit their chosen problem area to you. Alternately, you can identify the areas you found to of greatest concern in your students’ first drafts. Next, assign students relevant Grammar Girl podcasts based on their chosen problem area. For example, if a student says they had trouble with active/passive voice, you could assign “A Common Passive Voice Mistake,” “Active Voice and Passive Voice,” “Active Voice Revisited,” or “Passive Voice Revisited.” You may wish to put students into groups by topic if that seems appropriate, for example, if three students identify problems with their comma usage. If you do so, have them discuss the podcast(s) after listening. Ask students to take a later or final paper and evaluate it for the issue they identified in that first paper. Finally, have each student write a short reflection on how they’ve improved and where they still have some work to do! Assignment B: Every year brings difficulties, but also accomplishments. This activity will ask students to reflect on an accomplishment from the semester.  Ask students to identify an accomplishment or something they are proud of from the past few months. This could be related to academics and writing, or it could be something more day to day such as getting a new job, forming a new good habit or breaking a bad one, learning how to cook something new, or doing something that scared them.  Assign the following Grammar Girl podcasts for students for homework. Writing Scripts and Speeches  Sentence Length Are You Annoyingly Redundant? Then, ask them to take what they’ve learned about podcasts and writing to craft a podcast script about their accomplishment. Don’t forget a title for your podcast episode, and podcast series! They might consider answering some of the questions in their script: Why is this an important accomplishment for me? Did I plan to reach this goal? What steps did I take to achieve this? What is the next personal goal I hope to complete? Once scripts are completed, you can ask students to present them, either in small groups or to the whole class. If time and resources permit, you may also wish to ask students to record and submit the project as a podcast.   More Grammar Girl Activities If you are looking for other activities, be sure to check out the other Grammar Girl posts, especially: Using Grammar Girl Podcasts in an Online Classroom Grammar Girl & Ideas for Teaching Online Using Grammar Girl Podcasts for Fun, Low-Stakes Activities Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Improve Student Writing Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Discuss Pronouns   Credit: Pixabay Image 2538429 by MichaelGaida, used under a Pixaby License ... View more

From last February when I was beginning to see contours of this pandemic, through the terrible losses of the spring surge and the relentless and often hateful cacophony of a presidential campaign on steroids—I often felt like I was in a maelstrom, whirling about, trying to find some footing and a way to act or even think straight. The “wave” of the pandemic that just kept on cresting seemed to me to parallel the wave of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies that just kept on coming—and that are still flooding the ether even weeks after the election revealed a clear winner. During all this time, I have been reading—almost obsessively—national newspapers and magazines, and watching or listening to news programs on TV, radio, and the web, focusing on local, national, and global effects of the pandemic, the systemic racism so powerfully present, and a disastrously divided electorate. This week, however, I decided to take a break, to step back, take a very deep breath, put aside all the news, and focus on my immediate surroundings. While I had been taking long walks—something I could do safely here on the northern coast of California where there are few people out and about—I had spent them thinking and worrying about the virus and the election. Enough, I thought. Enough. So I began taking walks of a different sort, slow walks, sometimes just a few yards in one direction or another, looking closely, trying to take in every leaf, every twig, every stone. I paused under a homemade owl house and counted tiny skeletons of mice the local owl had been feasting on. I sat on a large rock on the bluff and watched the waves crest and break into the little cove outside my house, the plumes of foam shooting straight up. I counted a squadron of pelicans flying low over the water as they began their migration, laughing as one straggler hurried to catch up. I discovered a tiny clump of wild iris clinging to a cliff side, already poised to send out green shoots. I came home and re-read Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things.” Perhaps it’s time for all of us, and all of our students, to try to take a step back, to lean in close, and to observe something in the natural world that they connect with. Doing so can be soothing and calming, as I have found, but can also be revealing: I note, for instance, the dryness of the landscape, in drought and wildfire conditions now for three quarters of the year. But in every case, such close observations, I believe, have a grounding effect, bringing us back to the reality of the earth around us. So while I might well be giving students assignments to engage them in analyzing the current moment with all of its competing narratives—I think now I’d rather ask them to step back, take that deep breath, and do some very close observing. And then write about what they have seen, and what they have learned from the seeing. They may find, as I have, that they see themselves more clearly now as well. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 984083 by Free-Photos, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, April Lidinsky (@april_lidinsky), one of the authors of From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader, emphasizes the importance of community-building in composition classrooms, and offers strategies for creating a sense of community in synchronous remote classes using Zoom. ... View more

This post is difficult to write, and I approach writing this week with humility and a sense of empathy for the challenges that all of us are facing. I have ADHD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and I have written, reflected, and created multimedia as a way of processing how these disabilities interact with my brain and the rest of my body. I cannot say how Zoom fatigue feels for anyone else, but for me it was a shock to the system.  ADHD helps me hyper focus when I teach on Zoom, but I cannot shut off the hyper focus when I shut down Zoom, and then, also off camera, GAD kicks in. After two months of fully synchronous Zoom teaching, GAD erupted in shrieks and loops of non-stop thinking. Overthinking, over-emotional, idealistic, taking life too seriously—all the words applied to me by others in childhood, graduate school, and afterward, came ripping out of my brain again. This was quarantine, but also not quarantine, the election, but also not the election. This was my brain on too much Zoom. In “Higher Ed Needs to Go on a Zoom Diet,” Joshua Kim suggests: “Whatever the reason that Zoom tires us out, we should all start listening to our bodies and begin making some adjustments.”  The first body part I knew I needed to adjust was my brain, and I decided to ask for accommodations for next semester: I would need to spend less time teaching on Zoom, and more time working with students asynchronously on email and google.docs; work I already knew how to do because of online training I received years before this pandemic, and my current employer’s online training. Changes in policy and scheduling are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and as an adjunct, I understand that asking for such changes presents risks. Yet, as Eddie Glaude, Jr. reminds us, James Baldwin urged that we use our pain “to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.” In other words, it seemed an even greater risk to ignore what felt like a tornado in my brain, and there was no option to keep the tornado invisible.  Sharing our suffering shares our humanity as well. With white privilege, and with the privilege of excellent mental health care, which is rare in this country, comes the responsibility to resist invisibility. I asked for accommodations and received them. Thanks to the ADA, with proof of documented disabilities I am legally eligible to receive reasonable accommodations to do the same job as everyone else. In The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Audre Lorde, “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who also lived with disabilities, writes, “I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.” Indeed, we cannot wish away the problems and consequences of this pandemic. But, for me, for my students, and for my colleagues, my hope is that those of us with disabilities feel less invisible, less ashamed, and less alone. ... View more

As a concept, “representation” shimmers with meaning, a complex topography of politics, textuality, and power. What does it mean to represent oneself, or to be represented — politically, culturally, textually, academically? What are the ripple effects?  Senator Kamala Harris’s glass ceiling-smashing election to the role of Vice President has focused our national attention on the shimmer of representation. As the first Vice President-elect who is a woman, woman of color, and graduate of a HBCU, Harris strategically deployed these many meanings of representation on her November 14 speech in Delaware. Dressed head to toe in suffrage white on the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, she declared, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last — because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” The viral image by artist Bria Goeller of a striding Kamala Harris casting the shadow of desegregation icon Ruby Bridges reminds us of the histories represented in this moment. We can launch timely classroom conversations about representational significance (including the fact that we’ll have a first second-gentleman who is also Jewish) by asking our students, “Do you agree with the claim that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see?’ Discuss!” My experience with college students has been similar to Kalyn Prince’s in her description of students who are moved to apply rhetorical insights to the wider world as advocates.  With that in mind, you might also invite students to consider the power of citational representation, as we writers decide whose voices to include in our written conversations. I have been inspired by the Cite Black Women Collective in my own work and have introduced students to the principle of mindfully including a diversity of voices in every scholarly conversation. Citations are a core power move in scholarship, whether or not writers are conscious of this fact. We can help students understand that the decisions they make as writers, even at the level of citation, can have ripple effects. Quotation is about inclusion. Citation is about representation. As instructors, we can commit, now, to decolonizing our spring syllabi, breaking open our schedule to include more voices, and discussing with our students the rationale behind the decisions we make about classroom texts. I’m inspired by Susan Bernstein’s post on “Centering Black Lives,” and I would love to hear what is working in your classrooms and your plans for the coming semester. Regardless of our students’ partisan leanings, we all likely share an ideal of a “country of possibilities.” What our students can learn from you is that their decisions about which quotations to include in their writing are the work of making that ideal a reality. Photo by April Lidinsky ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Mike Palmquist, author of Bedford Researcher, discusses the benefits of labor-based grading, and how the process of integrating knowledge can lead to a short-term decrease in performance, but a long-term gain for students. ... 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 One of the most exciting things about multimodal writing in digital contexts is that we can compose non-linear texts that encourage readers to connect deeply and individually through engaging links, images, and exploratory paths. Writing and reading become participatory experiences in which we create dynamic spaces that encourage exploration and critical reading. When we read and write in non-linear spaces, we have opportunities to combine content in ways to create multidimensional experiences for our audiences.  Educational researchers, Howell, Reinking and Kaminsky define this process as writing in which readers and writers go beyond two-dimensional writing and, “add a third dimension of depth by simulating layers of visual elements.”  These features are also referred to as multimedia stories which, as media theorist, Jane Stevens, explains are “ a combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant (Multimedia Storytelling, 2019). It is these additional layers though which writers can create interactive texts where readers choose their own paths and directions as they navigate documents.  In order to create non-linear writing that is complementary and not redundant, writers must choose content that does more than tell the same story.  Instead parts of the story are told through different media, secondary research and different paths for readers to explore. Through following these paths, readers are able to engage, and understand multiple perspectives through a more comprehensive lens.   I find that it is often difficult to communicate this idea of non-linear, multidimensional writing to students although they interact with these texts all of the time on the Web.  I find that they rarely consider how much content we consume is inherently interactive.  Students are so used to presenting material in linear formats that this type of assignment challenges them to compose through the lens of interactivity to create depth and audience participation in online settings.  Interactive components can take the form of text, links, video, audio, images, animation, graphics, etc. The most challenging part of this assignment is getting students to understand interactivity and the ways composing takes on new shapes in digital contexts. I find that it is useful to concentrate and distinguish between three important concepts: Purposeful linking, Multimodal Components, and what I call Exploratory Paths. Purposeful Linking involves students in embedding links within their texts in order to guide their readers in a direction that will both engage them and extend their subjects through secondary sources.  I help students to consider linking in meaningful ways. Many students will link merely for duplication rather than extension or link to commercial sites that do not really add value or depth to their conversations.  Like other research practices, we look for students to evaluate their sources for integrity, validity, and interest.  It is also important to teach students about the logistics of purposeful linking and how to contextualize and place their links.  Students will often link to “here” or some other generic nomenclature.  They need to learn to carefully name and find the places in their sentences that connect most directly to where they are linking.  Multimodal Components add a visual and potentially interactive dimension to texts as we engage readers through images, videos and other graphic content.  The difference between multimodal components and embedded links is that these components appear on the original pages and do not require readers to follow them to other content.  Instead, they add to the reading experience through reinforcing and extending ideas through visual components. Exploratory Paths take readers deeper into productive, related tangents that allows readers to experience different layers that extends their content.    Unlike embedded links or multimodal components, exploratory paths are authored by the student on embedded pages.  They takes the form of mini features (or chunks of Composing Exploratory Paths (courtesy of author) information) in which students compose, interpret, synthesize and extend on ideas related to their subjects from their own perspectives. These paths include links or graphic connectors where readers engage and interact for related feature information. Essentially students create a master feature, along with associational content to give a larger picture that includes multiple perspectives and positions on their subjects. Background Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch.11d: Conducting Internet Research; Ch. 18b: Planning Web-based texts The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 10f: Use Web and Library Resources;  Ch. 20c: Plan Features of texts EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) - Ch.13d: Finding Useful Internet Sources; 13a: Conducting Research Steps to the Assignment: Have students generate an essay, story, feature article, or research paper. Ask students to search for copyright free images to include in their writing that extend or reinforce their ideas.  Have them include a caption for each image and pay attention to location to anchor their images close to their ideas. Discuss and show examples of purposeful and non-purposeful linking. Ask students to research and embed links that extend their subjects in purposeful ways through secondary sources. Emphasize that these links should extend, not just duplicate information in their texts. Discuss placement, purposeful naming and location of their links within the document. Introduce the concept of exploratory paths in which students find several related subjects and ideas to shape into mini-features that expand their ideas or offer synthesized perspectives. Have them include links or graphic connectors that take readers to this supplemental content. Have students pull together their drafts and elicit response and feedback from Content Design Teams (peer response).    Reflections on the Activity I find that although these concepts can be difficult for them to grasp, students benefit greatly from understanding these basic practices.  Most of us were taught to write linear documents that are read from top to bottom.  We have to retrain the ways that we think and compose. These principles provide a foundation for purposeful multimodal and interactive writing. References Kaminski, Rebecca, et al. “Writing as Creative Design: Constructing Multimodal Arguments in a Multiliteracies Framework.” Academia.edu, 2015, www.academia.edu/14079689/Writing_as_Creative_Design_Constructing_Multimodal_Arguments_in_a_Multiliteracies_Framework. Stevens, Jane. Multimedia Storytelling: Learn the Secrets from Experts. 22 Feb. 2019, multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/. ... View more

As I (along with the rest of the country and much of the world) await the final outcome of an election that has so strained the bonds that hold this country together—so much so that one wonders whether it can ever be united again—I cannot help but be minded of Abraham Lincoln's famous adaptation of Mark 3:25: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." For whatever the electoral outcome (and I do have my own predictions, but they are not the stuff of cultural semiotics), one thing is certain: roughly one half of the country is going to be enraged by it. And this is something that does belong to the practice of cultural semiotics—something, in fact, that Sonia Maasik and I anticipated as we worked on the 10th edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A., restructuring the text to make its foundational chapter "American Paradox: Culture, Conflict, and Contradiction in the U.S.A.," as well as focusing its inaugural exemplary semiotic analysis (found in the book's general Introduction) on the two-part Avengers saga, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. If you wish to explore the cultural significance of Election 2020 in your classes, these sections of the new edition provide you with ample resources for doing so, resources that engage critical thinking upon the current state of our nation without inviting partisan conflict among your students. I think it quite unlikely that anyone will disagree on the basic point that the country is very badly divided, so what the text does is provide ways for understanding how we got this way and what to expect in the foreseeable future. And, as always, the book leaves it up to you and your students to determine how you may want to respond to it all. With that, I will return to my own obsessive internet surveying of the latest election news (this is being written on the evening of November 4), and hope that the new edition of Signs of Life (which has just appeared in print) will be useful to you. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 3801639 by GDJ, used under Pixabay License ... View more

A little over a week after the 2020 election, it seems that the entire country is in a state of exhaustion. No matter who we voted for, we are worn down and exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. What an ordeal. Of course, now the real work—of actually governing—needs to go on. Or begin. But as the so-called transition goes forward, perhaps it would be good to take a time out and to reflect on what we’ve experienced, to write about those experiences and feelings, to share with others, and to begin or to carry on conversations intended to help us understand each other a little better. I also like the idea of backing away from the intense drama and emotion-laden angst of these last few weeks and going in for a little analysis. And because so much of our knowledge comes to us today via the sound of the human voice, I think it would be appropriate to analyze several speeches. Three that I think would provide rich material for analysis and reflection are the “non-concession” concession speech Stacey Abrams gave when she lost the race for Georgia’s governor (Nov. 16, 2018), the concession speech Hillary Clinton gave when she lost the presidential election (Nov. 9, 2016), and either Donald Trump’s concession speech following his defeat in this election (if he ever gives one) or John McCain’s concession speech when he lost to Barack Obama (Nov. 5, 2008). The questions: What are the characteristics of an effective concession speech? Does there seem to be an average length for a concession speech? If so, what is it, and why does that length seem effective—or not? How would you describe the tone of each concession speech? In what ways are they similar or different in tone? What role do personal pronouns (I, me, you, we, they) play in concession speeches? How do they affect the tone? How does the speaker in a concession speech characterize or refer to the person who won? How does the speaker try to relate to the audience? To build credibility? Of course, we could ask students to compare and examine other kinds of speeches: the ones candidates give when they have won an election, or the acceptance speeches they give at conventions. In any event, the goal is to get some emotional distance from recent political upheavals and to focus on how language works or fails to work in sending messages to others. So—a little rhetorical analysis as a post-election elixir. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3926344 by lograstudio, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Mike Palmquist, author of Bedford Researcher, reflects on teaching in-person during the pandemic: how he's had to rethink class discussion, group work, and seating, as well as the challenges of parsing student expressions under masks.   ... View more

  The following interview with Peter Adams, author of The Hub, was conducted via email in July and August of 2020. This is the third of four parts. * David Starkey: I’d like to shift the conversation, if I may, towards another reason we have for sharing this virtual space: both your book, The Hub, and my own forthcoming book, Hello, Writer, are specifically designed for accelerated courses. You and I have both written textbooks before. Hello, Writer is my fifth, and The Hub is your fourth. How did you approach the task differently when writing for an audience composed primarily of accelerated composition students?   Peter Adams: In some ways, The Hub is just a continuation of the work I did on my first three books. You might even say those first three were rough drafts for this book. On the other hand, my understanding of what we need to do to improve the success rate of developmental students has undergone radical revision in recent years. As a result, my earlier books were untouched by a number of pedagogical issues that I now think of as essential to effective teaching.             For example, the big chunk of The Hub addressing students’ non-cognitive issues was totally missing from my first three books   DS: That area was a central focus for me, too. In fact, it was really the starting point of Hello, Writer. Since I began teaching as a graduate student, more than thirty years ago, I’ve always felt that non-cognitive, affective areas were unjustly ignored in conversations about teaching. Consequently, I was excited about how well my accelerated students responded to my new emphasis on motivation, personal interactions with the professor and other students, and taking a meta-cognitive approach to feelings about the course and their education overall. At SBCC, we also focused on essential skills like time management, learning to correctly read and interpret a syllabus, meeting with your counselor on a regular basis, and so on. Granted, some students might pick up these competencies in a personal development class. Then again, they might not.   PA: At CCBC, we, too, require a one-credit “student success” course. Most students in ALP are also taking that course. Over the years, the ALP faculty have worked with the faculty teaching “student success” to minimize the duplication. In many cases, we’ve developed activities in ALP that reinforce what students have been working on in their “student success” course. For instance, in that course, students are required to keep an activity log in which they record what they do every minute of the day for a complete week. In ALP, we ask them to write a short paper analyzing their logs.   I’ve also, more slowly than I like to admit, come to realize that the artificial separation of reading and writing in community colleges both reduces the effectiveness of instruction in each area and, in addition, adds an extra developmental course students have to take before starting credit English.   DS: That movement to integrate reading and writing is clearly a very important one in acceleration. I think integration is right for students, but I worry it means we are losing some excellent faculty members because they don’t have training in composition. At SBCC, for instance, the number of reading courses we taught shrank so drastically, and so many reading faculty retired or moved on, that our “English Skills” department was absorbed into the English Department and essentially disappeared. What workarounds would you suggest for this issue?   PA: I agree, David, that integrating these two disciplines that we separated many years ago is a source of considerable anguish at many schools. It will, as you point out, result any many fewer traditional standalone developmental reading courses, but that doesn’t have to mean fewer teaching opportunities for our reading colleagues. It does mean they will need to learn how to teach writing . . . and that writing teachers will need to learn to teach reading. At first, I feared there was no way reading faculty could become successful writing teachers. How could they make up for all the training we had in grad school to become writing teachers? Then I remembered that many of us had little training in the teaching of writing (myself, included); many of us were focused on learning how to be teachers and scholars of literature. Nevertheless, with the help of colleagues, with attendance at conferences, with reading our journals, and with a lot of trial and error, we have become professional writing teachers. If we could do that, so can reading faculty.   I am more worried about the converse of that issue: can we writing faculty become effective teachers of reading?   I think the answer to both questions is yes, but not without resources to help us make the transitions, in other words, support for faculty development. I can’t claim I am yet a professional teacher of reading, but with the help of my reading colleagues at CCBC, I have become at least minimally effective, and I have observed many of my reading colleagues develop into excellent teachers of writing.   Part 4 of this conversation will appear next month. ... View more

Kalyn Prince (recommended by Roxanne Mountford) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She serves as the Senior Assistant Director of First-Year Composition and teaches first-year writing. She has also co-taught a composition theory survey course for graduate students in the OU English Department. Her research interests include public argumentation, nostalgia as ethos, and rhetorical analysis.   How does the next generation of students inspire you? I’m constantly impressed by my students’ inclination towards advocacy—both personal advocacy and advocacy for others. My students are not content to learn about rhetoric and writing in the abstract. They want to engage in the world and find solutions to the problems we discuss in the classroom. From Black Lives Matter to TikTok, this group of students actively takes a stand on injustice and is uniquely capable of doing so with their various social literacies. My job as their teacher is to help them think critically about the issues they care about, teaching them to thoughtfully analyze the arguments and stakeholders in the issue and consider their own unique abilities to intervene. How do you hope higher education will change in the next ten years? My hope is that higher education will follow the lead of this generation and find better ways to leave the classroom. In the time of COVID-19 and worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, it can come as no shock that composition studies cannot only reside in the university. So many of us enter into higher education—both as students and instructors—hoping to make meaningful change for the communities we care about, but instead our work gets trapped in the halls of the university, never to breathe the air outside. It is my hope that those of us in higher education will continue to intervene in public discourse from our place in the university and that we will increasingly find ways of becoming scholar activists, joining our students in understanding and crafting arguments that will have a real-world impact. What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Being part of the Bedford New Scholars program has been such a rewarding experience. It’s been so encouraging to work with other graduate students with whom I share research and teaching interests, discovering that they have the same goals and frustrations that I do! The Scholars have shared insight from their home institutions’ writing programs, which provides a unique opportunity to get a sense of what is going on in composition classrooms across the nation. It’s uplifting to discover our mutual hopes and concerns for teaching composition in 2020 and exciting to think that these passionate, brilliant Scholars will be directing writing programs in the future. I’ve also loved getting to work with the editorial team at Bedford/St. Martin’s as they guide us through textbook, program, and catalog reviews. They consistently impress me with their thoughtfulness and intentionality, time and time again thinking of incredible solutions to challenges we face in the writing classroom and designing course materials that our students can find accessible and instructive. The entire experience has been a delight, and I’m so grateful to have this opportunity. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? This program has inspired me to be more intentional in how I craft my classroom activities. During our Summit Week, Kendra N. Bryant ran a session on teaching philosophies and Shelley Reid ran a session on assignment design. What both of these sessions had in common was emphasizing the imperativeness of having classroom practices that match teaching philosophies and student learning goals. While this should seem obvious, it can be easy to lose sight of our ultimate goals when building small classroom activities or homework assignments. But just because our project or essay assignments are sound doesn’t mean the rest of the course is. The Bedford New Scholars program has reignited my concern for backwards design in lesson planning and inspired me to be even more intentional in crafting smaller activities to ensure that I’m giving students every opportunity to thoroughly develop critical thinking skills that will allow them to make change in the world.   Kalyn’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 Kalyn's assignment. For the full activity, see Synthesizing Primary Research. I’ve found that when I ask students to engage with real-world social/political groups or organizations, they often have trouble synthesizing all of their primary research, secondary research, and analysis. Such synthesis is crucial for students to be able to develop in critical thinking, understand the nuances of a group’s political engagement, and consider their own stake in these issues. To help them practice synthesis, I run students through this scaffolding activity where they begin to consider how synthesis works in documentary-style television shows. Students watch a clip of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (any documentary-style clip could work) and then respond to a series of questions regarding the different research components being synthesized in the segment. For this activity, you can customize the questions and materials to better fit with your classroom language and the skills you’ve been developing with your students. ... View more