composition

Over the winter break, I had my first job interview for a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Composition and Rhetoric. The search committee reached out to me and asked me to do an online interview via Blackboard Collaborate (which wound up not working, and we went with Skype). This worked well for me, seeing as I was out of the country. It was quite an experience. I don't know the results of the interview yet, but I still learned some things that I thought were worth sharing with those who are about to set out on the job search. Lessons Learned Lesson # 1: Murphy's Law Still Applies: Things will go wrong. It happens, and you will survive. For example, I landed in Brazil, only to realize I left my professional clothing home. Then, on interview day, I couldn't find an internet connection strong enough to host video-chatting. It took me 5 different wifi locations before I succeeded. The one I finally got was in a bedroom with nowhere to sit, so I had to kneel...

For the past few months, I've been trying to learn Portuguese. It is definitely one of the hardest things I have done in a long time. I use interactive websites. I write in elementary grammar books. I listen to podcasts. I even try reading the news and books in Portuguese. Acquiring even the most basic conversational skill has been a painfully slow process. Despite keeping at it everyday, I can make only a few full sentences-- nothing in past tense or conditional or the million other tenses Portuguese has. As someone who is almost a doctor in the English language, it feels so odd to me not to be able to craft complex sentences or find the right vocabulary for the ideas I want to express. I haven't given up yet, though. The reason I continue to fight it out is partially because I want to be able to converse with my boyfriend's friends and family, but even more so because I've had positive encouragement. My significant other will let me ask him one million questions about...

Last night was the highly-anticipated annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, the runway that in many ways sets the standard for "sexy" in America. As expected, my social media feeds flooded with statuses about the show-- or I should say, about the models. Not a single one of the posts was about the production or the garments; they were all about the women working the catwalk. Most of the posts fell into two categories: adorers and "haters." Some of these people thought the models were absolutely stunning and some were unhappy with the how thin the models were. However, this one Instagram post really seemed to capture the theme of the conversations: In case you can't read the text, it says " Hating on her makes you fat, ugly, miserable, and jealous ." Indeed, across the board, those who were supporting the models weren't just saying, "they're pretty," but that if you don't like the models, it's because you're insecure. ...

Today, Adam Weistein published a post titled " Jameis Winston Isn't the Only Problem Here: An FSU Teacher's Lament ," in which he discussed how high-profile college sports are creating an atmosphere that fosters intimidation, cheating, and irresponsible behavior. And while I can't support his careless use of Islamic extremists as a metaphor for college sports culture, I can empathize with the struggles FSU teachers have faced when dealing with high profile athletic teams. I, too, have dealt with them firsthand, both as a student and as a professor. The Almost Rape As a college student, I was an athlete. That means I socialized with other athletes from other teams. In particular, as freshman, I took a liking to one of the older baseball players, and I decided to go to one of his baseball player house parties... I bet you think you know where this story is going, but it's not... Nope, Baseball Guy didn't touch me inappropriately at all. He was actually a ver...

For last week's writing center professional development, my colleagues and I read George Hillocks' literature review on Middle and High School Composition from Smagorinsky's Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of Change. The chapter heavily concentrates on state-wide and national assessment, mostly via standardized tests, giving you an idea of what middle and high school writing education has become- an endless series of exams and rankings. Bleh! In this chapter, Hillocks cites Langer's (2001) discussion of six strategies used by high-performing teachers . They are: applying a variety of teaching methods and approaches that "integrate the skills taught with ongoing larger curricular goals" integrating testing-based skills into the curriculum pointing out connections teaching students strategies for organizing thoughts and making tasks more manageable, focusing on the "development of meta-cognitive strategies" taking a ...

Using the iSearch Model to Improve a Previously Dreadful 5-week Online Comp Course #TeacherFail Last year, I taught my very first online class. I thought I"d be awesome at it, seeing as I'm so connected to social media and constantly using the internet. Gosh, was I wrong! The whole class felt like a trainwreck to me. It was hard to keep students motivated. I realized I was not always as clear as I thought I was being, and I didn't get final projects that demonstrated the kind of in-depth thinking and writing improvement that I was used to seeing in my 15-week face-to-face classes. Changes had to be made. The problem with my first summer online course was that I was unwilling to try something I hadn't done before. While I was up for trying new technologies, I was sticking closely to what I had done in my face-to-face classes, simply trying to reshape time frames and assignments. Online is not the same thing as face-to-face, and a 5-week class is not the same thing as a ...

Today, my Facebook newsfeed was covered with stories about government-mandated oppression and silencing across the world. At least 94 protestors were killed in Egypt by state security forces. A US woman was deported from Bahrain  after writing articles and comments on social media that the Bahraini government decided  "incited hatred against the government."  As I read these headlines, I was also moved by an email I received: a student could not participate in my course because the government of the nation where this student resided blocked access to many sites. The student could not perform unbiased research-- or perform research at all, in some cases-- so the student was forced to withdraw, hoping to take the course again when back in the U.S. This made me think hard about the globalization that many universities aim to promote. In my online summer course, for example, I have several international students, and they are taking the course from their home country. While ...