Rhetoric History and Theory | Research Colloquium
I began at MSU with very little idea of what my specific purposes were in the program. I only knew that it was where I wanted to be. What my future looked like, though, was very unclear. At the time I was accepted into the program, I was teaching at Alma College. I had been there just for the year, having taught for two years previously at CMU as a graduate assistant. The big difference, of course, was that at this point I was full-time faculty rather than part time.
The demands at Alma College are very different from those at CMU, where I had previously been teaching. My first semester at Alma, in the fall of 2005, I taught English 100, a beginning writer's course, along with Studies in Literature, an introductory lit course, as well as English 101: College Rhetoric II. In 2006 I taught English 101 again, English 190, a creative writing course, and English 134, a literary analysis course. What is important to discuss here, though, is my 101 experience and how my months at MSU have affected what I do in my classroom. For one, teaching at Alma means teaching rhetoric rather than composition, so the focus is slightly different. Too, at Alma this is the only writing course Alma students are ever required to take, which is a big responsibility. While I made a few small changes in teaching approaches and tweaked a few assignments during the winter of 2006, the most important development was during unit three and why I have included it here. This unit is a rhetorical analysis unit, one that students struggle with every semester. I have approached this unit differently every semester and this particular time hit on something that worked particularly well. They approached rhetorical analysis several times collaboratively, this time as a different approach, and I had them get in chat rooms that I monitored while they analyzed the rhetoric of an article. This helped them really see what was going on much better than they ever had been able to before, due I believe to the combination of collaboration, my monitoring and keeping them on track, and the fact that they had to actually write what they were thinking rather than talking about it. They were then able to go back and see what they had covered, see where their thoughts had gone, and even discuss what they had discussed. It resulted not only in better understanding of rhetoric, but became a good lesson in metacognition as well. Too, it turned out to be an excellent way to make good use of technology.
Another important aspect of my teaching 101 was adapting to a new textbook, one that I contributed to. Over the previous summer the publisher had hired me to write a couple sample papers (see one here on stem cell research) for their new edition of a textbook written by William Palmer, a professor at Alma. I feel very strongly that this textbook fits my pedagogy anyway, (explained in my metacommentary), but it was pretty cool that my work was in it. Even more important, though, was going through the process of writing these papers, keeping track of my process, and articulating this for the book. Of course I was a student before and wrote papers before, but this time I was very aware of what I was doing and how it compared to what my students would be going through. I also this year had another sample paper published in a CMU textbook, a rhetorical analysis of an editorial, and I use this in my classroom as well. What's interesting, though, is that now, if I were hired to write these sample papers, I look at things differently and may have approached the papers in a different way. For one, my experiences in AL 805 (discussed below) would have affected the way I analyzed rhetoric, to be sure. I don't think, though, that the research paper on stem cell therapy would have been any different.
The only other thing relevant to discuss about this pre-MSU semester is my experience teaching creative writing. It really struck me, even as I planned for the course, that I was approaching writing very differently since it was considered "creative." For some reason I had trouble deciding if I should use a rubric, deciding if I should use a portfolio system, and deciding how I should approach peer editing and collaboration. Even deciding how much to have the students read was a big decision. Some of this is evident in my handout on drafting for the course and what I required, something I realized I never do in composition--and I'm not sure how well it would work. What struck me most, though, was that I was doing this based on my past experiences as a creative writer: creative writing had always been taught very differently. So as the semester progressed, we spent a lot of time workshopping their writing and reading some great poetry, short stories, plays, and nonfiction. We went on little trips to spur creativity. We went to poetry readings and sat in coffee shops writing. Why, though, was this so vastly different from the way I taught "non-creative" writing? I really pondered this one and actually did some research in 885 on teaching creative nonfiction in a creative writing course as compared to in a composition course, something that fascinated me and I'd actually like to research further.