Assignments
The Teaching Practicum is both a graduate-level seminar and a supportive environment in which to discuss teaching experiences, classroom activities, and assignments. For this reason, the assignments occur with regularity, invite connections between scholarship in the discipline and real-world instructional practice at York College, and include two significant projects.
Readings
The reading load for our seminar is very light for a graduate seminar at
roughly 25 pages per week. In part, the reading is light because you will
also be reading your students' work, and that reading can be quite heavy.
Please consider the reading to be a required course element.
Each week we engage at least one important scholarly article on a topic relevant to the teaching of writing at an undergraduate institution. In almost every instance, the readings are immediately applicable to classroom practice. They offer teaching activities or models, invite the reader to argue against them by drawing from the classroom experience, and/or help place the rewarding (and demanding) work of teaching writing at York College within the broader context of college-level composition instruction.
Class Assignments
Please bring to the seminar all materials written for the class you are
teaching . In The Elements of Teaching Writing (2004), Katherine
Gottschalk and Keith Hjortshoj write that “instructors often get into
trouble with writing assignments because they do not think of them as writing,
let alone as important writing” (30). We will take their insight very
seriously. In this course we broaden this point about the craft of writing
assignments to include all assignments. To paraphrase Gottschalk and Hjortshoj,
we will come to see assignments as our writing for both the course we are
teaching and the seminar we are taking. We accomplish this by bringing to
the seminar draft versions of our regular lesson plans, reading questions,
low- and high-stakes writing prompts, and more. We will engage with these
drafts and consider ways to revise them.
Weekly Journal Entries
The guiding idea behind this teaching practicum is reflective practice.
We engage with scholarship on the teaching of writing, arrive at ideas and
activities to move students from where they are as writers to where we want
them to be, and close the loop by reflecting on how those activities worked
in the classroom and how the experience shifts our understanding of relevant
literature in the field.
Please maintain a weekly reading and teaching journal or log. After the first week of class, at the beginning of each week please send along electronic copy of your journal entries for the week. The specific contours of this journal will be defined by each seminar participant, but each week should involve some description of the lesson plan, a discussion of the plan’s implementation, and reflection on both those elements that worked well and those that did not. An accomplished teacher often learns more from lessons that do not pan out than he or she learns from smooth implementation. It is important that, in the seminar, we are able to think and talk about those things that do not go as expected. The journal entries will enable us to explore the places where unexpected, and perhaps very productive things happen. I also strongly encourage you to use your journal entries to explore connections (and disconnections) between the literature we read in the seminar and your classroom experience.
Research/Curricular Project
Seminar participants will undertake or participate in a significant project
of their choosing. Please consult with me about your ideas. A graduate seminar
typically includes a major seminar paper, and this is one possibility for
the project. An alternative that might be more fitting for a teaching practicum
would involve substantial participation in some pedagogical or curricular
initiative on the college campus. This latter version of the major project
would potentially yield a tangible sample of college-level curricular work,
a product that would likely belong on a CV. Whatever project you select
should have the potential to be presented at a conference in the field or
to be published. I will work with you to explore ways to make that happen.
Teaching Portfolio
At the conclusion of the term you will submit a teaching portfolio, an organized
collection of your course materials, journal entries, and ideas for the
next time you teach the course. The teaching portfolio should also include
a brief (2-3 pages) articulation of your emerging teaching philosophy. I
leave it to you to imagine how to organize and present your portfolio, though
I am certainly available to make suggestions or to respond to ideas you
might have. Elements of the portfolio (or versions of those elements) will
likely prove helpful when you apply for other teaching positions, when you
prepare to teach your course again, and even when you are developing materials
for your full job search as a newly minted Ph.D. in English.
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