Possible Text for 110

When I first received my GA position I was incredibly excited and nervous at the same time - I couldn't wait to get the information about what texts we would use as well as assignments and syllabus information. Had I been asked to figure out what text I was going to use I would have been incredibly overwhelmed. The Presence of Othersprovided me with a good starting point, and although it has some very useful and good readings, I feel another book would be more beneficial for 110, not just for the TAs but also for the students. We are asked to teach assignments, some of which we know how to do, but not how to teach, with very little instruction. Therefore, a text that provides information on these types of writings and readings would be beneficial to all. Because of this, I would suggest the Norton Field Guide to Writing. The nice thing about this book from Norton is that there are actually three, the main one, one with readings, and one with readings and handbook. I would actually suggest either the one with readings and handbook. This book provides users with information on the Rhetorical situation that includes things like purpose and audience (to name a few) and genre that includes information on arguing a position and analyzing a text, a brief guide to common genres which includes the annotated bibliography, memoirs, and proposals (also to name a few), sections on processes, strategies, and research. The readings portion includes readings on things like the textual analysis, memoir, and arguments (to name a few). They are actually sectioned into these categories making it much easier to determine what readings should be used with what paper (unlike the Lunsford text where we have to figure it out ourselves). The final section is the handbook and is broken into sentences, punctuation/mechanics, and words. The nice thing about this Field Guide is the option of choosing how many of the major sections you want, at the very least I would suggest the Field Guide with Readings (it's like two books in one). I have seen this book and thumbed through it, but I do admit I haven't had the opportunity to look at it more in-depth (I'm waiting for my copy to come in). I hope this helps!

Two Weeks into the Semester

Well, once again, I have two classes with totally different personalities (granted, I teach 110 and 210 so that should be expected). What was/is unexpected about this is that my 110 students are more engaging and interested in what is going on than my 210 students who are sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I realize that the students in 210 all come from different backgrounds since this Writing II class is Academic Writing and not something more specific like fiction or non-fiction, but I assumed (and yes I know, I shouldn't have assumed) that they would understand what it means to have a class discussion. However, the second day of class, when we had our first discussion over the assigned readings, my 110 (mostly freshman) students impressed me with the amount of work the leaders put into their questions and the responses from the other students. Since I teach back to back, I was thoroughly excited to see what my 210 class would do. They surprised me as well, but to the other extreme - it was like pulling teeth to get any kind of response out of them and I didn't know what to do.

In my 110 class I feel extremely confident because I actually know what the assignments are this time and I know better ways to approach teaching them, but in my 210, it is new territory for me and even though I am not as nervous as I was my first semester of teaching, I'm still worried about making sure I know what they need to know to be successful. The most important thing in teaching, to me, is the students and I want them all to succeed. I'm still so new at this whole teaching thing that I don't really know how to come up with different ways to approach non-participation in the classroom. I do know that as a student it took me awhile to get comfortable talking in class (even though I love to talk - I was just always afraid of looking stupid).

I'm still in the early stages of determing what my teaching pedagogy is so I don't really know what to say about that just yet. However, I was in 621 yesterday and something Dr. Weaver said interested me. It was something along the lines that we need to look to ourselves and our own writing processes and apply that to the way we teach in the classroom. We tend to do a lot of brainstorming activities in the classroom, but most of us admitted that wasn't the way we went about coming up with ideas and getting those ideas to paper. Just something to keep thinking about.