March Madness not over yet

• Finalize my textbook selections for fall. Always tricky for me. I never feel like I know a textbook well until I’ve taught with it at least once. No matter how carefully I read a textbook and think about how I might use it in a class, actually using it brings out so many subtleties. Choosing a textbook doesn’t affect how I teach my class very much. I’ve never been one to “teach the book,” so changing textbooks doesn’t mean I have to overhaul my syllabus or change my assignments, although I tend to do that anyway because every semester brings me new insights and ideas that I want to incorporate into a class the next time I teach it.


• Finish a mini-grant proposal for a workshop in the fall for non-English faculty who want to use writing assignments more effectively in their teaching. I’m asking for $1500 for a half-day workshop that would cover creating good writing assignments, assessing them, and responding to them. The workshop would be facilitated by two faculty members and four writing center tutors and would rely on some standard writing center tutoring techniques to help participants think about the purpose, audience, and main idea of their writing assignments.


• Respond to assignments turned in by my technical writing students (two sets of PowerPoint slides with notes on the rhetorical situation for each slide set) and my humanities/English learning community students (a multi-genre project including a first-person piece from the perspective of a Renaissance artist, a collage that makes a point about the artist, and elaborate endnotes for both).


• Blog about the 4Cs sessions I attended. Last year I didn’t have a chance to blog about the sessions I went to until about mid-April. I would like to get my 4Cs responses posted this week if possible.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

links: del.icio.us    technorati