Pedagogy Materials
English 282: How Rhetoric Works: Persuasive Power & Strategies
How Rhetoric Works: Persuasive Power and Strategies examines contemporary uptakes of rhetorical theory to explore how rhetoric functions in myriad ways. This class asks the questions: What is rhetoric? What theories inform the field and study of rhetoric today? In what directions does the field of rhetoric need to go? Themed around contemporary uptakes, this course will help students understand where the field of rhetoric is today and where they think it should go in the future. This class is ungraded; see the syllabus (linked below) for details.
English 611: Approaches to Teaching College Composition
As a Graduate Assistant, I was a co-instructor for English 611: Approaches to Teaching College Composition. The professor and I heavily revised a previous version of her English 611 syllabus, creating a new sequence of assignments and readings and implementing an ungrading assessment system; I contributed to draft feedback, lesson plans, and leading discussion as well. As a prior Assistant Director of the Academic Writing Program and English 101 instructor-of-record, I offered unique, individual contributions to the English 611 syllabus, including developing 2 major written assignment prompts inspired by the standard UMD English 101 syllabus.
Furthermore, I researched, read, recommended, and replaced over half the readings from the old English 611 syllabus. I collected about 52 readings, offered summaries to the professor, and decided with the professor which readings to assign (resulting in about 42 new readings).
Below is an abbreviated copy of this syllabus, with some information removed. Everything in purple highlights either my own unique contributions to the syllabus or sections the professor and I collaborated on together.
English 294: Persuasion and Cleverness in Social Media
The aim of this course is to offer students a rhetorical grounding that they build on by examining the rhetoric of social media throughout the semester. Our course is themed around digital activism and features units on Twitter and hashtag activism, technofeminism, gender and sexuality representations, and rhetorical dating. Through a rhetorical analysis of a social media post, student-lead discussions, a regular social media show and tell, and a scaffolded research project, students learn how rhetoric functions on social media.
This course’s assessment strategies are inspired by Asao B. Inoue’s Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. I crafted a grading contract for our class based on Inoue’s model; as a class, we negotiated, collaborated, and revised the grading contract to incorporate student-sourced assessment policies.
English 101: Academic Writing
English 101: Academic Writing is the University of Maryland’s first-year writing course with a social justice theme. This rhetorically focused curriculum aims to teach students persuasive skills through seven major projects: Summary; Rhetorical Analysis; Annotated Bibliography; Inquiry Presentation; Digital Forum; Position Paper; and Public Remediation.
Below, you can find my syllabus for the course, which is adapted from UMD’s Academic Writing Program standard syllabus; this is the norm for instructors teaching for the first time at UMD. You can also find a sample lesson plan, complete with activities and accompanying lecture slides.
English 10803: Introductory Composition: Paranormal Writing
Paranormal Writing was a themed version of Introductory Composition I created, proposed, and taught at Texas Christian University. This writing workshop focused-class centered on writing to learn, rather than learning before writing; in other words, the course emphasized writing as an epistemic process. Students developed writing skills by inquiring about the paranormal and the preternatural - or things that can’t always be scientifically explained - while attempting to answer the question: How do writing practices define what is paranormal?
Students worked to answer this definition through a number of projects, all based on our collaborative class definition of “paranormal.” Class projects included a paranormal-related narrative, an ethnography of place (prompt linked below), a text-based research project on a paranormal phenomenon, and a multimodal presentation.
English 10803: Introductory Composition
English 10803: Introductory Composition was my first time teaching a class independently. As a novice instructor, I used Texas Christian University’s standard syllabus for this first-year writing course. The aim of this course was to teach students writing and communication skills through a narrative essay (prompt linked below), a research-based essay, ethnographic inquiry, and a collaborative presentation. This course was themed on connection, and is the first writing course in an installment of two required writing courses for all TCU students.
As I reflect on how I’ve grown as an instructor, I am aware of my ableist principles in my previous syllabi. As I’ve learned more, I’ve strayed away from ableist attendance requirements and hard deadlines. My first time teaching offers insight into where I started, and my current course syllabi indicate how I’ve begun to resist problematic requirements.