Faculty Development Plan
English Department
2008
I. Teaching
Self-Assessment.. I’ve been teaching writing for about eight years now, and I haven’t decided whether I’m becoming an expert or simply reinventing myself each year without evidence of progress. I’m only partly joking. I remember as a graduate student looking down on my first batch of student papers and feeling comma dizziness: Now, what’s the rule here? Isn’t this comma supposed to go there, or somewhere else? After eight years I still get dizzy grading. Teaching writing is such a complicated activity that once I feel I’ve mastered one level of competency, another student paper comes in and makes me wonder if I’m just a tenure-track snake oil salesman.
On the other hand, this last year I’ve noticed within myself a desirable level of competency when it comes to teaching and responding to student writing. (I identify myself primarily as a writing teacher rather than an English professor, though I play both roles.) With not a little relief, I see that my abilities to diagnose fundamental problems and prescribe activities has increased, and my classroom activities have helped students succeed.
I have strategies for teaching that I would consider “philosophical,” and I have instruction and assessment tactics I consider “practical,” and I see both categories as porous and overlapping. I believe rhetoric can help students improve their personal, professional, and public lives as they learn to navigate rhetorical situations at school, in their disciplines, at work, and in political engagement. Rhetoric develops in students attitudes, analytical skills, and performative strategies that help them not only appreciate and critically analyze texts but write their own. That’s the philosophy behind my teaching, and all my assignments, texts, and activities operate in that frame. Over the years I have also developed tactics of teaching that challenge students to do “hard things,” like look beyond the surface meaning of a text or completely obliterate those sentences they stayed up all night writing.
In developing these tactics, I have not been afraid to experiment with new class activities that either improve my strategies or, if I’m honest enough to admit it, keep me spinning my wheels. (I guess you could say the word “activities” reveals what little stock I take in lecturing to writing students.) If I’m not careful, I’ll just keep on reinventing a course or an assignment without reflecting on where I’ve been or where I’m going—an unhelpful pedagogical vice. But often the experimentation pays off, and I codify the results in the syllabus or on assignment sheets and handouts.
My overall attitude about teaching couldn’t be better. I love it. I love the energy I feel walking into the classroom. I feel genuine excitement asking students questions I know will provoke them. Though I’d never tell other human beings (especially at parties), I love to sit with students in my office and lean over their work with a pencil in hand and look very carefully at their prose. In those moments I see the light come on; students start to feel empowered when they see what they can do with their words, as long as they’re willing to “kill their darlings” (William Faulkner’s phrase) and re-see their work and cut out all the dead wood and rewrite what they took so long to write and transform their weaknesses into strengths. I guess I like those moments because I like to experience them myself as a teacher. If it felt good for me to overcome “comma dizziness” as a first-year writing instructor, it will feel good for my students to overcome awkward constructions, weak arguments, and obscurity as writers.
Goals. During each semester I keep a 4 x 6 note card with my class notes—you could call it the “I’m Never Doing That Again” card, but it also functions as a “Let’s Try This New Thing Next Time” card. Here are some highlights from that note card:
· Learn to make responding to student writing more thorough, yet efficient. With so many other obligations to think about, I simply can’t respond substantively to every student draft for every assignment, though I know I should. The “thorough” aspect can be achieved if I make sure students get drafts done at least two weeks before the final draft is due. Then they’ll have time to get feedback either from me or from their peers or the Writing Center. In Spring I’m experimenting with a more reflective process of drafting that requires students to write down strengths and weaknesses of drafts so that we can track them throughout the semester. I can make feedback more efficient if I keep myself from writing any comments on drafts until the end of the paper. Then I can make substantive, holistic comments about more systemic problems.
· During class discussion, improve the way you acknowledge, reinforce, re-articulate, or challenge student comments. Sometimes I don’t validate my students enough in class. I also don’t take the time to slow down when a comment merits further discussion or debate.
· The hardest part of teaching rhetoric is teaching “logical appeals,” using a new specialized vocabulary. Develop new class exercises that require students (1) to analyze the shape of someone else’s reason, (2) practice making arguments with deliberate and reflective logical appeals, and (3) receive feedback on how well they’ve done.
· Continue to teach English 312 at least once each year and work with graduate students as a mentor for the class. It sounds selfish, but I want to own this class, to steer its course goals, to help shape the syllabi and assignments, and to train future teachers to teach it.
In addition to these goals, I would like to teach the three undergraduate courses in rhetoric offered by the department at least one time each in the next several years. I’m committed to teaching rhetoric to undergraduates.
II. Scholarship
Self-Assessment. Frankly I’m a bit nervous about this aspect of my professional life. I was hired in part because I had a few strong publications as a graduate student—all of which were written while on a 1-0 teaching load my least year at Arizona. Now I need to continue that publishing trend with a much heavier load, and of course that makes me nervous. On top of that, I am challenged by the “call for coherence,” if I can call it that. Rhetoric is an undisciplined interdisciplinary discipline, and I’ve followed my interests wherever they’ve taken me, and those interests have found their way into print through an eclectic group of subjects ranging from evangelical hell houses to John Dewey and progressive education. Though these subjects fall squarely into the unwieldy category of “rhetoric and composition” (my academic specialty), they have tentative connections among themselves. And since starting on the tenure track last year, I’ve felt more pressure for coherence and specialization. Part of that pressure comes from working alongside capable, intelligent literature faculty who have one time period (the late 19th century), one location (Great Britain), and usually one or two authors (Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde) they specialize in. Rhetoric is not “built” that way, really, but the call for coherence makes sense to me, and I need to give my scholarly pursuits some structure.
My two primary scholarly interests are (1) pedagogical theories of teaching rhetoric for civic engagement and (2) American religious rhetoric, specifically prophetic rhetoric, which is a mode of public argument that channels the voice of Old Testament prophets. My dissertation was on John Dewey and teaching rhetoric as a civic practice, and I’ve published an article or two on the subject, and I have at least three more in the pipeline. The second subject came to me a while back while working on an article for Journal of Religious Communication that was ultimately rejected. I will continue to mine these two areas as I develop some semblance of specialty broadly conceived as American political and religious discourse, with an emphasis in rhetoric pedagogy and prophecy.
This last semester I did not accomplish as much as I wanted. I sent out one article for publication and wrote three conference presentations, one of which has promise as an article. About three weeks into the semester my time management skills began to fray; after receiving eighty 8-page papers, they collapsed. In the future, I need to create absolutely-positively-sacred-without-negotiation time for my writing. I also need to make more time for reading current scholarship.
Goals. It has helped me in the past to make very specific goals, even if I don’t reach them. At this point I have several specific goals for the next couple of years before my third-year review:
· Submit “The Paradox of Prophecy in the Agon” to the RSA Conference proceedings at the end of May 2008
· Complete and submit “Role-Playing Democracy” to the journal Pedagogy by the end of the summer 2008
· Submit article on rhetorical analysis early in Winter 2009 as a result of my research project with graduate student Ty Campbell. I’ll likely submit it to Rhetoric Society Quarterly
· Attend two conferences next year: CCCC and one other (possibly Western States)
· Review two books each year. (This year I went overboard and reviewed three in the last six months)
· Continue to work on (or daydream about) a book proposal for The Rhetoric of Religion.
III. Citizenship
Self-Assessment. I see citizenship as a chance to interact with new colleagues and help the department run itself. I’ve had a wonderful time this year working on the Advisement Committee with Keith Lawrence and others. I went to all the meetings, I did all my assignments dutifully. Of course I plan to do more of the same in the future, and I look forward to it.
But my citizenship duties will be changing dramatically in the Fall when I replace Dennis Perry as Associate Coordinator of the Writing Program. In this capacity I will train graduate and part-time instructors to teach beginning and advanced composition. Though I’ve been warned by mentors in the past not to take such positions until I’m tenured, I feel confident taking this position early in my career. It’s what I’ve been trained to do.
Goals. My goals for service fit into two categories:
· Hold a training meeting for English 312 instructors in Summer 2008 in my capacity as 312 Coordinator.
· Effectively teach English 611: Seminar in Advanced Writing in Fall 2008 by introducing students to the conversation in the field about theory and practice of teaching advanced writing.
· Effectively teach English 610: Seminar on Teaching Rhetoric and Composition in Fall 2008 by introducing students to theory, practice, and “lore” of teaching college writing and serve as a mentor for student teachers.