Events
- Annual Convention
- Great Teaching Round-up
- Leading from the middle
- fall conference for faculty leaders
- The Texas Network
"I think there is something more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren't enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision."
Events: 2012 English Schedule
English Summary
Friday, 11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
"Responding to Student Writers"
Speaker: Nancy Sommers, Professor of Education and Leader of “Teachers as Writers”, Harvard University
Friday, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.
"The Necessity for Information Literacy Skills in a World of Google and Wikipedia"
Speaker: Jessica Bacques, Education Outreach Representative, EasyBib; and Emily Gover, Librarian, EasyBib
Joint session with Library Section
Saturday, 9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
"Writing About What Matters: Preparing Students for Civic Engagement"
Speaker: Harry Phillips, Emeritus Instructor of English, Central Piedmont Community College
Friday, March 2nd, 11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
"Responding to Student Writers"
Speaker: Nancy Sommers, Professor of Education and Leader of “Teachers as Writers”, Harvard University
“It must be tough looking at a very large stack of papers, but it’s the most helpful part of the process because without a reader, the whole process is diminished.”
Our collective interest in responding is deeply professional and personal. We feel a weighty responsibility when we respond to our students’ words, knowing that we, too, have received comments that have given us hope—and sometimes made us despair—in our abilities as writers. The words teachers scribbled on our papers are often the same words we scribble in the margins or at the bottom of our own students’ pages. These words, we hope, our students will take with them as they move from our class to the next, from one paper assignment to another, across the drafts.
Research on responding has shown that teacher commentary, more than any other form of instruction, shapes the way students learn to write. To our students, it isn’t just that without a reader “the whole process is diminished”; rather, it is with a thoughtful reader that the whole process is enriched and deepened. Yet most teachers acknowledge that they don’t know how students use their comments or why students find some comments useful and others not.
In this talk, Nancy Sommers will explore what it means to be a thoughtful reader of student work. She’ll also discuss a wide range of teaching topics—creating and sequencing assignments, motivating students to become responsible writers, and developing an interesting classroom experience for all students.
Biography:
Nancy Sommers has taught writing and mentored new writing teachers for thirty years. She led Harvard’s Expository Writing Program for twenty years, directing the first-year writing program and establishing Harvard’s WAC program. Sommers now teaches at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, where she leads a “Teachers as Writers” initiative. Prior to teaching at Harvard, she directed the University of Oklahoma Writing Program and taught in the Rutgers University, Monmouth College, and Boston University writing programs. Over the last decade, Sommers has helped establish writing programs in Asia, Europe, and Saudi Arabia and has been a consultant to over 100 writing programs throughout the United States. A two-time Braddock Award winner, Sommers is well known for her research and publications on student writing. Nancy Sommers’s recent work involves a longitudinal study which followed 400 Harvard undergraduates through their college careers to understand the role writing plays in undergraduate education. Her current research focuses on the transition from urban high schools to community colleges.
Friday, March 2nd, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.
"The Necessity for Information Literacy Skills in a World of Google and Wikipedia"
Speaker: Jessica Bacques, Education Outreach Representative, EasyBib; and Emily Gover, Librarian, EasyBib
Joint session with Library Section
Students today by habit go to Google to begin their research. The results oftentimes contain the likes of Wikipedia, and websites driven by marketing and bias, rather than reliable academic content. At the same time, the library offers a plethora of great information which is increasingly underutilized. How do we teach students to properly research in a world of growing information? We will address how we are building tools to cultivate research skills that are critical not only in academia, but in our everyday information-driven lives.
Biographies:
Jessica Bacques is a New Orleans native who graduated from New York University with a degree in environmental science. While working on her senior paper, she realized the importance of having an effective way to manage research. Through her studies, Jessica has come to understand the challenges that today’s students face, and is committed to providing them with a quality solution. She loves working with librarians to help address student research needs.
Emily Gover is a graduate of the University at Albany's Master's in Information Science program. She has worked for Reader's Digest as an editorial librarian, at a small public library in New York, and most recently as a Web Services Librarian at Berry College in Georgia. Her main interests lie in web services, usability studies, information literacy and reference work.
Saturday, March 3rd, 9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
"Writing About What Matters: Preparing Students for Civic Engagement"
Speaker: Harry Phillips, Emeritus Instructor of English, Central Piedmont Community College
Writing about what matters most often means participating in local politics. Regarding our students, it means teaching argument in ways that allow writers to put their best feet forward on issues that matter to them in daily life. And this means alerting student writers to, among other features of argument, the importance of audience and the opposition. What an arguer wants to accomplish and what is actually possible in a local community is a tension that must be addressed early in the argument-building process. And knowing the values of the audience a writer aims at and bringing in the opposition in fair and respectful terms is essential to any effective argument. With these concerns in mind, life in the writing classroom can serve as a laboratory for practical civic engagement.
This interactive workshop will involve participants in the essential first steps in building arguments, with special attention to audience and opposition. Participants will work through an issue in their local environments by constructing an outline for an argument. While Toulmin-Based and Rogerian approaches are common, this workshop will focus on two underused approaches--Middle Ground and an Argument Based on a Microhistory.
Biography:
Harry Phillips earned a Ph.D. in English from Washington State University (WSU) in 1994 and an M.A. in English with a minor in Education from North Carolina Central University in 1988. From 1994 to 2009, he was Instructor of English at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he regularly taught Argument-Based Research and a range of American literature courses. He began teaching argument in 1993 at WSU and recommended that this course be a part of the North Carolina Community College Common Course Library, a recommendation that led to the course being adopted across the N. C. Community College system. He continues to view argument as an essential set of skills both for two- and four-year college students, as well as for everyday people intent on crafting responses to daily life. With Patricia Bostian, he is the author of THE PURPOSEFUL ARGUMENT: A PRACTICAL GUIDE, 1st Edition (Cengage Learning, 2012). In a former career, Dr. Phillips was Curator of Native Plants at the North Carolina Botanical Garden and author of GROWING AND PROPAGATING WILD FLOWERS (U of North Carolina P 1985). In a new life beyond the classroom he works with progressive groups focused on the environment, labor, and gaining collective bargaining rights for public sector workers in North Carolina. He has been a volunteer mediator since 1995 and, time permitting, battles the local deer population for rights to his vegetable garden.
English Section Co-chairs:
Simone Rieck, Lone Star College–Montgomery
David Zimmermann, Lone Star College–Mongomery