Teaching English in the Two-Year College - Volume 30, Issue 3, 2003

Describes the experience of a returning, nontraditional, first–generation college student as seen through the eyes of an English instructor who is substantially younger. Discusses the author’s anxiety about teaching and relates it to her students’ learning processes.

Describes a successful practice for incorporating more novels into community college literature courses and for sparking student interest in reading. Presents a book club assignment that includes both collaborative activities and a group presentation. Considers how a book club assignment offers an effective way to include more writers into the course while maintaining a reasonable reading load.

Reviews briefly the literature associated with the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s "Students’ Right to Their Own Language" statement. Explores the status of standard English at community colleges in Michigan, as expressed in first–year composition course objectives and descriptions. Considers the history of the standard written English objective at Delta College, a community college in mid–Michigan.

Notes that asynchronous online discussion forums can enhance community college students’ education. Focuses on how online discussion forums uniquely contribute to the teaching and learning of community college students. Discusses benefits of the online discussion forum. Concludes that educators must continue identifying who students are, how they learn, and how they want and need to be educated, and then look for ways that technology can help.

Considers how a community-college professor’s long–awaited sabbatical not only stimulates new thinking about projects and goals but also offers a foray into that forest of self that lies behind the trees. Discusses the author’s experience with the time shespent on her sabbatical.

Discusses implications of "readarounds" with the author’s first–year English composition students. Notes that readarounds consist of student drafts circulated around an entire class, evaluated according to three or four criteria, and praised viathe lavish use of highlighters. Concludes readarounds teach students to make valid suggestions on peer drafts and to evaluate the supportive feedback of a live audience.

Considers how although students’ frustration level may rise with the inclusion of computer technology in writing classes, so too do the number of "wow moments" – those times when students finally achieve something for which they have long struggled. Examines the efficacy of including technology in first–year writing courses. Finds that a sizable majority of students indicated that the use of computers had some positive effect on their writing.

Describes the Fulbright–Hays seminar and the author’s experience with it. Discusses the application process and experiences with Fulbright seminars in Poland, Hungary, Peru, and Ecuador. Notes how she and her colleagues use Fulbright information in their classrooms.

Examines six shifting boundaries: time and space, authorship, writing skills, medium, availability, and the senses.Addresses what the new perimeters might mean for teaching writing at the college level, for student writing, and for instructional management. Considers the challenges of plagiarism.

Reviews four books: Writing with Elbow, by Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl I. Fontaine, and Charles Moran; Opening Spaces: Critical Pedagogy and Resistance Theory in Composition, by Joe Marshall Hardin; Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators, by Rebecca Moore Howard; The Politics of Writing in the Two–Year College, edited by Barry Alford and Keith Kroll.