ACA Presentation Outline
1. Alan Jackson’s “Work in Progress”—cd and handout
2. Brief autobiography
3. Community College article http://www.mla.org/ade/bulletin/n079/079024.htm
a. What Asimov is to prose, the community college English teacher is to pedagogy: the workhorse of the industry, systematically churning out a product that is, for its bulk, of amazingly high quality. Composition, by and large, is what the freshmen and sophomores need to learn and what we teach. Rows of students march endlessly through my nightmare visions like the stream of kings in Macbeth, each one bearing a load of essays, each essay written in spidery handwriting with a fine-point pencil on yellow paper.
4. English composition classes as moving targets
a. As student at Miami-Dade
b. As beginning adjunct instructor at TCC
c. As beginning asst. prof. at GCCC
i. Book, pen, and paper
ii. Computer revolution begins
iii. Computer knowledge is commonplace
iv. My Space and Facebook
5. Effects of state laws
a. Gordon Rule
i. http://www.mccfl.edu/pages/210.asp
b. CLAST
i. http://www.firn.edu/doe/sas/clsthome.htm
6. Community College article http://www.mla.org/ade/bulletin/n079/079024.htm
7. “What Asimov is to prose, the community college English teacher is to pedagogy: the workhorse of the industry, systematically churning out a product that is, for its bulk, of amazingly high quality. Composition, by and large, is what the freshmen and sophomores need to learn and what we teach. Rows of students march endlessly through my nightmare visions like the stream of kings in Macbeth, each one bearing a load of essays, each essay written in spidery handwriting with a fine-point pencil on yellow paper.”
8. Burnout
9. Decision to come to Lee
10. Assembly-line mentality carries over
11. Supervisor and student evaluations
12. Back to computers
13. In search of a new paradigm
14. ACA grant
a. Various media
i. Chariots
ii. Music
iii. Powerpoint possibilities
iv. Computer as more than dedicated wordprocessor
b. Student folders
c. Modified portfolios
d. Tying research paper to Chariots
15. Demonstrations
a. Using Chariots
i. Narration
ii. Exemplification
iii. Comparison/contrast
b. The web page
c. Emailing
16. Evaluations-- https://toolbox.leeuniversity.edu/login.asp
a. Students
b. Course
c. Myself
17. Mistakes and opportunities
a. Educating the writing community members
b. More informal, ungraded writing
i. Text reading responses
ii. End-of-class responses
c. More reading and study of composition theory
i. Formalism
ii. Retoricist
iii. Expressivism
d. Going textless
i. Using the net
ii. Establishing class web pages
e. Reconsidering the purpose of first-semester composition
i. “Good” writing
ii. “Academic” writing
18. Question and answer