Free Writing Teacher Resources

Teaching as a college adjunct can be a lonely road. It starts when you get hired. Suddenly, everyone (and by everyone, I mean the college administration) assumes that somehow you already know all the college policies and where everything is located. I thought this was an experience unique to the first college I worked at, but after having it repeated at two other universities, I'm finding that this strange quirk about being a college adjunct must be fairly universal. So they expect us to know everything. Meanwhile, we're just as lost finding our way to our first class as the students are. (Thank goodness for hall greeters showing students the way. They are fantastic for pointing new instructors in the right direction as well!)

Unfortunately, finding your way around and catching on to all the college policies and procedures you'll be expected to know and follow is just part of becoming a new adjunct. You're also going to need something to teach; better yet, many universities will want you to have a plan for the entire semester before you even begin teaching. No problem because you've got a degree in teaching, right? Maybe not...If you're like most adjuncts (and like me), you not only do not  have a degree in teaching, but you may not have even gotten a brief overview before you were thrust into the classroom.

What's more, unlike most jobs where you run into colleagues on a regular basis, where you can share ideas and co-miserate over the frustrations of the work experience, college adjuncts rarely have time or opportunities to gather together. While this may all sound depressing, it needn't be.

Here's where Free Writing Teacher Resources comes in. I've developed this website to offer additional help to new and returning adjuncts. Because seeing what others are doing is often a great way to find out if we are on the right track and to get ideas, I've created this website to share my own lesson plans and teaching resources, and I've included a discussion board where you can share yours as well.

The more we share with one another, the less alone we'll feel, and the better teachers we'll become. Visit Free Writing Teacher Resources at https://sites.google.com/site/freewritingteacherresources. Be sure to check back often, as more materials are being added all the time!

Useful Websites for Writing Instructors

Knowing where to find good information can be invaluable to a new instructor. Two websites I have gone back to over and over again in the past six years of teaching. These include:

Purdue Owl (Online Writing Lab) This website has a little bit of everything on writing as well as the most comprehensive and up-to-date source for citations I've found.

The Little Brown, Compact Handbook A companion to the handbook, it's loaded with exercises I've found useful.

In addition, I've found that most textbooks now have companion websites. I've found that no matter how many new editions of a text come out, or how fast they book moves from manuscript to publication, it never seems to be fast enough. The articles in the texts as often outdated by the time they reach our students. The companion websites are nice because publishers will often post additional articles online, and these may be more up-to-date than those printed in the text.

Software Review: MyCompLab

Several years ago, I checked into MyCompLab. An access code came packaged with new copies of whatever handbook I assigned, and the question on the first day of class was always: Are we going to need this? As a new teacher, my first answer was “no”. I was already overwhelmed. There simply wasn’t time to think about testing out software.

About a year later (about 2006), I tried it out. My analysis: not worth it. Not worth the bother of making sure students had acquired an access code, and not worth both them and me learning the software.

Five years later, my analysis has changed: worth it, with room to grow.

First the merits of the program. MyCompLab enables you to:

1.       Set up drop boxes for all assignments. Most learning management systems can do this already though, so read on…

2.       Set up dropboxes for writing assignments that require multiple drafts. Because we focus on the writing process, this is a beautiful feature. Students cannot submit a final draft without submitting prior drafts.

3.       Dropboxes record the date and time of submission. Most learning management systems do this, but you have to click back and forth for the information you need. This one has it so that when you grade, the due date and date of submission are right there. (Not to mention the assignment instructions, so if there is any question as you grade, you can refer back to your original instructions.)

4.       Composition-instructor friendly grading. MyCompLab has a number of standard responses to student writing already programmed in, so you can easily insert comments about sentence fragments, run-ons, etc. (and you can add your own) and MyCompLab links those to resources the student can use to improve their writing. So, for example, if I noted a sentence fragment, MyCompLab links a sentence fragment resource to their draft for them to review before they rewrite.

5.       No need to download student papers to grade. Unless you opt to have students attach assignment files, they will have to cut and paste them into the assignment pane. The advantage: you don’t have to download anything to your computer. (After downloading files for years, I find this a great advantage!)

6.       Return for Rewrite option. I love this. If a student doesn’t complete the assignment correctly, then rather than returning it with a poor grade, you can simply return it with a request to rewrite it. No grade will be posted for the assignment until the student submits it again.

7.       Online tutorials, assessment, and activities. Beyond writing assignments, MyCompLab has a number of exercises on writing process, intros and conclusions, transitions, grammar, and punctuation that I've found very useful. Some of these are in a format that needs to be graded by me (write two introductions using two of the suggestions for good intros, for example) and others are in a quiz form of assessment, which are auto-graded. (Students have an unlimited number of times to re-take these, so I have found that this works well even with developmental writers.)

MyCompLab also has a calendar that shows each assignment and deadline, and a grade book so you don’t have to send students elsewhere to find them. (Not the best I’ve worked with, but they the job done.)

Here’s what the program doesn’t do, where there’s still room to grow:

1.       You can’t create and use online grading rubrics.

2.       You can’t attach files to students when you grade.

3.       The announcements section is not very visible to students. (It could easily be overlooked, so you don’t want to post anything really important.)

4.       Perhaps worst of all for writing instructors: there isn't a spell check in most of their features!

The program certainly has room to grow. But I’ve seen such improvement in the past several years and had such a wonderful response to it so far, that I will continue to use it in my courses –after I email MyCompLab my list of much-needed updates!

Will This Be on the Test? Creating Clear Guidelines for Students

"Will this be on the test?"

Teach for a day and you'll hear this phrase. The good news: they aren't just being annoying. They really need to know.

We all need guidelines. Without them, we're left guessing what's expected of us.

In the classroom, the need for guidelines becomes quickly evident in our students, but as we begin to evaluate our students' work, our need for guidelines becomes evident as well. (Did I tell them to do it this way? I thought I said...) If guidelines aren't clearly set, teachers and students alike can quickly lose sanity.

What do I post guidelines for? Just about everything, including:

• syllabus/general course expectations
• assignments
• attendance and participation

What do these guidelines include? What my expectations are of them (criteria of evaluation), and how they will be evaluated (how well they met that criteria). The trick is: keep your expectations concise. The more concise, the more likely they will read and follow them. (I use brief lists.)

Here's a few ways I make my guidelines clear:

1. I say them in class--usually more than once.
2. I show them on a PowerPoint slide in front of them as I explain the guidelines.
3. I post them online, in an online course management program (Desire2Learn, Angel).

Clear expectations take the guesswork out of classroom management and evaluation. When I student says, "Oh, I didn't know..." you can point them back to the places where they should should have seen and heard the guidelines.

Clear guidelines not only tells students how they will be graded, but it tells us as instructors how to evaluate. Since I've begun making my expectations clear, I can't say that my grading pile has gotten any smaller, but it has gotten easier to manage.

Learning Together: Engaging Students with Humility and Respect

I’m thankful we are only a first-time teacher once.  If every year were like the first, I’m not sure I’d still be at it now.

I think what made me the most nervous in that first classroom was that I doubted my skill and experience. Despite a B.A. in English and half a Master’s in it, somehow I still believed that the students might actually know more about writing than I did.

If you’ve been experiencing similar doubts about your abilities, then here’s a tip: don’t. Everyone has different strengths when it comes to writing, and you may not feel strong in all areas, but your education and experience says that you are strong in at least some of them.

When I started teaching, I didn’t have the rules of grammar and punctuation memorized, which was the source of my angst. But that came with time. Meanwhile, I found that my best course of action was not to pretend that I knew it all, but rather, to admit that I didn’t and suggest that we learn it together.

The cooperative experience I invited students into my first year has continued on throughout my years of teaching, despite all that I have learned in the years since—or perhaps because of it. Students respond to a teacher who demonstrates credibility (they need to know what you have to offer them—besides grades—so they know why they should listen) but who approaches them with humility and respect.

Through this, we learn together.

College Writing Class Essentials

In six years of teaching, there are a few things I've learned are essential in the college writing classroom. These are things I've learned I must do:

1. Create reasons for students to come to class. If I don't, they won't.
2. Post minimum word counts for assignments. I do this for just about every assignment. It gives them an idea of what I'm expecting and offers easy justification for taking points off. (Short assignments usually haven't done what was needed anyway.) In my experience, a requiring a minimum number of pages just doesn't work. It ends in me spending too much time either trying to enforce the page standards (font, size, margins) and later trying to figure out how much they've really written when they haven't met those standards (and what I should do about it).
3. Utilize modern technology. Our students do; if I want to reach them, I need to too.
4. Incorporate visuals into your lessons. I am a visual learner, so it surprises me when I think back and realize how long it took me to learn that I needed to use visuals in my classroom. Many--if not most--of our students are visual learners too. (Perhaps its the influence of technology?) It does take a little longer to plan lessons when I'm constantly coming up with visual aids (media clips, web references, or PowerPoints), but it comes with an extra advantage: it takes some of the attention and pressure off of me in the classroom. And even though I've had plenty of practice at it, I still get nervous teaching. But having the visual aid brings students' eyes to the front of the class--but not just on me--giving me the attention and confidence I need to get message across.