Getting Ready This Summer

I've been busy preparing course materials to teach WRA 125: Writing the Ethnic and Racial Experience this fall at Michigan State University. The course will focus on African American contributions (linguistic, rhetorical, literate) to composition studies. Students will look at writing in the field, as I adapt an Afracentric curricular approach. For those interested in the course materials, you can view them here. Although I obviously haven't taught the course yet, I will update you on the things I have been doing this summer as I prepare to teach in the fall. It's been roughly a year since I've taught, and I really excited about getting back into the classroom to do teacher-research. But here's what I've spent time doing this summer:

1) Preparing the WRA 125 course

2) Working on the Tier I Guidebook: Members of the Tier I Writing Committee are composing a handbook for all instructors teaching Tier I (First-Year Writing) at MSU.

3) The Tier I Reader: Nancy DeJoy, Collin Craig, and I are working along with McGraw Hill on the readings that will go in the reader. We've nearly finalized and obtained all permissions for these selections. I'm really excited about the reader because while it contains some familiar readings you see in FYW readers, ours is still very unique (more to come on this later).

We've recently passed a version of the shared learning goals that students should demonstrate upon completion on Tier I Writing. Our guidebook will talk about curricular materials in relationship to our learning goals. The learning goals should be up soon on the Tier I Writing website once it is updated. I'm excited that redesigning my WRA 125 Afracentric course comes at a time when we are incorporating new objectives. I'm hoping that the teacher-research I do with this curriculum will help demonstrate that instructors can use other curricular models (like Afracentricity) besides the current/traditional rhetorical paradigm, and still meet standards and programmatic requirements. More coming soon.

PC