Current Courses

3580: Teaching Composition

            This course explores teaching composition in a manner that provides for writing as a way of thinking, learning, and reflecting. It includes a wide range of teaching strategies based on current theory and research, examines the goals and purposes of various stages of the writing process, and looks at particular writing projects as a means of transforming the overall language arts curriculum. Though the main goal of the course is to come to an understanding about the importance of how we teach the actual process of writing, rather than simply focusing on student responsibility for the “end” product, evaluation of student writing will also be discussed. Class participants will be expected to actively engage in the practice of using a variety of models for writing, so that they will eventually be able to apply those models in their own classrooms. Peer response to text generated by the students in this course will be on going. Methods of writer’s workshop will be modeled, as will the writing strategies and stylistic devises for multigenre papers. Additionally, students will be expected to examine and evaluate different types of writing pedagogies such as inquiry based writing, writing for issues of cultural studies, feminist writing, use of technology in writing, and expressive, rhetorical, and collaborative methods. The six-trait writing model is employed in this course. 

3590:Theory and Practice in the Teaching of High School English

            This course emphasizes practice issues of teaching secondary English within the context of whole language theories of reading and writing.  Students will engage in many of the practices that are discussed, including reading/writing workshop and reader-response activities. A culminating product of the class will be the teaching portfolio that will include sample unit plans, mini-lessons, philosophical statements, technology competencies, and various other artifacts essential to an emerging understanding of who the student is as a teacher. Reflective statements about each of these pieces will also be required. This pre-service portfolio should serve as the basis for a professional career interview portfolio. This is the last course students take before student teaching. Visit the College of Ed website for further information about the student teaching application processes. Students in this course are required to join the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and to subscribe to the English Journal, a professional magazine intended for high school teachers.

4560: Adolescent Literature

            This course is designed to give prospective and practicing English teachers, as well as those involved with the selection of adolescent texts, a familiarity with the literature adolescents enjoy, choose, and relate to. It also presents the reasons why teenage readers make the choices that they do. In addition, the course reviews the sources of materials that teenagers will read with pleasure. Most important, it is planned to help the teacher develop a positive attitude toward this kind of literature and understand the consequences of various aspects of Adolescent Literature in curricular choices. Students will subscribe to The ALAN Review, a journal devoted entirely to adolescent literature and sponsored by NCTE. They are also encouraged to review copies of the Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, a publication of the International Reading Association.

 

    
   

5000: Bibliography and Research for English Studies

            This is an introductory level course about research genres, theories, methods, and processes. Students will examine electronic and print data resources, explore research problems, and discover a variety of ways to report research. Research proposals, analyses, and literature reviews are just a few of the assignments students will complete. The course is intended for anyone interested in the how, why, and what of both literary and classroom research in the field of English. It is meant to welcome students into a “community of scholars” and to open them to the spirit of inquiry, as well as to the techniques common to its endeavors. It is intended to help students integrate the reading and writing of research in a way that invites their own voice, while being attentive to the voices of others.

   
   

5200: Issues in Teaching English

            This course addresses issues of teaching reading, writing, and literature in a democratic society. It invites students to find ways to bridge the gap between theory, politics, and practice by looking at influences of race, class, gender, assessment, sexual preference, and technology on English Studies. The course includes readings and discussions of current reform issues as pertain to the politics of teaching and learning; it also addresses intellectual and institutional gaps in the educational conversation. Students will explore the ideas of teacher-as-researcher and the value of such practices in school reform and classroom performance. Emphasis will be placed on democratic dialectics of understanding, collaboration, self-reflection, and change. The class challenges current paradigms of reading, writing, and literature instruction by exploring alternatives to traditional models of institutional pedagogy.