yet.
Vol. 1, Issue 1 Ainee Jeong
Fall 2018 Issue
This Issue's Features: Teaching Moments, Teachable Moments What's Next? Sylla-bye, Sylla-hi Teaching Philosophy Teaser
Still growing. Why "yet" will probably always be Ainee's "teaching word."
Letter from the Editor. Dear readers, This first issue of "yet" aligns with my first semester of teaching a first-year writing course during my first year of graduate school. Lots of "firsts." Before this August, the classroom and teaching experience I had under my belt did not include leading a classroom on my own as is the typical image of a teacher. I had been a camp counselor, an RA, a TA, a Writing Center tutor, a college readiness mentor, a standardized testing Scoring Director... roles that seemed to sort of "skirt" around the position of being a "lead instructor." What I wouldn't realize until this semester was that with each of these previous experiences, the seedlings of my teaching ideology, philosophy, methodology, and identity had already taken root.
And now, with the roots already grounded, my first semester as a graduate instructor of college writing was about learning to grow my current funds of knowledge, to cultivate a classroom upon these foundations, and to nurture my teacher self. "Yet" was the word describing my teacher self at the beginning of this semester. Here, a few steps from the finish, I am seeing my first harvest. The flowers aren't the brightest and the fruit isn't the ripest. Yet, what I see as valuable is that I did it with my best efforts and experiential equipment. "Yet" will continue to describe my teacher self: not to suggest the lack and non-understanding I felt back in August, but to indicate the hopes I have towards future harvests and what is yet to come. Warmly, All thoughts, written copy, photography, and illustration by Ainee Jeong. Original template ("Architecture Magazine") by Jay Alexander Santos from Canva. Revised by Ainee Jeong as per Canva public licensing.
yet. Fall 2018 Issue
Teaching Moments, Teachable Moments Highlights from teaching (ENGL 1010) and highlights from learning about teaching (ENGL 5100)
Teaching Highlight #1: No matter what the outcome was, the first day of teaching is sure to be memorable. I am very grateful to have had my first class session of teaching ENGL 1010 be memorable for positive reasons. I had quite the bank of icebreakers to choose from having had experiences as a camp counselor and as a Resident Advisor. But I wanted to conduct an icebreaker that wasn't "cheesy" or that would make "too-cool-for-school" freshmen feel babied.Â
Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
Above. The Wilbur Cross Building at the University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus.
At the same time, I wanted the icebreaker to be "useful," in that it would encourage my students to actually interact with each other and learn something about each other beyond just names. Hence, "Mingle Bingo" was born (Figure A)! It's not a new icebreaker at all and I can't take credit for it. But I had fun giving it this name with that slant rhyme, assonance/consonance groove going on. It was also fun to come up with what would go into each box. The gist of "Mingle Bingo" is that each box describes a characteristic or preference for which each student must find a classmate who claims and/or fits that description.
Figure A. My "Mingle Bingo" board for the first day of class.
Instead of Bingo board pieces then, the students collect signatures to fill in the boxes. The same signature cannot be on there more than once. Thus, the students have to get up and move around the classroom to retrieve these signatures: they have to "mingle" for a "Bingo!" A first place winner was declared pretty quickly (and I look back on this fondly because they turned out to be one of my most proactive students), and then two students claimed Bingo next as tied for second place. This icebreaker went so well that my students couldn't hear me yelling for them to stop, and many of them kept going despite there already being three winners. Which was all fine, but it also made me realize I needed to practice how to be more of an authoritative presence when necessary. Which brings me to...
Pedagogy Highlight #1: I really enjoyed and appreciated the discussion we had about the Teacher's Body. So much of my anxiety about teaching college students came from my particular embodiments and how my students might perceive and receive them. Even before I had a vocabulary for these things, I had tried to imagine myself as an instructor of college students in terms of my body. My age, my presenting gender (femme), my style of dress, my Asianness. My Asianness in particular was already an embodiment that gave way to racialized subjectivity and experiences as an English student/scholar, and I was most anxious about this coming into this semester. During orientation, I was able to share this anxiety with a cohort friend at the brief session about identities and embodiments.
I wished that session had been longer, and I found myself craving for more of that space to bring these anxieties to light after the brief taste of it during the "Teacher's Body" ENGL 5100 class session. Although I do have my criticisms regarding that discussion, I did feel it was a noteworthy highlight of the Pedagogy course.
Even before I had a vocabulary for these things, I had tried to imagine myself as an instructor of college students in terms of my body. My age, my presenting gender, my style of dress, my Asianness.Â
Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
Left. My reaction to my first day of teaching ENGL 1010 as shared on my Instagram Story.
I saw peer-to-peer learning unfold before my eyes... I saw [my students] take ownership and responsibility... Below. My initial Instagram Story post regarding Teaching Highlight 2.5 (here, the InfoLit event is referred to as "Highlight 2," and then the infographic Exploration event that occurred later demoted this to the 0.5).
Teaching Highlight #2-2.5: By the third project of the course, I felt like I was starting to get the hang of how to introduce a project and plan lesson plans tethered to the course moves and course learning objectives. Project 3 required my students to create a research guide infographic for an audience outside of our class. This project also allowed for the information literacy tenet of FYW, and as we began our research for annotated bibliographies, highlight 2.5 occurred by way of overhearing a students' reaction to our "Library Day" source search/research session (quoted in the Instagram Story post to the right). Highlight 2 (to which I assigned the whole "2" Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
value, since I felt this was the "main event" over the "0.5" InfoLit event) occurred during my planned "Infographic Exploration Day" in the ALC. I had planned a "minilecture" about infographics (which I tend to do with calland-response/audience participation) which would lead my students into analyzing the visual rhetoric of bad infographics. Then, I split my students into groups and assigned an infographic or data visualization design site (including this one: Canva!). The groups were responsible for learning how to navigate their assigned site to then teach the class how to use it. As a class, we then compiled a recommended list and a "blacklist." I saw peer-to-peer learning unfold before my eyes! And my students seemed pretty enthused by the day's activities. I saw them take ownership and responsibility of the Infographic Exploration, and I'd like to think it's because they knew that in engaging with the activities, they would be helping themselves and each other. I felt like this was an a-ha! moment for me, and it is to this highlight I plan to tether my preliminary teaching philosophy. Pedagogy Highlight #2-2.5: This corresponding Pedagogy Highlight also warrants a "2-2.5," because
an FYW Sandbox Session that wasn't technically ENGL 5100 happened to be a pedagogical highlight for me. The Sandbox Session was about failure and creating things with the purpose of failure. This is what helped inspire my planned class activity for the "Infographic Exploration Day." I had purposely chosen some infographic and data visualization sites that weren't helpful/intuitive/free with the intent that my students would have to still try out a resource (that they could actually have Googled themselves) and find that it didn't work. But that time was also valuable so that they could "weed out" the "blacklisted" design sites and perhaps somewhat build up their classroom community by learning how to rely on each other and help each other (which is something I'd like to keep working on especially for Peer Review).
We attempted projects that I probably would have been reluctant to do on my own. This included, quite frankly, the creation of the stop motion video (which I'm still not so sure I really enjoy all that much). I also appreciated more of these sessions we've had towards the end of the semester, where we've discussed course syllabus planning as well as teaching philosophy formulation. I felt that these were a couple of the tasks I thought were daunting, but I found the sessions devoted to them helpful. I was mostly left wanting more and wanting it earlier.
Conclusion These highlights here are the top two (and a half) most memorable moments of my teaching practice and pedagogy learning. There were other little victories along the way, good days and bad days. I tend to believe that there is more to learn from the bad days, so perhaps these are "highlights" too in a way? Or "highlights-in-the-making?"Â
Below. Referring to this issue's "Letter to the Editor," this Highlights section consists of the ripest fruits of this first harvest, even amidst some dead stems and leaves. On to the next!
I felt that this message of this particular Sandbox Session complemented the "general Pedagogy Highlight" of ENGL 5100. We tried activities and considered pedagogies that took me out of my comfort zone, e.g., the consistently multimodal WWW journal entries and thinking critically about Bean's suggested methodologies.
Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
What's Next? Sylla-bye, Sylla-hi.
Changes that are being considered for the Spring 2019 rendition of the "Visions of American Motherhood & Motherhood" along with loose and floating thoughts for a new, future syllabus (i.e., Fall 2019?). Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
Sylla-bye
Sylla-hi
Process Notes The baseline syllabus asked for 10001500-word Process Notes for each project. I found that my students were exhausted and were more focused on hitting the word count than writing substantial rhetoric analysis of their own writing and revision process.
Podcast Show Notes, etc. I would like to incorporate other supplementary assignments that invoke reflection and analysis of my students' writing and revision processes for each project. At least for the podcast project, show notes and listener surveys may be more effective at leading students to engage with the rhetoric situation of their writing.
Ambiguous & Inconsistent Terms The original project/assignment prompts didn't utilize a consistent vocabulary, which I felt would often lead to confusion and repetition of questions asked each time a new project was assigned and introduced. I also did not keep track of the names I gave certain class activities that I planned for class sessions (so that was my bad).
Establishing a Vocabulary I would like to establish a vocabulary early on--perhaps collaboratively with my students--that would remain consistent and thematic throughout our course. I think this would help students apply similar lines of thought when it comes to engaging with each multimodal writing project even if the medium and theoretical lens is different.
The Warm-Up Assignments The "Warm-Up" writing assignments prior to each major project were inconsistent in expectation and length. Thus, I often found myself in weird black holes when it came to grading and evaluating the Warm-Ups. There never seemed to be enough time to give feedback on these "short" assignments that my students could then process and apply for the subsequent major project.
Small, Regular Writing Assignments I have been considering using an ongoing "journal" or "blog" form to replace the supposed function and purpose of the "Warm-Up's." I think it would be more helpful for my students to be constantly keeping up with their writing and revision processes "in real time" via a journal or blog that they update with their reflections regularly. Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
A Loose & Floating Future Syllabus (Fall 2019?) "How do we understand ourselves through the process of life-writing?" Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
This is the potential inquiry that I would like to pursue for a future ENGL 1010 syllabus (shoutout to FYW Asst. Dir. Alex Gatten!). This question was pinned down from loose and floating ideas around exploring the genres and forms of "lifewriting," identifying the life-writing we already engage in as readers and writers and in which spaces, and thinking critically about the writing processes of life-writing genres with its ties to human memory.Â
Teaching Philosophy
- Culturally Response & Inclusive - Cultivating Citizenship/Collaboration in a Classroom Community & Beyond - Identifying Ourselves as (Multimodal) Thinkers, Readers, Writers, Creators - Identifying Composition in Our World(s) - Student-Centered, Conversation-Led - Fostering Metacognitive Thinking
See the full story in the Winter 2018 Issue.
Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Fall 2018
Tha nks for rea din g! yet. Vol. 1, Issue 1 Ainee Jeong
Fall 2018 Issue