Creating Community in a Writing Classroom As the first day of school quickly approaches for us here at the University of Mississippi, I find myself trying to think my way through last year’s problems. One such problem was the issue of community in my classroom. Out of four sections, two bonded extremely well, while two did not. The two […]
As the 2013-2014 academic year approaches, I find myself in a situation that is somewhat odd: I’m charged with teaching an advanced composition course to students in the Oxford, MS area, but I’m doing so in an online environment while I work from home in Chattanooga, TN. Creating a sense of community is one of my first goals in a […]
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. You try to say what […]
To prepare to write this blog post, I thought I would read through some of last year’s entries to get a sense of how I could contribute something that would build on that earlier writing. One post that stood out to me while reading was Jeanine Rauch’s post focused on teachable moments, and I thought that I would continue that […]
I teach three sections of ninth grade English at Lamar School in Meridian. I love teaching freshmen; they are so unsure of this whole high school thing and are, for the most part, pretty eager to please. Translation: the perfect guinea pigs for me! Our school, like most, stresses writing. The students begin writing in kindergarten and literally journal […]