Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Back on Campus


Yesterday began the new semester, and, I'll start another on Monday. Weird, I know. I started the class I am taking this semester, ENG 402: Teaching Composition yesterday. On Monday, I'll start teaching my own classes: composition. It's strange to me to think that I have been teaching FYC (first-year composition) for about eight years now, and I have never taken any formal graduate-level courses (aside from the three that I have now taken as part of the PhD program), and yet I teach all writing classes (and love doing so). In the MA program I was part of, the only real glimpse of rhet/comp that I got was as a T.A. working with students in the Writing Center. But my coursework was all in literature. Oddly enough, I have yet to really have an opportunity to teach a literature course (not that I am at all interested in doing so now -- I am firmly in the rhet/comp camp and have no desire to teach anything lit-related). But as I start this class, 402, I will begin to fill in many of the holes that exist in my mind and my education about the teaching of writing. There is a LOT to read, and a LOT of smaller writing to complete, but it's gonna be great.

1 comment:

John Guzlowski said...

hey, jason, I hope you keep us informed about the classes.

Like you, I was trained in lit but spent half of my career teaching writing and composition. I had to learn on the job and from talking to people who had been trained in teaching writing.