In a recent post on Collage of Citations, Michael provides a snapshot of his teaching (and grading) load. As I read through his workload, I'm reminded of folks at UT (and, no doubt, other places) who complain about being "busy":

I’m all caught up in one of my business writing classes, almost caught up in the other, and all caught up in LGBT studies except for the book reviews that were turned in on Friday. Technical writing, however, I’m super far behind in work.

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001212.html

I want to bring attention to the summer 2008 MLA Newsletter--hot off the press at this very moment. Gerald Graff's presidential column, "Bringing Writing in from the Cold," articulates the need for the university community to embrace, or re-embrace, the teaching of first-year writing.

Today I had the students in my class to do peer reviews of each other’s collaborative writing projects, and, at first, I was a bit stumped on how to organize the workshop. Typically before peer-review sessions I provide a handout with a list of questions for individual student reviewers to respond to when they read each other’s papers, but since I was working with collaborative groups I didn’t think this method would work. First, I didn’t think that individual peer review would be appropriate for collaborative groups, and, second, I felt that at this point in the semester the students knew more about their papers than me, and it wouldn’t be best for me to dictate what issues the peer reviewers should look for.

Since my students have already had some experience working with a number of different revising strategies, what I ended up doing was having each group generate a list of questions for their peer reviewers to respond to, questions that could address what the group perceived to be the current limitations of their paper. The activity seemed to work well, generating some good discussion over both the questions and the responses to those questions. I’m not sure if it seemed successful because the students identified their own problems with their papers, or if more conversation was generated because the students read each other’s papers in groups. In either case, I think I’m going to try it again.

Click on “read more” to see assignment description.

After worrying that I was in some ways responsible for the failures of some of my students (http://pedagogy.cwrl.utexas.edu/node/296), I incorporated some of y'all's advice--mainly trying to find something about the students that I liked, and challenging myself to keep them in the class.

Hi everyone. I wanted to announce the CFP for the upcoming issue of Praxis (Fall 2008), with the theme of Technology in Today's Writing Center. I know that many Blogging Pedagogy contributors are interested in the use of technology in writing instruction, so I invite you to consider writing something about your experience with pedagogical applications of technology, particularly if it might provide insights for people in the writing center community.

This is one of my favorite in-class activities of all time, which I remembered and used recently in a class about writing description/observation. It is the "boring paragraph" assignment. I tend to give it out as a pair activity, and then have students share their rewritten paragraphs in class. It's fun. (It can also be tweaked to be about tone, which is fun too.)

Someone asked me recently who my "Mad Libs" are for teaching. I wasn't initially certain what that meant (you mean who are my nouns, verbs, and adjectives?), but on further thought I see the point of the question. Whom, it asks, do I imitate or simply mime when I have trouble knowing what to say, or how to say it, to my class? Whose language, gestures, formats, structures, reactions, jokes, or aphorisms do I seize on, filling in the blanks with information from the present situation?

I’ve been using these three readings in my class and I thought others might find them interesting in discussions on metaphors (and a range of other topics on language use). I think these are applicable in a lot of the different 309s (and 306s), not just mine on language and identity. And these readings have generated lots of interesting discussion in my class. You may already have come across these, but if not take a look. These can also serve as a spring board for evaluating the way language is being used with respect to other current events.