Thinking Beyond the Black and White

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Welcome to my Writing and Rhetoric ePortfolio. This website is a collection of resources for students and fellow instructors; this is a place for reflection, sharing experiences and collecting ideas. The material here has been gathered during in-class experiences assisting ENC 1101 and during ENG 6937 Seminar on Pedagogy in preparation for teaching my own ENC class in the Spring of 2017. This collection of teaching methods is a representative sample of some of the most compelling classroom strategies I have learned this semester; however, learning and teaching are ongoing processes, and I look forward to continuing to add to this collection as I gain experience and am inspired by my future students and peers.

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I welcome you to get to know a little bit about me through the “About Me” section. I love telling stories and I encourage all my students to practice the art of oral history as a strategy for organizing ideas, so please do ask questions about my experiences and we can collaborate on oral traditions together. My teaching philosophy will discuss in detail the approaches I will be utilizing in the classroom. I have included a link to a Prezi presentation as an overview of the course goals for ENC 1101 – this visual representation will hopefully help students literally see how the various components of the course function together to further the learning objectives of the course. Understanding goals is critical when encouraging student engagement and I hope this retro visual introduction will help students learn about the purpose of each unit and how these units further to course goals.

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There are two tabs for the core Writing and Rhetoric courses; however, you will notice that ENC 1101 has much more information. This is simply because we have focused on developing unit plans for this course this semester. For convenience, I have provided the learning objectives for ENC 1102 as well as a link to the FIU homepage for this course for students wishing to prepare for the following semester.

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ENC 1101 material has been organized in a dropdown menu according to units. As I tell every student during conference, the syllabus is your best friend! Get to know the syllabus, read through assignments sheets carefully, and ask questions. Successful college students succeed because they take the time to learn the laws of the land – or in other words, the guidelines in the syllabus. Please note, I will be choosing two of the first three units for each semester, therefore each course will consist of the introduction, two units, a capstone synthesis unit, followed by a timed writing unit to be completed during finals week. I have included a detailed sample lesson plan; while this is only a glimpse into the framework of a day in class since the magic happens only when the students collaborate with me to bring the material to life, this will give you a nice glimpse as to the way I approach mini lectures, group work and classroom discussion.

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This ePortfolio is an introduction to some of the strategies I will be using in the classroom, but I strongly believe that critical thinking and writing are always a work in progress. Together my students and I will push the boundaries, challenge our comfort zones through critical thinking and move beyond the black and white. 

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