Teaching

I have been teaching college writing for over ten years, and each course teaches me something new about writing, teaching, and learning. In each class I teach, I strive for radical accessibility (my accessibility statement is below), incorporate digital writing, and assign different genres and audiences to my students. My pursuit of accessible pedagogy was honored by ODU in 2020 with the Kate Broderick Award for Excellence in Promoting Educational Accessibility.

Below is a sampling of the courses I’ve taught.

• Feminist Rhetorical Studies, a doctoral-level seminar. This course engages with two central questions: what is feminist rhetorical studies, and how can we apply it to our research, teaching, and activism? We begin the semester by examining discussions, definitions, and debates surrounding feminist rhetorical studies. Looking at both academic and activist texts, we historicize the study of feminist rhetoric and its implications for rhetorical studies.
• Feminist Disability Studies, an upper-division undergraduate and master’s level hybrid. In this course, students study Feminist Disability Studies (FDS) as an academic and activist conversation about how embodied differences are constructed, interpreted, and acted upon. Students create activist and educational texts informed by FDS. 
• Advanced Composition, an upper-division undergraduate writing class. In this course, students become experts on problems facing the ODU community, and then move stakeholders to take action toward solving that problem. This course is then established on the premise that creating powerful texts can lead to powerful change in our communities.
• Women and Technology Worldwide, an upper-division undergraduate General Education class about gender, technology, and power. We begin the semester by examining the history of women and technology. Just like technology, history is not neutral. As we will examine, history has been written with a particular point of view, a point of view that often erases the contribution of women. We discuss how including women in the history of technology transforms our understanding of technology.
• Introduction to Rhetorical Studies, upper-division undergraduate class on rhetorical history and theory. We approach the topic of rhetoric by reading rhetorical histories and theories with the guiding question: how can we use rhetoric to create action in our communities?

• Reading and Writing Disability, an undergraduate General Education course I created and guided through the General Education approval process (so that students could take it toward graduation credit). In this course, which I will teach for the first time in Fall 2016, students will learn how to analyze the various ways disability and ableism are constructed through everyday language choices, stories, and policy.
• Writing in the Wireless World, an undergraduate General Education course about digital writing. In this course, students ran a social media account, wrote blogs, and created multimedia arguments about a local issue. At the end of the semester, students pulled everything together to create an online portfolio of their digital presence throughout the semester.
• Introduction to Academic Writing, University of Maryland’s first year writing course. In this course, I introduced students to various academic genres, discussed how to analyze and implement various rhetorical strategies persuasively, and built a classroom community through play-based and active learning class activities.

• Basic Writing courses. At Monterey Peninsula College (MPC), a California community college, I taught various levels of writing to a diverse group of students. In these courses, I strived to build my students’ confidence through low-stakes writing and larger public writing projects. Students blogged, wrote letters to elected officials, and analyzed public arguments while learning the generic conventions of academic writing.
• First Year Writing courses. I also taught English 1A, the transfer-level first-year writing course at MPC. In English 1A, students wrote various genres throughout the semester, building toward a public writing project. Two semesters, students initiated and completed service learning projects. In another student, students published their revised essays in a digital magazine.
• Basic Reading courses. After earning a certificate in teaching postsecondary reading, I taught basic reading courses for one year at MPC. In these courses, students used play, Twitter, in-class writing, book clubs, collaborative activities, and reading journals to develop reading comprehension and summarizing skills.

My Accessibility and Disability Statement

I continue to revise my syllabus accessibility and disability statement based on the suggestions given by Tara Wood and Shannon Madden here. This is my current version.

Your success in the class is important to me. If there are circumstances that may affect your performance in this class, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can work together to develop strategies for adapting assignments to meet both your needs and the requirements of the course. In other words, you do not need an official letter in order to talk to me about any issues impacting your learning—whether that be disability, sickness, family issues, etc.

In order to receive official university accommodations, you will need to register and request accommodations through the Office of Educational Accessibility, which is located at 1021 Student Success Center. You can also reach the OEA by phone at 757-683-4655 or through their website: https://www.odu.edu/educationalaccessibility.