COLORADO:
My dad, who worked for Kinney Shoes for 44 years, graciously moved his
district manager's office and the family from Omaha, Nebraska, where I
was born in  1948,
to Denver, Colorado, mostly for my health. One of our family photos shows
us standing at the sign marking the Colorado border--me with cowboy hat,
cap guns, and belt, with sunken, asthmatic eyes. Although the asthma gradually
disappeared in the more arid Denver climate, it was pronounced enough to
classify me 1-Y in the Vietnam draft era. Since my allergies resurfaced
after a few years on the East Coast, it's probably just as well that I
didn't get drafted to serve in that humid climate. Picture a platoon on
night patrol, stealthily approaching an enemy contingent. Suddenly, the
sound of wheezing and coughing fills the jungle air. It might have been
a very short tour. Still, I never had to face the moral dilemma of being
forced to serve. On the other hand, I also never had to face the consequences
of rushing into a marriage just before the marriage deferment ended. Funny
thing, some Congressional aide sets a date for such a deferment to end,
it gets into a bill and passed, becomes law--and lives are forever altered.
Maybe doctors aren't the only group who should take an oath to "do no harm."
I guess I still use Death of a Salesman
in my introduction to literature course, partly because of my father's
experience. He did get his "New York job," but it only lasted a year because
the family hated the East Coast lifestyle. Even though we lived in a split
level house about 12 miles west of Newark, New Jersey, where the deer from
the neighboring game preserve used to come across the road and eat the
blooms off the neighborhood flowers, the dismal, rainy climate and the
jaded sophistication (it seemed to our naive midwestern mentalities) of
our schoolmates and some of our neighbors sent us fleeing back to Denver
within a year.
When we moved to Denver in 1953, we could see
the mountains from our kitchen picture window; when I left in 1969, I couldn't
even see the downtown skyline from I-70 because of the thick smog in the
industrial section, which used to blanket the valley between Denver and
the mountains and then ooze north nearly to Cheyenne, Wyoming, 120 miles
away. Back to "Colorado" in text.
NORTH HIGH SCHOOL:
My teaching training started with tutoring a 15-year-old non-reader. This
is probably where I began to form the impression that real teaching is
one-to-one. One day, after we had built up some trust, I couldn't get my
car started, so I called AAA. After the mechanic popped the hood, he looked
at me like I was playing a practical joke on him. Since I kept a straight
face, he figured (correctly) that I was just one of those know-it-all college
kids who didn't know a distributor from a disk brake. Some joker had simply
disconnected my distributor wires from the spark plugs; all I would have
had to do was to snap them back into place--if I had opened the hood. We
often learn things the hard way, don't we.
By the time I got to North High, my charge
was feeling neglected and rejected; after I explained what had happened,
he gave me back a few points, but my stock was still down and never quite
got back as high again. I see the same thing happen with students in my
classes every semester, but I figure I break even or perhaps stay ahead
if most of them pass the class and feel like they've learned something
or change the way they view a movie, listen to a song, or even watch a
TV show. Back to "North H.S." in text
EPDA training: Under
the Educational Professions Development Act (EPDA), I took a 45-credit
master's program (the usual is 30 credits) that included 30 credits in
literature, plus assorted courses in teaching composition, educational
anthropology, and psychology. Two excursions resulting from the ed. anthro.
course were tutoring at the Indian middle school students on a reservation
near Tucson and a side-trip to the Lucky Dollar Bar where I saw and met
some of the local adults, including one construction worker who helped
me realize that "education" takes various forms (although I sort of knew
this from working in a shoe store during high school and college). Back
to "training" in text
ARIZONA: After attending
an all-male college of 800 students, moving to Arizona on a
fellowship ($2500 a year for two years) was a culture shock! I lived in
a dorm the first year, meeting a lot of people from New York, including
"Lon Gisland." The second year, my best friend from college and the guy
who was president of the local fraternity chapter at Regis after I was,
roomed with me a block from the campus main gate. We got tear-gassed during
the anti-war protests near the university. This roommate had a strict routine
for studying in law school--up at 8 am for class, study at the law library
until 10 pm, have a beer and socialize, but be in bed by midnight. He also
had an alcoholic dad that he visited on weekends, so I learned a new meaning
for "the child is father to the man." Back to "Arizona"
in text
AUBURN, NEW YORK: My first
student at Auburn Community College (now Cayuga County Community College)
in 1971 was named Dave Ashworth. The first day when I got to the room,
dressed for recess in jeans and tennies, he was sitting alone in the back
of the room, so I joined him there. We were about the same age, so I acted
like a student, wondered about the course and teacher, learned that Dave
was a Vietnam Vet. When it was time for class to start and the other students
had filed in, I walked up to the front of the room and started in. Dave
was surprised but managed to take it in stride. Years later, reflecting
on it, I realized that was sort of a mean thing to do, but I doubt if he
resented it since he stayed the course and participated readily. At the
time I realized that while he was in the army I had been at graduate school
establishing my career, having avoided the army due to asthma. Back
to "Auburn" in text
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Here's a link to the community college where I first taught, which maintains
the Web site for Cayuga County in upstate New York on the Excite City.Net---Cayuga
Community College
ONE-YEAR-OLD: I interviewed
in the Seaboard Building (now the Travellers, I think) before the RMA was
built right next to it. I started teaching that summer, May, 1973--a developmental
reading course in a room at Hermitage High School. That fall we opened
in a building at Foushee and Franklin that had been a Sydnor-Hundley furniture
store. Morris Carson played mariachi music in his Spanish lab study carrel
square while I gave my reading students a standardized pre-test in my developmental
reading and writing lab, also a square of study carrels. My desk and the
financial aid office composed the rest of the lst floor--except for the
provost's and continuing education offices in the display windows. Back
to "one-year-old JSRCC"
IUP: On half-pay, a tuition waiver fellowship,
a small stipend, a college loan, and a bunch of new credit cards I rented
a house about a half mile from campus. I finished the 30 credits
of course work and returned to Richmond. I learned to use a word processor,
printing my dissertation in A-208 (supplying one ink cartridge when I ran
out in the middle of printing my final draft). Back to
"IUP" in text
1973: Picture, if you will,
the student commons in Building A of PRC (our student cafe on the first
floor is open to the second-floor ceiling and includes a balcony all around
with more tables) with no tile on the floor. A crew of teachers, secretaries,
and Buildings and Grounds staff are uncrating teachers' desks for the classrooms
and tossing the cartons into "the Pit." Others are wiping down the students'
desks in classrooms that have been brought from the ABC warehouse down
by the Diamond, where they were stored (thanks to the state Alcoholic Beverage
Control [ABC] Board). All of this "pitching in" was needed to get the only
building at PRC (then) ready to open by the new deadline--a week after
classes were supposed to begin. Ah, those pioneering "good old days"! Back
to "1973" in text
GREG COWAN AWARD:
This award was named for a popular and promising teacher and researcher
who was active in the Southeastern Conference on English in the Two-Year
College (SCETC). When he died young, members of the organization sponsored
this award, which has been given since the early '80s. Just the process
of applying is a reward in itself because up to 10 colleagues write letters
of endorsement. The winner gets to keep a cumulative trophy for a year
and pewter plaque permanently. Back to "Cowan Award"
in text
PRESENTATIONS:
I've given about a dozen presentations on spelling (observational research
results from the 1970s at JSRCC), writing, literature, distance education,
and multimedia. Most of these were at statewide or local meetings of two-year
college English teachers, but the 1974 NCTE presentation on spelling was
in New Orleans (I had a dozen oysters for my Thanksgiving dinner and got
stiffed when a guy ordered Hurricanes for 3 tables of us conventioneers
and left before the bill came!) Back to "presentations"
in the text
PUBLICATIONS: Over
a dozen of my articles on spelling, writing, or reading teaching have appeared
in statewide or regional journals for English teachers, including a couple
of articles derived from my dissertation. (Read on for books.) Back
to "publications" in the text
GRANTS: The first was
the biggest, but I didn't write it--part of a federal Title III grant (for
improving colleges). From comparing 3 ways of teaching, while controlling
for time of course and teacher by each of 3 faculty teaching at various
times, we found that editing practice with lessons on writing improved
writing in ENG 101 better than sentence combining and better than trying
to connect with the "real world" in our writing assignments. "Underage
Driver," which I use for editing practice when teaching English 01, is
one of about 25 lessons written for this experiment. Other grants have
all been from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) or the college
for time off to develop variations of courses--to implement the 112 telecourse
and (currently) to develop an online version of ENG 112 with four other
English teachers in Virginia. Back to "grants" in the
text
CONSULTING EDITOR:
The company has published 8 textbooks on spelling and basic writing for
which I was consulting editor. That company also published my own textbook,
a developmental handbook, in 1984--after 5 revisions (without a word processor).
It's out of print now, but doing a textbook taught me a lot about writing
processes, publishing practices, and the mass market. Back
to "Consulting Editor" in the text
FLORIDA: One of my nieces
used to teach fifth grade in a Florida school, but now she teaches special
education and has to few students for an exchange between equal numbers
of students. A few of her fifth-grade students were more sophisticated
as writers than a few of my basic writers, which could be either intimidating
or inspiring, depending on the college student, so I had to be careful
about the pairings, although I tried to let my students self-select the
letters they wanted to read and answer. Back to "Florida"
in text
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Here's a link to the town, Sarasota,
Florida.
-
Here's a link to one of the more interesting features
in Sarasota, The Ringling Museum.
The art collection was amassed and housed by the circus producer.
NEVADA: My best friend used
to teach fourth grade in a Nevada school, but she now teaches as a resource
teacher, making this project impractical. At first, we tried letters back
and forth and had students send "a Virginia thing" or "a Nevada thing."
Students exchanged postcards, leaves vs. sand or cactus needles, photos;
one of my students sent a musket ball. A few students even wrote after
my course was over.
After a few semesters, we switched from narrative
to exposition, and roles changed. Instead of writing as equals, my students
wrote illustrated reports and her pupils decided which ones they liked
best and why--giving revising advice, praise, or other helpful feedback
to each of my students. My students learned from this,
-
how to pick a topic to interest a specific readership,
considering age, location, education
-
when to simplify vocabulary (a first for these
basic writers!)
-
how to match illustrations with text by in-text
references--and how to focus readers' attention on the particulars of the
illustration
-
how to merge words and illustrations in an attractive
layout
-
when to simplify sentence structure: since they
were writing about topics they knew well, their sentences structures were
sometimes too long or complex for their fourth-grade readers!
Back to "Nevada" in the text
DRAMAS: So far I've had
students study and write about the camera work, light vs. shadow, costuming
and colors, props as symbols, actors' positions (blocking) and gestures,
and background music for Mel Gibson's HAMLET, Dustin Hoffman's DEATH OF
A SALESMAN, plus THE LION IN WINTER, A RAISIN IN THE SUN, and A FAREWELL
TO ARMS. I used CAMELOT for a while--until a couple of guys said out loud
at Franco Nero during one of the out-of-class viewings, "Oh, no! Don't
sing!" I realized that the music broke their "willing suspension of disbelief."
Back to "dramas" in the text
WWI: This project went on
for 8 years. The resources found by one class I would keep for classes
to use in later semesters. The best papers using those photocopies of newspapers
or a 1911 encyclopedia or chapters from a medical history text became resources
themselves for later students. One of the most lavishly illustrated and
complex was an analysis of the Milan opera house mentioned in the novel.
Other information involved the available know-how for birth control and
childbirth, lack of blood transfusions for treating hemorrhaging, and the
terrain of northern Italy, the Abruzzi, and southern Switzerland. One of
my pipe dreams is that maybe someday I'll get a Guggenheim grant to go
to Italy with a digitizing camera and use all this research to make a definitive
study guide on CD-ROM for A FAREWELL TO ARMS. Back
to "World War I era" in the text
TV: No, my face isn't on the
TV. We bought courses from Texas and Virginia companies that were made
for educational or public television stations and colleges to use. (See
the notes for 111 and 112.) Back to "televised"
in the text
ENG 111: Dallas County
Community College District produces THE WRITER'S EXCHANGE, a telecourse
for ENG 111. It shows interviews with renowned teachers and researchers
on rhetoric and writing, as well as students. It also shows cases, e.g.
a Texas journalist at work, a grant writer, and other writing situations
from real life. Students write essays from the assignments I select out
of those offered in the course texts, and they may revise for a higher
grade if they wish. Now that I've moved on to online courses, Bill Ziegler
(who also went to IUP) has taken over this telecourse. Back
to "English 111" in the text
ENG 112: Annenberg/CPB
produces LITERARY VISIONS, which dramatizes some of the poems, and pieces
of some of the short stories and plays assigned as course reading. These
30-minute lessons also include interviews and at-work profiles of living
poets and fiction writers, dramatists, directors, and others involved in
producing plays. The Roberts and Jacobs textbook supplies all of the readings,
plus all of the coaching on writing about literature. Students write essays
assigned from the selections provided in the course STUDY GUIDE, hopefully
looking at the sample essays in the course text. They may revise for a
higher grade if they wish--and time permits.
Margaret Stem took over this telecourse for
Spring, 1999. Back to "English 112" in the text
NEWSLETTER: Samples
are in binders collected for THE TEACHING NETWORK at the campus libraries'
main desk (reserve). This newsletter lasted from 1992-1995; I'd like to
think that it stimulated some thinking about teaching, if not actual talk
about teaching. My goal at the time was to generate via the newsletter
and THE TEACHING NETWORK more discussion about teaching on campus than
there was talk about administrative concerns. The advance of technology
on campus has redirected my energies, my committee assignments, and also
has increased faculty time spent learning and considering course and lesson
design. Just putting faculty in the position of learners has value--especially
when they find themselves sitting at a computer that forces learning by
doing and trial and error. Back to "newsletter" in text
CURRENT PROJECTS: In
Spring, 1996, I was drafted to set up a campus Teaching, Learning, and
Technology Roundtable (TLTR). The aim of this national movement is to ease
the transition of college teachers into the Information Age. Their method
is to put innovative teachers with innovative computer users and the computer
support staff to anticipate upcoming waves of equipment and brace the faculty
for impact. This is a worthy project, but it will certainly include THE
TEACHING NETWORK's activities.
After this unfunded mandate fizzled out for
various logistical, organizational, and personnel reasons, I took on other
projects to accomplish similar goals for 1998-1999.
-
Project
Director for Litonline: This VCCS courseware Introduction to
 Literature
has its own server at the college as of Sept. '98. It still needs
some heavy-duty tweaking to regularize design, but the content is solid.
The forums need constant attention for weeding out empty and multiple submissions,
as well as misplaced ones.
-
Technology
Faculty in Residence: The online workshops I've developed don't preclude
a printed manual, but they do go beyond introductions to single software
by showing academic applications of the software.
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Chair, Midcentral Region, VCCS Centers for Teaching
Excellence: After taking over this added initiative at mid-year,
the first initiatives dealt with co-sponsoring the 5th Annual Teaching
and Learning Conference in Ashland, KY, and sponsoring a telecourse in
the series " "I Taught It, But They Didn't Learn It."
Back to "currently" in text
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