LAI 518LEC - Writing Workshop for Teachers

This is a writing course for teachers and prospective teachers who want to extend their own writing experiences with the social support of others in a writing workshop format. Our major focus will be a cultural inquiry into our own lives through memoir writing, which could include family history, childhood stories, becoming and growing-up-as-a-teacher stories, coming-to-consciousness stories, situating-self-in-history stories, etc. We will draft more pieces than we revise and become aware of how significant and everyday experiences and people shape our sense of self, both personally and professionally. Looking across our stories, we will reflect on issues of growth and change, and on how experiences shape cultural perspectives. We will publish a class booklet and look for opportunities to submit these pieces for broader publication. There will be opportunities for other kinds of writing, as well, depending on student interests. A new option in the course will be composing digital video stories–visual texts created in response to sequenced assignments, for the same purposes as the written texts. Although the teaching of writing is not the main focus of the course, we will be generating ideas, drafting, revising and editing our own writing/visual compositions using strategies and processes which are very helpful for K-12 students, too. We will share writing ideas and problems in presentations and in conversations, collaborating to form working/writing groups. As we write, we will read published memoirs, titles to be selected by students, but the major text for the class will be the drafts and revisions produced by class members.

Credits: 3