Introduction
Many graduate students will find their first teaching jobs after graduate school in one of the thousands of community colleges around North Carolina or the country. As such, English 7666 offers master’s and doctoral degree seeking students an opportunity to study and reflect on the types of teaching experiences that are typical of the two-year college experience, although those interested in teaching introductory writing, literature, and language courses at small four-year colleges and universities will also find the course productive for building a pedagogy appropriate for students in their first two years of college.

Rarely in graduate school (if ever) are graduate students given a chance to reflect on what it means to teach “English” – why do we bother? To what end are we teaching? What difference does it make if an English course is required or elective, taken by "general education" students or "majors"? What does it mean to teach writing at the college level? What does it mean to teach writing in a literature or film course? Why even teach literature or writing? And how? And how might answers to these questions help a teacher construct his/her syllabus, teaching philosophy, and sequenced assignments?

English 7666 investigates the types of courses that are open to teachers at the two-year college, courses ranging from basic writing and first-year writing to introductory literature and language courses, rhetoric and technical writing courses, film and theater courses, creative writing courses, grammar courses, and even special topics courses that teachers can construct based on their own expertise. In English 7666 we will explore the politics implicit in teaching English to early undergraduates and confront the problems that are specific to two-year college students and faculty.

However, it is not possible, in a graduate course, to teach students how to teach. We will examine the complex issues that surround teaching at the first- and second-year level, usually taking a "critical pedagogies" stance, but nothing we do will substitute for your actually teaching in such courses. Graduate students will, nevertheless, gain some practice with creating lessons and teaching them, using students in the class as test subjects, as an attempt to put theory into practice.

Goals of English 7666
Upon completing English 7666, graduate students should be able to

• situate the "teaching of English" historically, specifically in regard to the two-year college system;
• recognize and articulate various pedagogies available for the college English teacher, particularly critical pedagogies;
• understand the interrelatedness of the various areas of English Studies and how these interesect in courses intended for first and second year college students;
• develop and organize syllabi and class schedules appropriate for English courses offered to first- and second-year college students;
• create and teach both practical and theoretically-sound "lessons" appropriate to first and second year college students in various English courses;
• and develop an understanding of where English Studies may be headed and what teaching English will mean to first- and second-year students in the near future.

To meet these goals, graduate students will generally read between 100 and 150 pages per week, take part in online discussion boards, post responses to readings on individual student blogs, and engage in other projects listed below.

Texts

• Darder, Antonia, et al. eds. The Critical Pedagogies Reader. London: Falmer Pr, 2002. (ISBN: 0415922615)
• Dunn, Patrcia A. Talking, Sketching, Movie: Multiple Literacies in the Teaching of Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 2001 (ISBN: 0867095709)
• Mayberry, Katherine J. Teaching What You Are Not: Identity Politics in Higher Education. New York: NYU Pr, 1996. (ISBN: 081475547X)
• Reynolds, Mark and Sylvia Holladay-Hicks, eds. The Profession of English in the Two-Year College. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 2005. (ISBN: 0867095792)
• Tinberg, Howard. Border Talk: Writing and Knowing in the Two-Year College. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1997. (ISBN: 0814103782)
• Yancey, Kathleen. Teaching Literature as Reflective Practice. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2004. (ISBN: 0814151167)
• Readings To Be Assigned (at times, these will be PDFs or webpages available from links on the course schedule and/or assignments links; other times, they will be available on CD/USB-drives or as photocopies)

Other Required Materials

• Three-Ring binder for creating a Teaching Portfolio
• Recommended: one 256 MB USB Drive (for example, the Sony Micro-Vault) for keeping up with files and the various drafts and projects that you'll include in your Teaching Portfolio

Instructor Expectations
Obviously, I expect a great deal of commitment from graduate students. By choosing to tackle graduate school, you have plunged yourselves further into the world of the "scholar." I hope you will enjoy that work and take advantage of this time to read, write, and think about issues and ideas you haven't considered before, or to go further than you have in the past. "Reading" in graduate school, especially for doctoral students, is an exhausting activity. While I expect graduate students to "read" everything I assign, I hope that you will learn quickly how to "skim and save." Do NOT try to read all these texts like you would poems or novels, pouring over each sentence looking for nuances of meaning. Try to get the big picture, isolate the key arguments/points of the text, and keep it archived for future reference. Some texts, I expect you to devour; others may not hold your interest. That's normal. Regardless, I expect you always to have a passing acquaintance with ALL our readings and an engaged friendship with selected others. Obviously, I expect that we'll have tremendous fun as we work hard together this semester.

Projects
The following brief annotations will provide some context for the sort of projects that this course will require this semester. More thorough explanations, where necessary, will become available over the course of the semester through the "Schedule" and "Assignment" links that bookend this document. The following items will be completed at various points in the semester; some of these will be compiled into a Teaching Portfolio to be turned in at the end of the semester for final evaluation:

• Reading Responses •
  Class members will regularly write responses to course readings and place these responses as blog postings on the course blog. These conversation are intended to further class discussions by offering writers a space to begin their thinking before class, but as the blog is dynamic, we can return to posts after class and respond even more. Due dates for responses will be announced on the course schedule.
• Curricular Survey of Two-Year College English Programs •
  In order to get a handle of what two-year schools offer, both in North Carolina and around the country, class members will begin the semester with a survey of two years schools, investigating the types of courses offered, and creating a "master list" of courses and the ideologies that underscore those courses and curricula (where available). This project has two temporal components: the initial survey and reflection, and a revision of this work at the end of the semester, wherein class members offer a significantly revised critique based on course readings and discussions.
• "Issue" Project •
  Class members will survey the major teaching-related/-oriented journals of the field (College English, CCC, TETYC, Pedagogy, Profession) and isolate a particular 'issue' related to the teaching of English. They will then develop a sythesis paper in which they explore how 8 - 10 articles or book chapters address this particular issue/problem. The goal is find multiple perspectives on this particular issue/problem and tease out the complexities of how various teacher-scholars have addressed (or are beginning to address) this particular problem/issue.
• Teaching Statement •
  Throughout the semester, class members will do various heuristic assignments intended to help them develop a "philosophy of teaching." These teaching statements will involve synthesizing various in-class and out-of-class writings we'll do (e.g., Reading Responses).
• Teaching Demonstrations •
  In order to gain experience with developing and teaching "lessons" appropriate to the first- and second-year student, participants in the course will prepare a 40 - 50 minute teaching demonstration and teach these to the other members of our class. Participants should be able to start and finish the activity in the allotted time. "Teachers" may assign a reading or short writing to be completed before the demonstration. All "teachers" should discuss their demos with the course professor before they teach class. Particpants, when finished, will then write evaluations of the "teacher" and his/her demonstration, which will then be given to the demonstrating teacher so that he/she may revise the demonstration and prepare it for the Teaching Portfolio. Demos will be accompanied by a reflective statement to contextualize them and explain their relevance/value/connection to the class member's "Teaching Statement."
• Syllabuses •
  Class members will create two syllabuses for two different kinds of classes, one for a "typical" course (based on our survey of two-year college curricula) and one for a "special topics" course that the class member develops based on his/her interest. Syllabuses, in this case, will be both "policy statements" (which indicate types of assignments, course goals/objectives, methods of evaluation, required texts, etc.) and a schedule of what happens and when for the semester. Syllabuses and schedules will be accompanied by a reflective statement to contextualize them and explain their relevance/value/connection to the class member's "Teaching Statement."
• Curriculum Vitae •
  The CV is an important document that all academics need to know how to construct, and it is one of the most common documents college teachers are expected to keep updated and part of their teaching portfolio. We will construct these largely outside of class, though there will be some classtime devoted to "how to" and for peer response.

Most of these "texts" will become part of each student's Teaching Portfolio (Course Portfolio), a collection of artifacts that will count for the majority of the course grade, though sstudents will also submit selected Reading Responses and the two-fold Curricular Survey for instructor evaluation (90%). Students will also complete a final exam during the last week of class (which will be part of the Portfolio) and will be held accountable for appropriate "studentship" in the course (10%). Studentship means attending class, participating in face-to-face discussions, participating in online discussions, and meeting assigned deadlines for projects.

Grades, Assessments, Evaluations, and Responses
Graduate students do not need grades; I would like to think that they have out-grown them, gotten beyond the need for simplistic responses and have become capable of reading feedback from professors so that they know if they are engaged with the course and its materials at an "exceptional" level. Therefore, students in this course will not receive "grades" from me, not until the university forces my hand on the matter and requires that I give you a "grade" for the course at the end of the semester. Instead, students will receive constant feedback from me in the form of "responses" and "evaluations." Should students be worried about their final outcomes in the course, they may see at any time for an impromptu "assessment" of their performance in the course. I assume that students, when reading my "responses" and "evluations," will recognize that my use of terms like "exceptional" or "excellent," or phrases like "your reading/interpretation is nuanced and complex," indicate that they are performing as well as possible in my estimation; likewise, comments like "good" or "strong," or phrases like "your reading/interpretation recognizes the key issues and suggests interesting possibilities," in contast to the other language, suggest that work could be improved and is not yet "exceptional." Important: my finding holes or problems with students' reasoning or articulation of ideas do not mean that the work is necessarily "weak"; often, graduate students who are exploring new territory and are genuinely engaged in complex thought will likewise become lost in the details and miss the larger picture — that's a good problem to have and one that suggest excellent studentship for a graduate student.

Attendance
Graduate students by default should be at every class meeting. Emergencies and problems arise, so I can overlook your missing a couple of days of class, especially since individual students can contribute significantly on the course blog the days they miss in order to "make up" for not being physically present. Missing more than three class periods, however, will dramatically impact a student's course grade. Graduate classes rely on the students to be successful; as such, your absenses will jeopardize learning for others, which isn't acceptable. Because this course is required for those who wish to teach, I will be especially annoyed by absences; this class is simply too important for you to miss because each absence means that much more you'll not know before you start teaching, and that puts your future students' education in jeopardy!

Late Work
We all have very busy, trying lives, and as such, there come times when we have to complete some work late. Each student in this class is allowed an occasional late blog response or other short piece of writing. Neither major projects nor drafts of major projects may be turned in late, as turning the drafts in late would invalidate the reason for drafting in the first place and turning in final projects late would prevent me from reading and evaluating them in time to turn in grades at the end of the semester. Students may always turn projects in early.

Conferences
Students should schedule conferences with me when they do not understand comments I've made on their projects or when they become confused about the expectations of this course. Likewise, I may require a certain number of individual and/or group conferences during the semester. After midterm, I will schedule conferences to discuss major project proposals.

Academic Integrity
Students are expected to be honest about individual effort and responsible to peer/secondary source materials that are included in their projects. Both plagiarizing and turning in work written partially or completely by someone else are forms of academic dishonesty and carry serious penalties, the least serious of which is a grade of zero on the particular assignment (and thus a D, at best, in the course), but could also result in failure of the class and even expulsion from the university. Students who keep up with their work and consult with their peers and their professor have no reason or need to "cheat." Since this course is focused on research ethics, I expect that students will see me if they are unsure about how to cite or represent ideas/writing by others so that we can figure it out without ending up in a nasty plagiarism case.

Computers in the Classroom
Because we meet in a computer-mediated classroom, we will make frequent use of the machines.  However, certain computer-related behaviors will not be tolerated.  You may check your email or free-surf the web as you please before and after class, but after I announce the beginning of class by starting the roll, any student still using email, chat programs, or web browsers for non-class-related activities will loose points for participation or may even be considered absent from class for the day. **Likewise, students retain sole responsibility for keeping electronic copies of all their work.**  Lost or stolen disks, erased disks, home computer crashes, printer problems, etc. do NOT excuse you from turning in work or having copies of all your work on disk at the end of the semester.  Remember to make frequent back-up copies of files and keep copies on multiple disks.

Accommodations for Students with Special Needs
East Carolina University seeks to comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Students requesting accommodations based on a covered disability must go to the Department for Disability Services, located in Brewster A-114, to verify the disability before any accommodations can occur. The telephone number is 252-328-6799.