Author Archives: Carrie Hall

For April 26th– our last meeting

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By noon on the 26th, please post a copy of:

  • A cover letter (if you’re about to be on the market) or a draft unit plan
  • An updated CV (this is ALWAYS useful, even if you’re not on the job market)

If you would like to attach or send pdfs or word docs, that’s fine.

Here are some resources and some info:

Job descriptions may call for the following documents:

  1. Cover letter (always! The most important document!)
  2. CV (always)
  3. Writing Sample (the second most important document in tenure-track jobs)
  4. Teaching materials (teaching portfolio/ particular teaching sample—this will be the second most important document in a teaching-focused job.)
  5. Diversity Statement
  6. Teaching statement

Cover Letter: The most important document (BY FAR) is the cover letter.  For Comp jobs, and any job in the English Dept, this is about 2 pages.  This document: https://grad.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/academiccoverletters.pdf  gives a pretty good outline of the format.  I would also add—show a little personality, man! I will share my letter (HallCityTechLetter) with you, not because I think it’s the greatest, but because it’s what I’ve got and, I did get the job. Please do not show this to anyone outside of this group.  I’m also asking for other cover letters to show when we meet.

Here is a screencast video I made of the ins and outs of cover letters IN GREAT AND EXCRUCIATING DETAIL. You don’t need to watch it, but if you’re on the market, I think it will be useful to you.  (note: I misspoke a bit, you should still have service on your CV. Just not ONLY on your CV. Mention it briefly in your cover letter as well).

CV: The site theprofessorisin.com is great, but is a lot to parse through.  She has a good post on CV’s here: https://theprofessorisin.com/2016/08/19/dr-karens-rules-of-the-academic-cv/. Sometimes there is a page limit on CVs, but generally speaking, these are long and extensive. Here is another good resource: https://grad.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/cvsamples.pdf

Writing Sample: The writing sample is important! The advice is this: Submit your best writing. It needs to be pertinent to the field (you will not get hired for a Technical Writing position if you submit a chapter on Chaucer) and you should not go over the page limit. It should also not be out of date.

Teaching Materials: they could ask for any number of things.  Make them look nice, make them clear, make sure the committee will not be confused what this lesson, unit, course, etc… will look like for students. But also (this is what other CUNY writing program administrators told me!) they are looking for something innovative and cool—some new thinking. A caveat: don’t turn in the model courses—these are the property of FYW. Myself and a few other faculty members wrote them. Most CUNY departments know this.

Diversity Statement: Committees want to know you’d be a good fit for their student body and faculty. I, personally, do not want to read a diversity statement with an us/ them vibe. Here are some good resources: http://facultydiversity.ucsd.edu/_files/c2d-guidelines.pdf and https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2016/06/10/how-write-effective-diversity-statement-essay

Final notes: Label your files clearly!  Don’t just label them “cover letter” because there are 7000 files labeled the same.  Label them HallCityTechCover or something clear.  Also, I always send pdfs because Word can change formatting.

Other resources:  

This guy (in communications) posted his materials and that was kind and useful: https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/job-market-materials

Cheryl Ball on additional materials: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/11/18/essay-requests-additional-materials-academic-job-searches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Tuesday, April 12– Zoom

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Hello everyone! For next Tuesday, we’ll be meeting on Zoom and discussing principles of Universal Design and accessibility.  To review, Universal Design :

(A) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (B) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who have limited English proficiency (Chardin & Novak 3)

Key to the ideals of UD is that we are designing for everyone, not just those who have been given non-normative labels.

For Tues, I’d like to do things slightly differently. With the ideas of UD in mind, I would like everyone to:

  1. Take a look at accessiblesyllabus.com Then
  2. please choose to read or listen to ONE of the following:
    • UNIVERSAL_DESIGN_AS_AN_INSTRUMENT_OF_CHANGE-1. This book chapter gives a pretty solid overview of the theory and praxis behind UD. It’s a good starting place!
    • TEA FOR TEACHING: DISABILITY AND HIGHER ED This podcast involves some teachers chatting and “spilling the tea” about experiences with disability for both instructors and students, and how institutions can better serve us all. Transcript available if you, like me, can’t concentrate on podcasts.

3. Write a blog post about your thoughts/ feelings/ questions/ experiences/ whatever’s on your mind about Universal Design and Accessibility.

Just FYI, and kind of on the topic, a deaf friend of mine posted this article about how outsiders respond to deafness today and I found it very helpful/ interesting, if you wanna give it a read.

Asynch “assignment!” Due March 24 and reading/ blog post for March 29

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Hello, everyone! Sorry I am posting late–

By noon this Thursday, March 24 (extra time due to my lateness,) please:

  1. Read and annotate the article “the Utility Value Intervention” on Perusall.  This is a little long cognitive science article, so perhaps a bit out of your wheelhouses, but it’s very interesting as far as the benefits of metacognition go.  The spoiler alert here is that we will be discussing (on padlet) how these interventions may be useful in the Comp/ rhet classroom, so keep this in mind as you read.
  2. Respond to the padlet HERE.  Comment on your peers’ responses as well!
  3. Respond to the (quite brief) edpuzzle HERE.  This shouldn’t take you more than 10-15 min.

Please note that when we meet on the 29th, we’ll try to talk only about multimodality– so please try to comment on your peers’ padlet comments so we can have a bit of a discussion! I will also write a post responding to your edpuzzle answers after the 24th.

Before our Zoom meeting Tuesday, March 29, please: 

  1.  Read Takiyoshi and Selfe article on multimodality on Perusall
  2. Write a brief blog post in response to the article/ thoughts on multimodal writing.  To be frank, I think some of the argument over whether we should teach multimodal assignments is finally over and we can stop defending multimodal pedagogies. That said, I am still interested in questions of what it means to YOU when you teach a “multimodal assignment.” What are your qualms? What about it excites you? What do you feel is gained or lost? Any questions or cool assignments to share? Basically, any thoughts on multimodal writing in comp or any thoughts on the article.

 

Some links

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Hey! I will post the work for next week tomorrow.  For now:

Here is the link to Asao Inoue’s Address 

Also, we didn’t get to this, but I do want to clarify something Rebecca said in her response  which is that ESL students do often need grammar instruction.  This is an important point! Language acquisition is much different at this level.

For March 15th!

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Hello, all.  Nice seeing you today! For next week, please:

  1. Read through each other’s blog posts for March 8 on research.  Drop a comment or two.  These are really worth the read!
  2. Read and annotate the two (very short) articles on Perusall about linguistic “correctness.”  One is on linguistic diversity, the other is on teaching grammar.
  3. Write a blog post here on Open Lab in response to those readings.  How do you teach grammar? How do you deal with sentence-level issues in essays?  Or any other thoughts on the readings.

For next week’s asynchronous meeting, and the following week’s homework

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Next week, we will be trying our hand at meeting asynchronously!

By noon  on Weds March 2, please: 

  1. The first step will be to watch and answer the questions to the Discourse Community Slideshow on Edpuzzle.  You will need to do this all in one sitting, because I’m not making everyone sign up for an account.  Please give yourself at least 20 minutes! This exercise is meant, not only to give you info on Discourse Communities, but also to introduce you to EdPuzzle!
  2. Watch video walkthrough of 1121 Assignment trajectory also on edpuzzle .  You can do this at a different sitting.  This has fewer questions, and they’re all optional– just spots for you to add your own questions or comments.  Should take you about 15 minutes.

Here are links the 1121 Weekly Schedule and 1121 Assignment Sheets (also already installed on the Model Course Site).  And here are the links to the 1121 slide shows, by unit.  Here, you can see the slide shows on the NYT Mentor text articles, as well as links to those articles.

By noon on March 8, please:

  1. Read the two articles on research (Kynard and Graff)
  2. After reading, please post a blog post to this Open Lab site considering (some of) the following questions:
      • What does the term “research paper” mean to you?
      • How might we expand our definitions of research and “research paper”  to more fully contain the curiosity and delight of research and discovery?
      • What are some ways you have taught research in the classroom– successfully and unsuccessfully?
      • What are some ways you have engaged in your own research– successfully and unsuccessfully?

Please note, you don’t have to answer all of these questions– these are just starting points to guide a post about research!

Work for next week! Due Tues Feb 22 by noon!

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Hello everyone! Sorry we ran out of time. I just love to talk about reading, I guess.  Here are the resources from today. If you have any to add, please send them my way!:

For next week, On Perusall under Assignments, please finish reading and annotating the Carillo text on Reading (Bad Ideas about Reading) and read and annotate your partner’s Teaching Philosophy on Perusall.  I put you in groups! You’ll be able to find yours because they are labelled by name.

You don’t need to focus on sentence-level concerns, unless there is one sentence in there you find particularly distracting. Instead, focus on places where you have questions, where you are confused, where you would like specifics, or where you would like to know more!

Optional: post an exercise on Open Lab, either in-class or homework that you do with students to teach reading.  Nothing too big or small!

 

Homework for Feb 15 (by 2 pm, please!)

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For next week, we’ll all be writing a statement of teaching philosophy, which you will post to the open lab (here!) These will be confidential and only shared amongst ourselves.

I particularly like this description of how to write a teaching philosophy from the Western University in Canada

Here are some examples of teaching philosophies (including my own– I include mine, not as a shining example, but just in the spirit of full disclosure.  Also, it is old!)

Example One  Example Two Example Three (Carrie)

Remember– this is only a draft. You will revise this at the end of the PD– and hopefully the exercise we did today will be of some help in getting started.

 

Hi– and welcome!

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Hello, everyone. This is the site for our professional development. You will be posting here, and this is also where I will post our homework, etc.. That said, all of our readings will be found on Perusall.  To sign up, go to perusall.com.  I have sent you the class link. You will need this to sign up.  Don’t worry– there are no assignments there yet!

Glad to have you all here and looking forward to getting started! Remember that we have an optional office hour on Monday from 3:30-4:30. I sent the link. Please email me if you’d like me to send it again or if you need to meet at another time

Carrie