Courses

My primary responsibility is to train students who wish to become middle and high school English teachers.   Each year I teach four courses:

ESEC 385 Secondary English Methods :   Students learn all the tricks of the trade for teaching adolescents to love literature and become better writers.   Because of my commitment to diversity, we also spend a good deal of time covering issues of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation.

ESEC 386 Field Experience : Students are placed with an English/language arts teacher at a local middle or high school to complete 25 hours in the field.   They observe, tutor, help with grading, and teach.

ESEC 450-460 :   For this course, I supervise the English student teachers in the field.  

A closely related English course recommended for all Education majors in any certification area is ENG 304 Writing for Teachers : Students work on improving their own writing skills and practice the kinds of writing they will do in the profession.  

I also teach ENG 203 Women's Writing in which I help women tell their stories and find their voices.  

The other writing course I teach is ENG 101 Essay Writing.   In this course, I help new students learn how to write for college and help them adjust to this new stage of their lives.  

Finally, I teach ENG 410 Classical Rhetorical Theory.   My focus for this course is on the ancients—Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian.   This course provides an excellent foundation for graduate study in rhetoric and composition, but it is also relevant for future teachers since many of the principles of modern education began in Greece 2,000 years ago.