As a somewhat seasoned first-year composition instructor, I continuously strive to update my syllabus so that it reflects current sociopolitical and cultural discussions, the students’ interests and varying skill levels, and my own pedagogical shifts and development. So I often experiment with teaching a variety of literary genres and assign a diversity of writing exercises. Last semester, I developed my syllabus around the concept of “literacy,” using Deborah Brandt’s article “Sponsors of Literacy” as the theoretical framework for the course, and had students develop their own literacy narratives. Afterwards, I wrote a blog post describing the step-by-step process and reflecting on the results. You can read it here. I’ve also uploaded the course schedule and the literacy narrative assignment description.
As I continue to build this website, I will add more blogs about other teaching experiences/experiments, texts and assignments.