Author: Emily Chambers

Design Thinking in the Writing Classroom

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date December 11, 2016

By Emily Chambers

Emily Chambers is a former WAC GRA and is studying for her M.A. in Teaching Writing and Literature. Her main interests are faculty development and curriculum resources. Prior to coming to GMU, she taught sixth grade English in Culpeper County, VA; now she teaches composition at GMU. She can be reached at echambe5@masonlive.gmu.edu.

Design Thinking is a way of using the principles of design to think about various problems and projects in contexts outside of design. When clients give designers a brief, a document outlining the goals and results of the proposed project, the designers use design thinking to create prototypes and final products for the client. Many educators, innovators, and businesses have sought to apply design thinking to the classroom. For writing teachers, design thinking offers several principles that are helpful, because it addresses the complex challenges that writers face. By teaching our students to face these challenges together, with minds open to new possibilities and a willingness to fail, we can teach students a means to successful writing. Design thinking addresses complicated problems with empathy, collaboration, divergent thinking, and failing often.

“I Cannot Prepare Students to Write Their (History, Philosophy, Sociology, Poly Sci., etc…) Papers” by John Warner

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date November 17, 2016

First year composition courses are often expected to cure students of all their writing woes. John Warner addresses this false assumption by examining why students’ writing often falters outside the first year composition classroom. Not only are students often underprepared and still learning content material, but they do not grasp the requirements of different genres and rhetorical situations. Even when armed with an understanding of rhetorical questions to consider when writing, students often struggle to apply these to a new field of study.

Faculty Writing Teaching Writing

Resources and Reflections from the Northern Virginia Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute 2016, Part 2

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date November 16, 2016

Image via The New York Times Learning Network

Each year, teachers who participate in the Northern Virginia Writing Project Invitational Study Institute (NVWP ISI) create an incredible number of resources, and this year was no different. At the ISI, each teacher consultant (as graduates of the ISI are called) presents a demonstration of a writing lesson they have successfully taught in their classroom. This year, teacher consultants presented on everything from found poetry, to improv, to visual literacy. Each lesson is focused on teaching a writing skill to all students; what follows is a sample of just a few of those lessons.

Faculty Writing Teaching Writing

The Importance of A Writing Community: Reflections from the Northern Virginia Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute 2016, Part 1

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date November 9, 2016

For four weeks this summer, 18 teacher writers met in a crowded conference room, with a beautiful view of treetops, and natural sunlight filling the room through a wall-length window. Three tables were pushed together to form a “U” shape, and the tabletops were crowded with journals, laptops, pens, and coffee cups. Each day, the teacher writers discussed their teaching practice and wrote page after page. With chairs pushed close together, they shared insights, inspiration, and struggles with each other. In the morning, the room filled with the smell of breakfast and coffee brewing, the tea kettle just about to boil nearby. The teacher writers’ voices reverberated and resounded through the halls outside the room.

Reviews Teaching Writing

“Professors Can Learn to Be More Effective Instructors” by Coleen Flaherty

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date November 3, 2016

Coleen Faherty reviews Faculty Development and Student Learning: Assessing the Connections (Indiana University Press), a book based on a multi-year study of faculty development at Washington State and Carleton University. They found that faculty development improves faculty’s teaching and positively influences students’ development. Developing outcomes the faculty believed in was important, the study found, and the improvement to faculty’s teaching persisted over many years, even spreading to others who did not attend the same development.