The lecturers in English write about what they've learned from seven years of teaching the College Writing for High School Juniors course they created.
Greg Hlavaty, lecturer in English, and Paula Patch, senior lecturer in English and college writing coordinator, published the blog post, "," last week on the "Literacy & NCTE" blog for the (NCTE).
In the post, they describe seven lessons they've learned about teaching and conclude, "The initial purpose of this course was to provide a critical writing and inquiry experience for high-achieving high school juniors in the ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ community. We expected, and achieved, that goal. Now in its seventh year, the course has matured to serve a corollary purpose: to provide a space for reflective teaching and to help writing teachers understand just what high school students are experiencing. The type of information one can gather from conferences or scholarship is offered firsthand by interacting with high school students, something few of our colleagues may do."
College Writing for High School Juniors is co-administered by the ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ English Department and Collegiate Start @ ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ in the Office of Education Outreach in the ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ School of Education. The two-credit-hour course provides a pre-college critical writing and inquiry experience for high school juniors. Through specific focus on application essays and argumentative writing, students develop an effective writing process, practice writing for multiple audiences and purposes, learn to ask for and respond to feedback on writing, learn the elements of argument, practice using evidence and reasoning to support an argument, learn to develop research questions, and learn to find and evaluate material in academic and popular databases. Now in its seventh year, the class has enrolled approximately 100 students from the Alamance County area.
The is an edited space where NCTE members write about reflective teaching practices, education policy, and other topics of interest to NCTE members.