Hi Everyone,
I am a little late getting this posted, but I have really enjoyed reading everyone's introductions: such a variety of experiences and interests is great to have in this online class. Hello to Edith, Lisa, and Dale again!
My name is Glynis Benbow-Niemier. This will be my second online class in the TOUT program--I took the first, Best Practices, last semester. I would like to complete the TOUT program and be able to teach effective classes online as well as in more traditional settings. I have taught poetry, composition, and writing & thinking workshops for the past 20 years or so--10 at COD as a part-time instructor while my kids were small. Since I teach composition as writing workshop, I have to admit I was (and still am a bit) hesitant about what is possible in an online environment. So much of a writing community happens because you are writing & sharing with students in the same space and time--but, I see the writing on the wall--pretty literally--and feel the need to be able to teach using online technologies as well as the more traditional technologies of notebooks, pens, and pencils. The workshops I have lead through the Institute for Writing & Thinking, are all face-to-face and intense exchanges of writing and ideas and reading. These are my gold standard for learning as a participant or leader--each participant is active in creating their own knowledge through writing and sharing that knowledge. The thing I see online courses offering which is comparable is the act of writing what you are thinking--really taking time to put into written language what you are learning & thinking--making your thoughts concrete. What is lost is the immediacy of sharing--
I have taught high school writing workshops, college writing workshops, and teacher training writing workshops-- many moons ago I also taught 4 & 5 year olds but that really does seem like a different lifetime ago! I did most of my undergraduate work in English at Indiana University (in South Bend); received my MA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and my PhD in English Education from New York University. One of the best teachers I had was at IUSB: she was a Shakespeare scholar who was tough as nails when it came to just about everything--especially our writing. She was not a perfect teacher: she had some suspect practices which I cringe to think about now, but she was fair, had high expectations, and would not let us write more than a page for our essays (if you had a word or two on the second page--forget it--she wasn't going to read it). Whatever we had to say about King Lear, A Winter's Tale, or Henry IV, Part One--had to be said in one page--with evidence and thoughtfulness. Every word mattered. It was high stakes writing and where I began to learn the fine art of revision because I had to.
This is the kind of thing which may be possible in an online--the honing down of things from a loose abundance to the hard kernels of what is important. How to do this is what I hope to learn in this second installment of the TOUT program.
I am a little late getting this posted, but I have really enjoyed reading everyone's introductions: such a variety of experiences and interests is great to have in this online class. Hello to Edith, Lisa, and Dale again!
My name is Glynis Benbow-Niemier. This will be my second online class in the TOUT program--I took the first, Best Practices, last semester. I would like to complete the TOUT program and be able to teach effective classes online as well as in more traditional settings. I have taught poetry, composition, and writing & thinking workshops for the past 20 years or so--10 at COD as a part-time instructor while my kids were small. Since I teach composition as writing workshop, I have to admit I was (and still am a bit) hesitant about what is possible in an online environment. So much of a writing community happens because you are writing & sharing with students in the same space and time--but, I see the writing on the wall--pretty literally--and feel the need to be able to teach using online technologies as well as the more traditional technologies of notebooks, pens, and pencils. The workshops I have lead through the Institute for Writing & Thinking, are all face-to-face and intense exchanges of writing and ideas and reading. These are my gold standard for learning as a participant or leader--each participant is active in creating their own knowledge through writing and sharing that knowledge. The thing I see online courses offering which is comparable is the act of writing what you are thinking--really taking time to put into written language what you are learning & thinking--making your thoughts concrete. What is lost is the immediacy of sharing--
I have taught high school writing workshops, college writing workshops, and teacher training writing workshops-- many moons ago I also taught 4 & 5 year olds but that really does seem like a different lifetime ago! I did most of my undergraduate work in English at Indiana University (in South Bend); received my MA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and my PhD in English Education from New York University. One of the best teachers I had was at IUSB: she was a Shakespeare scholar who was tough as nails when it came to just about everything--especially our writing. She was not a perfect teacher: she had some suspect practices which I cringe to think about now, but she was fair, had high expectations, and would not let us write more than a page for our essays (if you had a word or two on the second page--forget it--she wasn't going to read it). Whatever we had to say about King Lear, A Winter's Tale, or Henry IV, Part One--had to be said in one page--with evidence and thoughtfulness. Every word mattered. It was high stakes writing and where I began to learn the fine art of revision because I had to.
This is the kind of thing which may be possible in an online--the honing down of things from a loose abundance to the hard kernels of what is important. How to do this is what I hope to learn in this second installment of the TOUT program.