Presidents Day at BYU = Strange week

Author

Kelsey Smith
February 23, 2024

Imagine my internal reaction at parent-teacher conferences when my third-grader’s excellent teacher tells me that my third-grader lets out a long disgruntled sigh every time she signals writing time. The shame! The horror! The where-did-I-go-wrong?!

So far my third-grader has not replaced his sigh with a cheery “Writing is awesome!” like I told him to. Apparently, I have work to do on the homefront.

More stuff from Narrative Sharing Time

Inspired by Amy William’s recommendation of George Saunder’s book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, I stumbled upon Saunder’s Substack newsletter Story Club, and already I am a fan: his “Office Hours” emails are gold (“I am, you know: reading to be lit up”). I’m sorely tempted to upgrade to the paid version of this newsletter.

Here are two more great writing sites that were shared at Narrative Sharing Time:

If you missed my email with a link to our Narrative Sharing Time loot, click here—I just added another submission from Christel Swasey.

A review of WRTG 150 requirements

When I had to be reminded (again) what’s required for WRTG 150, I thought, “You know, I don’t think I’m the only one.” (Okay, so that last sentence is a lie, but I later found out I was not the only one!)

Here’s what every WRTG 150 instructor is required to teach in WRTG 150:

  • Inquiry

  • Advocacy

  • Reflection: Cognition (“What?”), Metacognition (“So what?”), and Action (“Now what?”)—the same model of reflection students will be learning and using in UNIV 101!

And that’s it. That’s the list. You can choose additional genres, the assignments, the rubrics. Which is all great and awful at the same time!

Just remember, you can steal assignments via Learning Suite or in person, just ask someone, “What do you do for __________?" and “Can you send it to me ASAP?”

Trust me on this. Our community of full- and part-time faculty are willing—happy!—to share. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. You can customize already existing wheels.

A matter of order in WRTG 150

While we have lots of freedom when teaching WRTG 150, we do need to teach inquiry BEFORE advocacy—we need to help students gather evidence before making arguments.

Fortunately, as my officemate Holly Wood emphatically pointed out, this order leads to better arguments and better writing (and less hair-pulling and sad sighs while grading).

WRTG 150 textbook update

By Fall 2024, every WRTG 150 class needs to be using Everyone’s an Author as its textbook.

But—oh what a glorious conjunction!—if there’s a textbook you’d like to use instead, stay tuned: You’ll soon be able to submit a textbook for approval from the official University Writing Textbook Committee! (Members of this committee have yet to be finalized, which means I’ll be hiding under a rock for the foreseeable future.)

Now there will be criteria that proposed textbooks will have to meet. This will be published along with the instructions on how to submit a textbook to the committee. Watch your email!

One vote for Everyone’s an Author

Change is hard, but sometimes a comment from a student makes it a little easier, puts the change in a different light.

Yesterday my multilingual student thanked me for Everyone’s an Author. I’m not going to lie—at first, I thought she was talking about another book, not our textbook.

But she really did say, “Thank you for Everyone’s an Author.” She even plans on buying a hard copy of it and putting it on her bookshelf, so she can refer to it whenever she is trying to figure out how to write for an American audience.

Her appreciation for Everyone’s an Author reminded me of a story I heard on NPR years ago about economic policies. A researcher argued that if economic policies, like paid sick leave, specifically helped women of color—who often work frontline jobs, run small businesses, and manage households—they would help everyone; the whole economy would benefit.

It seems to me that it’s the same with the textbooks and readings we select for our classes. If our selections empower multilingual and first-gen students as writers, then they’re the texts we need. They will help everyone.

Winter semester book club reminder

For those of you who signed up for this semester’s book club, I hope you’re enjoying (or enjoyed) Verified—I just started it and have already learned a whole lot (go Wikipedia!).

As you read and reflect, consider these questions: Would this be a helpful book to assign to students? If you could only share five concepts (or one chapter) with students, what would they be? What has surprised or alarmed you? What information from Verified is a must-include in our classes’ library days?

Remember, we’re meeting to discuss Verified the week of March 25. Keep an eye on your email for the date and time!

Stuff for your calendar

Be sure to read over our calendar. Remember, you can now see our adjunct faculty happenings on the department Google calendar—our events are in green: The English Department Calendar. (Thank you, Juli Todd!)

MARCH

March 7–8: The English Symposium. Check out its awesome new website!

March 21: Mental Health Chat. Join fellow adjunct faculty and grad students in B106 JFSB at 11 am for a helpful Q&A with Husband Jon Cox, a psychologist at CAPS. At the time of publication, Jon did not have a title for this chat, so I will propose one: “Your Mental Health Matters Too!”

March 25–29: NEW DATE! Adjunct Faculty Book Club Lunch. Sometime during this week we’ll meet to chat about Verified over lunch. For those of you who signed up, keep an eye out for an email to vote for the best day and time to meet.

March 28: Student Ratings Start! Encourage your students to complete ratings for all of their classes, but especially yours.

APRIL

April 3: Withdrawal Deadline. Use the week before this date to have the a-W-is-better-than-a-F conversation with your students who have many absences and/or are failing. You’ll be grateful you did.

April 18: The Adjunct Faculty Biennial Conference! One of the best days of the year! Great presentations with new ideas and strategies! Please consider presenting! And please come! Your teaching lamp will be refilled! Keep an eye on your email for more information.

April 18: The Adjunct Faculty Award Luncheon! After the biennial conference, we’ll meet for lunch and celebrate all of our good works. Both the conference and the luncheon will take place in the Hinckley Center (I think).

April 18: Student Ratings Close. Perhaps request a rating analysis from the Center for Teaching & Learning SCOT program—and go for the big picture: ask them to sort and categorize your last three years of student ratings (don’t worry if you’ve been at BYU that long :).

April 30: Grades DUE by NOON!

Our makeshift website

As I’ve noted before, Ansalee Greenwood, Greyson Gurley, Kelsey Smith, and I are hard at work writing content for our Adjunct Faculty Website (and we are continually surprised at how much stuff we need to cover!). Until this website is up and running, here are links to some helpful Google docs (which you can also find in your “swag” folder that’s sitting in your mailbox right now):

Observation Opportunities—sign up to be observed or find someone to observe!

Syllabus Requirements: I just added another option—the RWC’s official syllabus statement that you’re welcome to customize!

Write NOW!—want to get some of your own writing done? Write NOW! can help!