Tag: Teaching

Corrupting the Youth

On Ways to Teach Writing Very, Very Well

daelnorwood

Or, Learning to Imitate FTW

SEK’s got a fantastic new post up at Acephalous about a particular technique he uses to teach his student’s how to imitate an academic style of writing. Or, as he puts it “a very long post about teaching non-humanities majors how to fake like they know what they’re talking about.” 

Anyone interested in writing, teaching writing, or teaching non-humanities majors would do well to read the piece.

Though he’s framed it as a retention technique — for those science majors who after 2 years of problem sets and Scantrons get to their senior year research papers with no clue how to write in an academic voice — but I think it’s worth reading for the description of his pedagogy within which this technique is embedded, too. I especially like the way he gets the students on the side of good writing and argument by showing them how to take down terrible stuff.

Go read!

Scott Eric Kaufman, “How to Bootstrap Student Diction,” Acephalous, 5 February 2010

Image cite: the trial, write,” Flickr, CC License

Corrupting the Youth

I [apple] Teaching

daelnorwood

Or, Blogger as Teacher-in-Training

Apple

Deep in the depths of catching up on e-mail and reading teh interblags, I just found a new blog, and I might be in love.

It’s The Scholar As Teacher, put out by Princeton’s in-house professional development office, the McGraw Center for Teaching & Learning.

Don’t let the bureaucrat’s dream of a originating body throw you: it’s attractive to look at, smartly written to take advantage of the bloggy medium, and, most important, offers some ideas on teaching — both tips and tricks for the classroom, and ways of thinking about teaching more generally.

Not things I personally have much cause to use at the moment (woo hoo summer! boo hoo dissertation!), but I’m filing it away in the category of “good procrastination” (think “good cholesterol”).

Reminds me, in tone and deliciousness of content, of the stuff that the CHNM folks put out.

And, not to be rude, but it’s a bit easier on the eyes than the Tomorrow’s Professor Blog. So there.

PS – “JBFC,” a tag for a lot of the posts over there, stands for “Just Back From Class.”

Image Cite: Ms. Tina, “An Apple for the Teacher (3/365),” Flickr, CC License