The Mason composition teaching community continues to innovate and support each other with its Teachers Need Teachers (TNT) initiative. This faculty-driven initiative provides an opportunity for composition faculty to share assignments, activities, and lesson plans with each other and to talk about teaching during the semester.
TNT, organized by Ben Orlando, has featured work from several faculty during the last year. Liz Paul shared an icebreaker she uses in her composition courses, and Jessie Matthews shared an activity that explains to students in ENGH 302 courses the Discipline Project.
Ann Chen has shared assignments for novices and advanced students to help them learn genre awareness, and Audrey Pettibon presented on an activity designed to help students understand the proposal as a written genre.
Cathy Saunders shared activities that help students choose their research topics, and Mark Rudnicki showed the group a community assessment tool that supports student engagement with local communities.
Many others participate, present, and contribute to this initiative. Ben Orlando says that,
Since I’ve been teaching at George Mason, I’ve always wished there was some kind of meeting where we could see what other teachers were teaching, and share what works and what doesn’t. This is part of TNT. The other part is simply chatting with people you don’t normally get to see or spend time with. It’s really a live extension of the OER. To me it’s exciting and fulfilling to share lessons I created. It’s just as exciting to see what other teachers have created and think about how I might incorporate those lessons into my class. So far I’ve adopted several major and minor ideas presented in TNT, and I am trying to integrate more into my course.
TNT meets three times each semester. With GMU instruction now online and everyone in the area on stay at home orders, these meetings have moved online as well. Meetings will be held via Zoom, with the hope of giving teachers a space to see familiar faces and chat about what is and isn’t working with the move online. Spring 2020 dates include:
- Wednesday, April 8, 12 - 1pm
- Topics include gathering anonymous student feedback at end of semester and Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
- Wednesday, April 15, 12 - 1pm
- Tawnya Azar will share about using multimodal assignments
- Future meetings to be determined
For information or to join this great group of faculty working together, or if you’d like to share at an upcoming meeting, please contact Ben Orlando at borlando@gmu.edu. Visit the Composition Wordpress site to access materials from past TNT meeting presentations.
April 03, 2020
