This semester at the Mason Korea campus, English Program Coordinator Dr. Hyunyoung Cho began facilitating a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) in order to discuss key Writing Studies concepts and relate these to instructors’ classroom practice, as well as to offer workshops of best practices. Dr. Cho also hopes the FLC provides a means of in-house professional development:
I believe it is important for instructors to learn the current best practices and to be constantly updated on the current pedagogical discussions…I came to realize that it is also critical to build local structures of intellectual and pedagogical exchanges among colleagues.
In this, their first year, they are using Naming What We Know by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle as their foundational text for discussion and consideration. The workshop portion of the FLC will allow all participants to share their best practices and how they’re incorporating the readings into their classroom practices. Dr. Cho plans to present the Linguistic Noticing Workshop materials co-developed by the members of the Fairfax Language Diversity FLC led by Anna Habib.
The FLC has been enthusiastically attended already by Melissa N Bruce, Jason Kifer, Teresa L. Michals, Alice Wrigglesworth of the English program faculty. And with the support of the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Mason Korea, John T. Crist, Dr. Cho was able to open up the FLC and invite the colleagues in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Program, of which Eunmee Lee, Elizabeth Joye Quillin, and Eunhee Seo have attended. Dr. Yingji Jin, a colleague from Modern and Classical Languages Program, has also been in attendance as a guest, with the hope of starting a similar FLC in their program soon.
Dr. Cho is very pleased with the success of the FLC thus far:
We had vigorous and productive conversations in our first two meetings…Many colleagues at Mason Korea see in our FLC a great potential for faculty development. I am proud that the English program serves yet again as a role model at Mason Korea and I hope this FLC continues as a platform for collegial learning and pedagogical conversations.
November 16, 2020
