English faculty member, Elizabeth Paul, received Mason’s esteemed 2024 Teaching Excellence Award with special recognition for her inclusive teaching. As she wraps up her semester, Paul took some time to reflect on why she cares about teaching, energized inclusive classrooms, and working with international students.
How does it feel to be recognized for your excellence in this field?
It feels special to be “seen” by colleagues who know what all goes into teaching.
Congrats on the award! You received special recognition for inclusive teaching. How do you foster a supportive and inclusive learning environment in your classroom?
There is a lot to say about this. One thing I can say is that I often think about the international students in my classes—students who are very or somewhat new to the U.S. or U.S. academics. I have a sense of the huge leap they’re making from having lived in Kyrgyzstan as a Peace Corps volunteer and having married a citizen of Kyrgyzstan who took his own leap in building a new life in the U.S.
I find that if I’m thinking about international students, I’m thinking in ways that benefit all students and help me create a supportive and inclusive environment.
I want to make sure international students are getting what they need and feeling included as they make their leap. In fact, this is one of my favorite things to do. This means encouraging students to interact in pairs and small groups and hopefully become friends. It means demystifying things we may tend to assume everyone knows, like what the writing process is. It means giving students opportunities to talk with me, a professor, one-on-one. It means remembering how exhausted international students may be feeling due to cultural immersion. It also means getting to know students as individuals, looking for opportunities to understand their particular needs and appreciate their particular gifts.
Thinking about international students helps me keep my teaching instrument in tune because it’s probably fair to say that a lot of our students are taking some kind of leap—into college or writing if not the U.S.
All of this amounts to more than supporting international students. It’s more like thinking about international students helps me keep my teaching instrument in tune because it’s probably fair to say that a lot of our students are taking some kind of leap—into college or writing if not the U.S. It’s probably safe to say that everyone feels exhausted sometimes. And everyone brings a unique background, so there are both individual needs and gifts to perceive.
Finally, while I don’t put a spotlight on international students, I make visible efforts to make sure I’m including them. For example, I might ask if everyone knows what a thesis is or preface my lessons on research by acknowledging the different ways people think about ethos and sources in different cultures. I think these gestures help to establish inclusivity as a value and a norm.
What inspired you to pursue a career in teaching?
I’ve needed to change the question from what inspired me to pursue a career in teaching to what inspires me to teach and keep teaching writing because I’m not very career-oriented and because I find it takes ongoing inspiration to keep going in the satisfying but demanding job of teaching writing.
I became strongly interested in education in high school when I discovered my peers were largely motivated by grades and GPAs while I was more focused on learning for learning’s sake. This led me to attend The Evergreen State College as an undergrad. At Evergreen I experienced interdisciplinary curricula, alternative (no-grades) assessment, and student-led seminars and was totally engaged. Learning was expansive and exhilarating. I also worked as a writing tutor and enjoyed helping my peers.
But I suppose it was boredom with a desk job that inspired me to try teaching. I had about as good a desk job as I could have wanted, creating educational materials at the Library of Congress using their amazing online collections. But working on a computer all day wasn’t satisfying. I realized I needed something more interactive and thought I’d give teaching a try.
It takes ongoing inspiration to keep going in the satisfying but demanding job of teaching writing.
My first experience teaching was as a Peace Corps education volunteer in Kyrgyzstan. Between the instability of daily life and the corruption of the education system in Kyrgyzstan, teaching conditions were challenging, even absurd, but I loved it. I not only enjoyed my time in the classroom but loved the outlet for creativity in designing curriculum. So I looked for teaching jobs in private high schools and higher ed when I returned to the U.S.
At a small liberal arts college, I got to see what was possible when students regularly showed up to class and couldn’t bribe their way to graduation. But I struggled with the workload as a writing teacher. So much so, that I avoided teaching composition during a four-year period when I entered a low-res MFA program in creative writing and worked part time teaching ESOL.
During this time I also started teaching at GMU as an adjunct with the INTO program, which began to bring me back to teaching composition. It was my pleasure to co-teach a course for INTO students with Mary Richardson. I remember observing how much Mary and I had similar instincts during class, and that was kind of exciting. Mary also has a talent for seeing the big picture and staying focused on what’s most important, which was something I needed as I can get consumed with detail and complexity. Teaching with Mary, I began to think I could find a way to manage the workload of a full-time position in composition.
I also loved the curriculum Mary introduced me to—curriculum that’s been shaped over many years and has the imprint of creative and generous colleagues like Anna Habib, Sharon Doetsch Kidder, Esther Namubiru, and James Savage. Working with such colleagues and curriculum made me feel at home at Mason and inspired me to apply for a term position in composition. Since then, I’ve continued to be inspired by my colleagues and by opportunities to get involved in things like linguistic justice and alternative assessment.
I didn’t mean to write a CV here, but I’ve needed to change the question from what inspired me to pursue a career in teaching to what inspires me to teach and keep teaching writing because I’m not very career-oriented and because I find it takes ongoing inspiration to keep going in the satisfying but demanding job of teaching writing.
Can you offer any advice or insights for other English professors thinking of teaching?
When I was new to teaching, I worked as an adjunct professor of English at a community college in Chicago. In a shared office for adjuncts, a woman who taught six different classes at three different institutions—an older and experienced teacher—told me I had “to put my woof in” with the students. For years I carried this idea around with me. I assumed she was right. And I thought that putting my woof in was especially important because I was young and female. In other words, I thought I needed to be a strong disciplinarian to counterbalance my appearance. It was years before I realized I had no woof to put in—that being a disciplinarian wasn’t my style and thus wasn’t going to work for me. I’ve also learned that most students are going to see beyond age- and gender-based stereotypes because they want to see a real person in their teachers—they want their teachers to be real with them.
Most students are going to see beyond age- and gender-based stereotypes because they want to see a real person in their teachers—they want their teachers to be real with them.
I think learning to teach is really learning to teach as only you can. It’s an individual thing and a lot of fun to discover, though it can also be a challenging and ongoing process.
In what ways do you continue to innovate and evolve to meet the changing needs of our students?
Lately I’ve been struck by some of my students’ reluctance to interact, even in small and casual conversations. For example, I might ask my students to discuss a specific question or text in pairs or small groups or to just say hi and check in with their neighbors at the top of class. Some students simply sit quietly even if I come over and encourage them to talk with the person next to them. This rarely happened in my classes until about a year ago.
This semester, my innovating and evolving to respond to this new trend has looked pretty messy. I’ve complained to my students about this refusal to talk. I’ve shared my genuine concern and asked for their input (they chalked it up to tiredness and social anxiety and suggested there was nothing I could do). I’ve revised my expectations a bit. I would much rather see and hear students engaging with each other and with ideas, but I’m learning that quietness isn’t necessarily a sign of disengagement or unhappiness. I’m trying to get used to a more subdued mood, which has been hard. I like an energized feeling in the classroom—it helps me feel energized and motivated. I’ve been having to find more of my energy and motivation elsewhere, and I’m still working on that.
Meanwhile, the ease with which students can turn to AI to generate writing has me trying to improve some of my low-stakes exploratory writing prompts. Noticing which prompts sent students to AI, I’m looking to replace prompts that require students to analyze a text with prompts that ask students to provide their own take on a text. I hope this will create better—more provocative yet accessible—prompts that students will want and feel ready to explore in writing.
May 06, 2024