General Readings

Here are some reading resources that I use to help with teaching. The general books have helped me a great deal adjusting to an instructor role. The composition books focus more closely on teaching composition and various theories you need to be aware of as a teacher, and the ecocompostion books deal with my research interest and incorporating it into the composition classroom.

General Teaching Books

• McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Several tips explaining about course prep, meeting your class for the first time, making lectures effective, promoting active learning while reading, facilitating better discussion, giving better feedback, motivating students, using technology, grading, and more!
• First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student’s Guide to Teaching: this is an extremely helpful book for graduate instructors or first-time teachers. It provides information about weekly class preparation, interacting with students, grading, preparing for the job marketing, balancing school and teaching, etc.

Composition Books

• The Norton Book of Composition Studies: This is a more comprehensive version of A Guide to Composition Pedagogies.  This book has details about common writing theories, issues in the composition classroom, etc.
• A Guide to Composition Pedagogies: This book has several composition theories and how they apply to the composition classroom such as cultural studies, feminist theory, using new media, and teaching second language writers.

Ecocomposition/Place-conscious Pedagogy

• Composition and Sustainability:Teaching for a Threatened Generation: a very thorough : This is a focus on ecocritism and has several chapters about how to incorporate ecocomposition into your classroom and to keep sustainability, place, work, the future all in mind while lesson planning.
• Dobrin, Sidney I., and Christian Weisser, eds. Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches. Albany: State University of New York P: 2001.
• Dobrin, Sidney I., and Christian Weisser, eds.Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition. Albany: State University of New York P. 2001.