ABOUT THIS BOOK

Harris, Miles and Paine ask: What happens when the texts that students write become the focus of a writing course? In response, a distinguished group of scholar/teachers suggests that teaching with students texts is not simply a classroom technique, but a way of working with writing that defines composition as a field.

In Teaching with Student Texts, authors discuss ways of revaluing student writing as intellectual work, of circulating student texts in the classroom and beyond, and of changing our classroom practices by bringing student writings to the table. Together, these essays articulate a variety of ways that student texts can take a central place in classroom work and can, in the process, redefine the ways our field talks about writing.

REVIEWS

Teaching with Student Texts offers new perspectives, insights, and approaches to working with and thinking about student texts and representations of student writing. Equally important, it also opens new questions and opportunities for exploration about intersections and divergences among the ways that instructors work with student texts – in individual programs and across programs and institutions. It is a rich, useful, and provocative book.

Linda Adler-Kassner, University of California, Santa Barbara; author of The Activist WPA, winner of the 2010 CWPA Best Book Award

The new teacher enters the writing classroom, assignment in hand. What happens next? Teaching with Student Texts understands both the drama and the stakes of this moment, where so much depends on what role students are asked to play in the educational process. Prominent members of the field and new voices alike are represented in this compelling collection of essays, each showing how to make the student text the center of the writing classroom. The editors know that a quiet revolution is set in motion when the focus of instruction shifts from professional writing to student writing. Readers of this volume are invited to join in the work of teaching the arts of thoughtful engagement with the world and its challenges.

Richard E. Miller, Rutgers University, author of Writing at the End of the World

The idea that working with student writing defines what happens in composition classrooms may seem so axiomatic that it’s hardly worth mentioning. But this is why Teaching with Student Texts is so valuable. It turns out, as the various contributors show, there is quite a bit to say about working with student writing—to give examples of how to do it, certainly, but as a way to explore what it means to value student writing as an intellectual practice and intellectual resource. This thoughtful attention to teaching with student texts is the book’s platform, and, to my mind, its inquiries set a new standard of informed practice.

John Trimbur, Emerson College; author of The Call to Write

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction / Joseph Harris, John D. Miles, and Charles Paine

I. Valuing Student Texts

1. Re-Valuing Student Writing / Bruce Horner

2. Revealing Our Values: Reading Student Texts with Colleagues in High School and College / Nicole B. Wallack

3. "What Do We Want in This Paper?" Generating Criteria Collectively / Chris M. Anson, Matthew Davis, and Domenica Vilhotti

4. Teaching the Rhetoric of Writing Assessment / Asao B. Inoue

II. Circulating Student Texts

5. Ethics, Student Writers, and the Use of Student Texts to Teach / Paul V. Anderson and Heidi A. McKee

6. Reframing Student Writing in Writing Studies Composition Classes / Patrick Bruch and Thomas Reynolds

7. Students Write to Students about Writing / Laurie McMillan

8. The Low-Stakes, Risk-Friendly Message-Board Text / Scott Warnock

9. Product as Process: Teaching Publication to Students / Karen McDonnell and Kevin Jefferson

10. Students’ Texts beyond the Classroom: Young Scholars in Writing’s Challenges to College Writing Instruction / Doug Downs, Heidi Estrem, and Susan Thomas

11. The Figure of the Student in Composition Textbooks / Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori and Patricia Donahue

III. Changing Classroom Practices

12. Workshop and Seminar / Joseph Harris

13. What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Workshops? Charting the First Five Weeks of a First-Year Writing Course / Maggie Debelius

14. Texts to Be Worked on and Worked with: Encouraging Students to See Their Writing as Theoretical / Chris Warnick

15. Writing to Learn, Reading to Teach: Student Texts in the Pedagogy Seminar / Margaret J. Marshall

16. The Writer/Text Connection: Understanding Writers' Relationships to their Writing / Muriel Harris

17. Learning from Coauthoring: Composing Texts Together in the Composition Classroom / Michele Eodice and Kami Day

18. Inquiry, Collaboration, and Reflection in the Student (Text)-Centered Multimodal Writing Course / Scott L. Rogers, Ryan Trauman, and Julia E. Kiernan

19. Workshopping to Practice Scientific Terms / Anne Ellen Geller and Frank R. Cantelmo

20. Bringing Outside Texts In and Inside Texts Out / Jane Mathison Fife

21. Embracing Uncertainty: The Kairos of Teaching with Student Texts / Rolf Norgaard

Afterword: Notes toward an Informed Practice / Charles Paine and John D. Miles

References

Index

Contributors

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