{"id":441,"date":"2018-08-06T22:29:43","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T02:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/roguerhet\/?p=441"},"modified":"2025-05-30T21:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T02:07:09","slug":"plot-twist-the-rogue-returns-to-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/2018\/08\/06\/plot-twist-the-rogue-returns-to-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Plot Twist: The Rogue Returns to Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rogue Rhetorician is returning to the classroom<\/strong>. Yes,\u00a0I gave up the academic job search\u2026 and was offered a position.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been away for a couple of weeks, traveling with my children from Western PA to the California Coast. While we were in California, I received and accepted a full-time teaching post at a state university near our home in Pennsylvania. Classes start later this month.<\/p>\n

The fall semester includes four sections of \u201cCritical Writing\u201d which is another name for college composition<\/strong><\/em>. I\u2019m not a fan of how most composition courses are structured (or taught) so this will be something of a challenge as I attempt to prove my approach to teaching academic writing works well.<\/p>\n

I am not going to change what I believe is a better approach to academic writing instruction.\u00a0<\/em>Hopefully, that is why I was hired.<\/p>\n

When I was a graduate student, we were given a syllabus with four essays, starting with a personal narrative. I\u2019m not going to follow that approach.<\/p>\n

My writing course will be grounded in rhetoric, the\u00a0traditional rhetoric and\u00a0<\/em>recent rhetorical scholarship<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I am not going to focus on grammar or formatting because I can instead expose students to tools and resources that help with APA and MLA formatting, along with other style arbiters.\u00a0Why have students memorize style guides that change when I can instead point them to websites and applications that are always up-to-date? Let\u2019s be honest as teachers: we look up formatting and style rules because assuming we know them is risky<\/strong>. Very few scholars I know have memorized style guides and those that have done so study how the guides evolve.\u00a0My students will be given templates and links to training resources.<\/p>\n

College writing courses \u2014 all writing courses \u2014 should focus on the ideas and creative expression. Yes, we can tell students they are judged by the formatting of a document, and we can insist they use proper formatting via software tools, but we do not need to distract them from learning how to analyze arguments.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to teach visual rhetoric and the economic nature of rhetoric.<\/p>\n

It is good to be back on track, though it was entirely unexpected after I had given up the academic job search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rogue Rhetorician is returning to the classroom. Yes,\u00a0I gave up the academic job search\u2026 and was offered a position. I\u2019ve been away for a…<\/p>\n

Continue readingPlot Twist: The Rogue Returns to Teaching<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":7,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,12,13],"tags":[77,122,277,317,335],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-teaching","category-tech","tag-composition","tag-education","tag-rhetoric","tag-teaching","tag-universities","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/01\/RogueRhet_1200x630.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfiwhV-77","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1317,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/1317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/roguerhet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}