Category: Teaching
Empathy and Education Revisited: Fight or Flight
This week, we look back at Vicky Cheng‘s December 2016 post on engaging with students in the classroom. Vicky will be back next week with more on teaching and writing. “A good teacher will lead the horse to water; an excellent teacher will make the horse thirsty first.” — Mario Cortes Inside the academic classroom,
![The "is this X?" meme. The male Asian anime character has a meteor superimposed over his face, and he gestures at an image of Earth. The meme is captioned "Is this [X]?" where [X] is an image of the eyes of the man from the commercial real estate meme.](https://i0.wp.com/broadlytextual.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/49265719_278284466202425_5489023532056707072_n.png?resize=790%2C550&ssl=1)
“It’s Lit!”: Memes, Linguistic Play, and Academic Terminology
As a first-generation immigrant who first grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese, which then became superseded by English as my entire family struggled to learn the ins and outs of this truly ridiculous language, reading student papers submitted by those wrestling with the language will always provoke a bit of extra compassion from me. Working toward
Learning Writing By Teaching Writing
Generally, there are few things that unite teachers more than a mutual aversion to grading. For some, the marking up of assignments and assigning of earned grades may be a mere annoyance; for others, the unavoidable nature of subjectivity inherent to that process, plus the amount of feedback necessary, multiplied by the time consumed makes
Back to School Shopping: Exploring Independent School Teaching
Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we? I had graduated with my PhD in English but had realized that a tenure track academic job was not for me. What does one do, then, to prepare oneself for a new career path? Again, I must echo what Staci emphasized—reach out to your networks.
We’re All Smart Enough: A Pep Talk for PhDs on the Job Market
I begin this blog post with the title “We’re All Smart Enough” because, as has at least been part of my experience of graduate education, there is a perception that only the best and brightest get the coveted tenure track job in higher education. But I’m here to tell you—if you’re in a PhD program, you are one of the best and the brightest. You ARE smart enough. And deciding that you do not enjoy parts of the work, or do not want to make certain lifestyle choices to try and get that tenure track job, has nothing to do with intelligence.
On Alt-Ac Careers and Autoimmune Conditions
This month, Broadly Textual is proud to welcome back two outstanding graduates from the English Graduate program at Syracuse University (and previous contributors to the blog), Dr. Staci Stutsman and Dr. Melissa Welshans. Each week in March, our returning contributors will discuss their experiences within their PhD program, the skills they gained during their studies,
Revisiting Unruly Instruction
This week, we dive into Broadly Textual’s archive, from its days as Metathesis, to revisit a piece of important work by now-Dr. Melissa Welshans. Her post, written in 2014 during her time in the English PhD program, addresses the same issues discussed by Natalie El-Eid in her first contribution this month, and reflected in the
Revisiting Asexual Awareness Week
This week is 2018’s Asexual Awareness Week (October 21-28), so I want to revisit a post that I wrote four years ago. (Ray Osborn will return with a final installment of poetry next week.) This article below was the first time that I would publicly write about asexuality. I was not out when I wrote
Looking for Purloined Letters
Last week, I explored the benefits of mastery when approaching a text — namely the meanings that are made possible to those who know what to look for. While I mentioned that those who didn’t know what to look for are likely to “miss out,” this week I am interested in the ways in which
Recognizing Heroic Domesticity
An article in the most recent issue of The Atlantic draws attention to the varied ways in which Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is read. The main suggestion is that knowledge of Alcott’s biography can drastically change a reader’s interpretation of the text. This knowledge about the author’s biography, one of many types of topic