Pulaski Technical College

Pulaski Technical College welcomes you to the 44th Annual Conference of the Two-Year College English Association – Southwest Region Conference Overview

Thursday, October 29, 2009 2:00 – 5:00 – Registration Main Lobby 5:00 – 7:00 – Reception 2nd Floor Pool Patio and Arkansas Suite A

Friday, October 30, 2009 7:00 – 9:00 – Breakfast and Business Meeting Hilton BC 9:00 – 5:00 – Publisher’s Exhibits 3rd Floor Lobby 9:00 – 9:50 – Breakout Session I 10:00 – 10:50 – Breakout Session II 11:00 – 11:50 – Breakout Session III 12:00 – 1:30 – Luncheon Hilton BC 2:00– 2:50 – Breakout Session IV 3:00 – 3:50 – Breakout Session V 4:00 – 5:30 – Literary Readings Hilton BC

Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:00 – 11:00 – Publisher’s Exhibits 3rd Floor Lobby 8:30 – 9:20 – Breakout Sessions VI 9:30 – 10:20 – Breakout Sessions VII 10:30 – 12:00 – Luncheon Hilton BC 12:30 – 2:00 – Executive Committee Meeting Little Rock Suite AB THURSDAY, October 29, 2009 2:00 – 5:00 – Registration Main Lobby 5:00 – 7:00 – Reception 2nd Floor Pool Patio and Arkansas Suite A

FRIDAY, October 30, 2009 7:00 – 9:00 – Breakfast and Business Meeting Hilton BC 9:00 – 5:00 – Publisher’s Exhibits 3rd Floor Lobby

9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. BREAKOUT SESSION I LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB Barbara Beverage and Gerry Perkus Collin College – Preston Ridge Campus Faculty Caring Behaviors: The Bridge to Success in the Classroom Join an interactive roundtable workshop designed to evaluate your individual caring behavior activities that promote retention, successful student learning outcomes and coping strategies, and best practices in teaching. How do empathy, modeling, sensitivity, encouragement, availability, respect, helpfulness, motivation, flexibility, reinforcement, and genuineness affect student success? Faculty who were evaluated on their caring behaviors developed strategies to strengthen their course policies, assignments, and rapport with students. Presenters Barbara Beverage and Gerry Perkus from Collin College will facilitate a workshop that focuses on improving pedagogical techniques with an emphasis on developing best practices of caring behaviors. Learn new strategies that you can incorporate immediately into your classes. Develop mentoring skills, enduring relationships and ability to facilitate more active student learning. HILTON A Jack Marshall Houston Community College Central Creating a DVD for a Classroom Supplement Since 2007 I have been working on a series of 29 essays narrated and illustrated on DVD (these are not movies). Each essay runs 10-20 minutes for use as a classroom supplement. So far I have completed 9 essays and expect to finish 10 more by August. One of my colleagues has used two of the essays in a Humanities course and another has used one in an ESL course. The subject matter is visual art but also includes narratives related to poetry, history, and psychology. In my presentation I will show one or two of my essays as well as a student essay. I'll briefly explain the process of creation and introduce the main instruction book, I-Life 08. The Student essay I'll show is my nephew's. We gave him a Mac laptop for high school graduation in 2007 and in Spring 08 he created the DVD essay for a biology assignment.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Stephen Knapp Arkansas State University at Beebe (ASU-BB)

Linda Knapp Vilonia Middle School Deconstructing Student Empowerment: Derrida on Translation and Student-Centered Learning in a Two-Year College World Lit II Class Derrida’s influence on contemporary translation theory provides a means for fostering student- centered versus teacher-centered learning in a Two-Year College World Lit II class. By de- centering the source text in translation and shifting attention to the play of traces in each translation/interpretation of the original, students are empowered to produce and develop their own meanings, licensing the use of signs and signifying chains from their own receiving language and culture, in active semantic play with the source and its translations. From an instructor-modeled lesson examining alternatives for translation of “The Magic Mirror Scene” in Goethe’s Faust, students explore opportunities for similar kinds of alternative translations both in straight translation and translation/explication of poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Examples across a range from ESL to Honors students are examined with attention paid to the interplay of explication and translation, the honing and developing of critical thinking skills, and the transition from product-ownership to process-ownership as students take responsibility for and control of the learning dynamic.

HILTON D Ashlyn Dugan and Nannette Crane National Park Community College Developing Student Ownership: Active Learning Strategies in the College Classroom We would like to conduct a hands-on workshop for professionals who want to turn their current curriculum into a more active student-based forum employing student-led activities and discussions that focuses on the value of active learning opposed to passive learning in the classroom. Our workshop will be geared towards ways instructors can utilize the experiences and concepts of the non-traditional student and how these experiences can be productive factors in the active learning environment. In doing so, the students feels that he or she is contributing to his or her education, thus bridging that gap between students and between the students and the instructor that a passive learning environment often fosters through the neglect of individuality.

10:00 – 10:50 – BREAKOUT SESSION II

LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB Danizete Martínez University of New Mexico’s Valencia Preparing to Teach Chicana/o Literature at UNM-Valencia; or, Teaching Tome in Tome In Ana Castillo’s novel, So Far From God (1993), her prescient and quirky characters call Tome, New Mexico, their home. While the Tome Land Grant was affirmed by the United States in the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1948, Castillo illustrates how the history, culture, languages, and traditions of the community far exceed the demarcations of tidy timelines. Along with other seminal Chicana/o authors such as Tomás Rivera, Rudolfo Anaya, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and Gloria Anzaldúa, Castillo is among one of the many Latina/o authors dedicated to exploring the complicated and rich history of the Southwest. My paper will consider the various directions, set-backs, and possibilities that precipitate my preparation of teaching Mexican-American literature at a two-year college nestled in the heart of the Chicana/o imagination. While my idea is based from a Latina/o perspective, I hope that my presentation will open up dialogue with other instructors who have—or plan to—teach ethnic literature at junior colleges. Questions to consider include: how does ethnic literature shape the American story, and how does this tradition compare with other world literacies? In what ways will these courses influence our students’ regional knowledge and sense of community? And how will courses in ethnic literature prepare students for their later college experience and beyond?

HILTON A Karen Caig UACCM Lyndsey Daniel UACCM Global Mind: Bridging the Gaps in the 21st Century How can we stretch beyond our socio-economic and racial point of view and work against stereotypes? How can we promote active, student-centered learning? How can we promote cooperative, creative learning strategies? How can we transform our under-privileged, ill- prepared students into global citizens? The answer is international travel. Unfortunately, most of our students have jobs and families to support. How can we help our students compete in the emerging global economy against more fortunate students? The dynamic team of Caig and Daniel will share how to organize, finance, and lead educational trips abroad. This presentation will cover all aspects of global travel with students, including how to offer a course for college level credit to accompany the trips as well as funding ideas.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Jenia Walter San Juan College Taking the Grrr Out of Grammar: Building Bridges with a Hands-on Approach Academic writing is a challenge for many students from diverse backgrounds, and grammar instruction is most often met with groans or growls of frustration. Many instructors find themselves wondering if there are more effective, engaging ways to bridge the learning gap in developmental writing classrooms. The hands-on, active learning approach presented in this workshop addresses multiple learning styles, particularly kinesthetic, and reaches across the abyss to students who have had negative experiences with “grammar.” The kinesthetic activities break through the “print barrier” and help students relax and open up to learning. This approach instills confidence and creates an environment where students can successfully absorb, integrate, and retain complex material. The workshop will provide a live demo and slides of activities, handouts with ideas, and support for developing your own. If you are already teaching grammar in action, please bring activities to share!

HILTON D James Wright and Laurel Lacroix Houston Community College, Southwest Joseph McDade Houston Community College, Northeast Roy Ruane Austin Community College Is Just Showing Up Enough? Negotiating Expectations in the Composition Classroom If, as Woody Allen says, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up,” should class attendance count for ninety percent of one’s composition course grade? A recent New York Times article describes growing faculty concern regarding student grade expectations. Citing a study by the University of California at Irvine (which “found that a third of students surveyed . . . expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading”) and anecdotal evidence from college students and faculty, the article examines various causes of students’ “increased sense of entitlement.” Although the piece focuses on four-year schools, community college faculty will not only recognize these factors feeding unrealistic student expectations but be familiar with others, such as the social promotion practices of K-12 public schooling. The problem of grade inflation is further complicated in two-year colleges by the vastly varying abilities of student writers and the multifaceted mission of composition instruction itself. This roundtable will explore the place of student expectations in the community college composition classroom with the aim of generating a variety of responses that can contribute to our understanding of this complex issue.

11:00 – 11:50 – BREAKOUT SESSION III

LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB Rhonda Armstrong, Joan Mathis, Toni McMillen, and Beth Shelton Paris Junior College A Smorgasbord of Group Projects Instructors have been challenged by the Texas College Readiness Standards adopted by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, January 24, 2008, to “understand the elements of communication both in informal discussions and formal presentations (p. a9), “apply listening skills as an individual and as a member of group in a variety of settings” (p. a10) and “work collaboratively” (p. a75). We have accepted these challenges and responded in a variety of ways depending on the course and the course delivery method, from developmental writing to sophomore literature classes, from traditional face-to-face classes to ITV and Internet classes. Hopefully, each attendee will leave this buffet with a plateful of practical strategies with which to meet this challenge on variety of levels. HILTON A Myshie M. Pagel and Rose Galindo El Paso Community College The Co-Madre Factor in ESL Learning Communities Transitioning to college level courses for ESL students is like leaping a chasm of expectations. To prepare ESL students for this transition we have created a reading and writing learning community based on dialogic collaboration which we call the Co-Madre factor. This presentation focuses on a pilot study of a cohort of ESL students at the intermediate level who transitioned to college level courses after participating in a learning community. Using college level texts, assignments were developed to support language acquisition in both the reading and writing ESL classroom with an emphasis on college readiness.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Clint Gardner Salt Lake Community College Joe Hardin University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Barbara L'Eplattenier University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Community College Writing Programs and the Council of Writing Program Administrators: What We Can Learn from Each Other

Because more than 50% of all postsecondary writing instruction occurs at two-year schools, and because writing program administrators work at all two-year schools (although they may not have that title), the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) believes that it is important to broaden the base of its membership to include more people from two-year colleges and to build a dialogue between key professional organizations such as TYCA and its regional affiliates. This panel describes some of the CWPA resources that TYCA members may find useful, but most important we hope it helps jostle some of the perceived boundaries between the two organizations so that a long-term and deep collaboration can ensue.

HILTON D V. Noelle Burr Rose State College Establishing and Emphasizing Student Responsibility: Teaching Students How to Build Bridges In the midst of the national outcry against the recent series of economic bailouts for the “fiscally irresponsible” we do not see our own complicity in reinforcing the same behaviors in our students by providing a variety of “academic bailouts,” reinforcing the students’ expectations that others will always, and should always, help them – rather than fostering skills that will teach students how to help themselves. We must teach students to look beyond obstacles - to take responsibility for their own choices, their own prejudices and biases, their own academic successes and failures. Rather than building the bridge for our students, let’s teach them how to build their own bridges. In this way, students will excel in , not only one class, but in all classes. Through an individual presentation, I will identify several “gaps” that hinder student success and provide several concrete “tools” for building bridges. Emphasis is placed on teaching students the method for applying this process of identifying gaps, brainstorming plans, and implementing tools on their own.

12:00 – 1:30 p.m. – LUNCHEON Hilton BC Welcome TYCA-SW Service Award TYCA-SW Teaching Excellence Award Keynote Speakers: Trevette Brown, Verna Collins, and Toby Daughtery From the Other Side: Student Success Stories Community college students often arrive on campus eager to make progress in their education only to face obstacles in the form of gaps that need bridging: gaps in finances, gaps in preparedness, and gaps in support, just to name a few. These three speakers offer a view from the other side, having hurtled these gaps and gone on to succeed in new areas. Hear first-hand accounts of experiences both positive and negative from their community college years and how those experiences helped them move forward along new paths.

Trevette Brown attended Pulaski Technical College from the Spring of 1999 – Fall of 2001, graduating with her Associates of Arts degree. She has since received a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Management (BAOM) from John Brown University in 2004 and a Masters of Business Administration(MBA) from Harding University in 2005. Trevette now works as a Manager for Union Pacific Railroad, continuing as a 3rd generation railroader. In her spare time she works with community charities devoted to under privileged children and college scholarship programs. Her strongest passion is history and learning about other cultures, so she travels whenever possible.

Verna Collins received an Associate of Arts from Pulaski Technical College in the Spring of 2007. She is currently an English major/Creative Writing minor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and graduates December 2009. She will pursue a Masters in Secondary Education at UALR in the Spring of 2010. Verna is a 2009 Ronald E. McNair Scholar, and has spent extensive time researching the African- American literary tradition. She is currently working on an independent study, assisted by her mentor, Dr. James Levernier. Verna is an avid reader of multi-cultural contemporary and classic literature. Toby D. Daughtery graduated with an A.A. degree from Pulaski Technial College in the spring of 2009. When he was a student at PTC he received a Fine Arts scholarship and progressed under the guidance of great professors. He is currently attending his first semester at UALR under the Shelly Breedlove Scholarship Program. He devotes a lot of his time to helping his peers enter college. He also speaks to Arkansas youth about the importance of staying away from crime and the benefits of a higher education. His motto is, "Crime pays temporarily, but education pays throughout a lifetime".

2:00 – 2:50 – BREAKOUT SESSION IV

LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB Kari Conness Austin Community College Not Everyone Thinks ‘Like Me’: Facilitating Student Success This presentation and workshop will discuss leaving our own bias as educators (our passion for education and subject matter) at the door and entering the classroom from the position of our students. In order to foster student-centered learning, we must acknowledge and understand the perception of our students who may be in our classes apathetically, fearfully, or even begrudgingly. Participants in this workshop will first learn the shifts in focus I made and what my students gained from a firm pedagogy that includes a malleable teaching style. We will then have a workshop forum in which participants learn strategies that will help them immediately create bridges of success for their students. Examples of practical strategies include the following: giving power to students to determine or choose their assignments, creating a “buy in” for classroom objectives and student success, setting individual and class SMART goals to keep students focused on their own learning and success, and encouraging student success through interdependence, modeling of course material, and promoting positive self-perceptions.

HILTON A Jennifer M. Wing Colorado Mountain College Sequencing Writing Assignments as a Means to Bridge the Gap for the Millennial Generation I, along with many other teachers, have been astounded by this generation’s desire and apparent need to have assignments not only spelled out for them but also justified. In response to this, I have relied even more heavily on sequencing writing assignments as a means to give students a fuller explanation of each paper and why it is important (i.e. answering the questions, “how am I supposed to do this?” and “why do I have to do this?”). By sequencing writing assignments and allowing students to choose their own topics, they better understand the writing process, improve their time management skills, and produce quality work on a topic that holds true meaning for them. This presentation will address the efficacy of sequencing assignments especially for writers of the Millennial Generation or Information Age. I will also share my own experiences and pedagogical practices of devising assignments that can be easily sequenced within the composition classroom. I intend to share some student models that demonstrate the various assignments I’ve devised that lead up to the final persuasive paper. Finally, I hope to engage the audience in a discussion of ways to improve and further the sequencing process as well as address any objections and potential pitfalls to it.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Donna Hill Ouachita Technical College Whose Paper Is It, Anyway? Using Technology to Encourage Students to Take Ownership of Their Writing Many students are content with making the changes their instructors mark on their papers and declaring their papers “revised.” While one-on-one discussion with students can help them find their own mistakes and areas for revision, most instructors don’t have time for such interaction on each paper. Two online technologies, Smarthinking Tutoring Services and ETS Criterion, can help students take ownership of their writing by teaching them to personally examine their writing to find areas for improvement not only in grammar and mechanics, but content and style as well.

HILTON D Marlea Treviño Collin College Bridging the Gap of Understanding: Motivating Composition Students Even though I’ve taught for over 20 years at several Texas community colleges, I still struggle with ways of motivating my composition students and increasing retention. In this effort, I have learned that educating them about college and the responsibility it demands is just as important as educating them about writing. In my discussion of this topic, I will examine why composition students often aren’t motivated as well as strategies instructors can use to “bridge the gap of understanding” and help them see the value of making composition a priority. I will also summarize recent research on community college students that supports my assertions. I plan to develop my discussion along these lines: why composition students often aren’t motivated; which motivation strategies usually don’t work; which types of understanding an instructor requires; and which motivation strategies are more successful.

3:00 – 3:50 – BREAKOUT SESSIONS V

LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB David Ragsdale Lone Star College-Kingwood Heading Off Faulty Student Assumptions that Short Circuit Success in Developmental English Many Developmental English students struggle in their classes, but the difficulty often isn’t really raw IQ. Rather, the difficulty is an inability to know how to “play the game,” how to go to college properly, and how to do the “affective behaviors” that will insure their success in the course. Often this is due to some false assumptions that students bring to college. An educational psychologist once said that most wrong behaviors result from wrong thinking, and this so often seems to be the case in Developmental English. If I could make students more aware of the faulty assumptions under which they’re operating, then they would be more likely to be productive and successful. Here are just a few of these faulty student assumptions: (1.) merely sitting in the classroom means that I’ll pass the course because it worked in high school; (2.) rigorous grading means my instructor doesn’t like me; (3.) I have a good memory, so I don’t need to write anything down; (4.) if I make a low grade on a paper, I’ll just wait for his grading to get easier, or time alone will clear up the problem. HILTON A Joyce Mosher Colorado Mountain College Sound Practices: Performing Composition and Literature People learn ten percent of what they read, and seventy percent of what they talk over with others. (Biggs, John. Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Buckingham, UK: Open UP, 1999, p 79) In this interactive session, Joyce reviews NCTE’s 2009 report on new 21st Century “multimedia, non-print literacies” that redefine college reading and writing and underscore the need for aural and oral materials and methods in literature and composition studies. A synthesis of 2008 - 2009 TETYC articles reveals that our organization is answering NCTE’s call to transform college classrooms. Most importantly, we are committed to increasing student voices in the classroom. When students speak, they build emotional and intellectual bridges between their life experiences and their academic material. Multi-dimensional learning enlists a performance model, where students explore aesthetic, personal, and scholarly dimensions of what they write and read. TETYC research suggests a two-pronged way to implement NCTE’s recommendations. The first is to develop a flexible communication style in the classroom, so that discussion, performance, images, and sound join traditional notions of reading and writing. The second is to build up a repertoire of formative assessment measures that reflect outcomes such as listening, rethinking, and self-evaluation. Participants collaborate to define and describe ways for students to practice comprehending and producing the multi-genre texts that they encounter in school and in the varied contexts of their lives.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Marsha Anderson Wharton County Jr. College The First-Year College Experience: Teaching the Facebook Generation What happens to students during the first year of college? Why do they drop out ? What hinders academic success? What can the instructor do to help with the transition and help with student success? My topics will include: * The Fusion Folder- a method for teaching organization and time management * Strategies for Improving Writing- Using YouTube videos in the classroom *Helping students make the transition- new and innovative ways to retain students *The One Minute Paper- games and short in-class prompts *An overhaul for the "New Millennium Student"- Improving Academic Performance

HILTON D Matthew Kim Parkland College The New Revision Strategies of Digital Natives: Bridging the Gap between Active and Passive Learning Many of our students—whether academic transfer or vocational-technical—are Digital Natives, or those learning and interacting with one another in spaces mediated by digital technologies and literacies new to teachers. In this presentation I wish to develop an argument that invites teachers and students to integrate the formulaic revision strategies of process-oriented writing with the idea of (re)envisioning revision strategies as a set of collaborative, participatory practices. These new practices emphasize students (re)envisioning their roles as writer and audience by collaborating in multimodal activities such as sketching-to-learn and mapping and also through social networking activities such as receiving more diverse, global feedback on writing from members of online communities like facebook and livejournal. Revision should never be about the passively “fixing” grammar or simply following a teacher’s suggestions to the letter. Revision is always about the actively (re) envisioning the spaces where writing happens. For students to begin bridging the gap between active and passive learning, we must commit ourselves to engaging—and us—towards considering revision as (re) envisioning the spaces we grow as a writers, where we redefine our audience as participants with their own values and beliefs in the conversation we are offering, and where our texts become compositions that will circulate as a contribution to our communities.

4:00 – 5:30 – LITERARY READINGS Hilton BC Antoinette Brim, David Charlson, Nancy Herschap, and Sandy Longhorn

Bridge Builders: TYCA-SW Creative Writers Present their Work

Antoinette Brim presents: Poems from Psalm of the Sunflower. In Psalm of the Sunflower, poet Antoinette Brim explores the painful reality of divorce as a foundation for self-discovery. Through exquisitely crafted poetry, filled with layered language and meaning, Brim unravels the breaking and mending of heart and spirit through a metaphoric engagement of nature, the Little Rock landscape, collective memory and song. Many community college students are themselves single parents in the process of discovering themselves and redefining their lives. Subsequently, these poems are relevant to the community college experience and can serve as inspiration and validation to many. Antoinette Brim teaches Creative Writing, Composition, and World Literature at Pulaski Technical College. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, a Harvard University W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow, National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Institute. The recipient of the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Scholarship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a Pushcart Prize nomination, Psalm of the Sunflower is her debut poetry collection.

David Charlson presents: Two-Year Colleges Don't Get No Respect: Very Short Stories from the Most Redoubtable of Contact Zones. The two-year college is rarely rendered in art except as that place where not too many want to go. Garrison Keillor puts it down, Chris Rock ridicules it, and Robin Williams is supposedly a loser for teaching at one in the film Good Will Hunting. Many people in the arts and out of them dismiss the two-year college as a dumping ground for life's also-rans. However, all sorts of incredible people attend these days, about HALF of all entering first-year college students, and stuff happens there that is amazing. From a manuscript called Community Colleges Don’t Get No Respect, this presentation will offer some stories about those students, sometimes in verse that aims not to be dull, and your input is desired as well. David Charlson now teaches English at Tulsa Community College after a ten-year stint at Oklahoma City Community College. He is the author of Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast (2005), a book based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Kansas, and he has an essay on the 1997 Oklahoma City banning of The Tin Drum in the recently released Sooner Cinema (2008). Currently he serves as Vice Chair of the Two-Year College English Association- Southwest. Nancy D. Herschap presents: Bridging the Gap: Teen-Age Real Life Experiences, Epiphanies, and Education. These pieces from Herschap’s poetry/prose collection are based on experiences of young women in their teens (in this selection, at age seventeen). It’s possible that we, as educations, are oblivious, to a degree, that a percentage of the young women/men in our classes may have had horrific life experiences and often these experiences impede, delay, and sometimes block, the goal of acquiring an education. Herschap was born in Laredo, Texas and has been an educator for the past eighteen years, teaching English in middle schools and high schools, as well as the university level. Currently, she teaches English at Laredo Community College.

Sandy Longhorn presents: Building Bridges out of Thin Air. Longhorn will read a selection of poems from her new manuscript, In a World Made of Such Weather as This. While these poems do not directly comment on the community college experience, they are certainly brewed and distilled from the mash of one community college English instructor’s being. Longhorn’s first book, Blood Almanac (Anhinga Press, 2006), won the 2005 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, judged by Reginald Shepherd. Longhorn is the recipient of an individual artist fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council and teaching composition, world literature, and creative writing at Pulaski Technical College.

6:00 – Transportation to River Market leaves Hilton 2nd Floor Lobby 10:00 p.m. – Transportation to Hilton leaves River Market

SATURDAY, October 31, 2009

8:30 – 9:20 – BREAKOUT SESSIONS VI

LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB David Charlson Oklahoma City Community College Charles Bukowski in the College Classroom: Seducing Students into Reading Entire Books NOTE FROM PRESENTER: If profanity disturbs you, please skip this presentation. Charles Bukowski is a confrontational spokesperson for the lower class, as is evident in both the content and form of his prose and poetry. Targets of his social criticism include the workplace, traditional masculinity, and the culture industry - all of which he has been a cantankerous part. His work can carry into the classroom in productive ways. Partly based on the presenter’s book Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast, this presentation offers an introduction to Bukowski as well as ideas on how to get students excited about a different kind of literature.

HILTON A Mark Silvia Lone Star College-Montgomery MISSING TITLE The pedagogical philosophy surrounding W.E.B. Dubois and the “Talented Tenth” developed during the period of U.S. Reconstruction. He proposed that Black-Americans would be best served if Blacks financially supported ten percent of their population through a liberal arts education. In turn, these educated statesmen could raise up the rest of the Black population. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it was never fully embraced during its initial proposal period. Additionally, its philosophies were in direct opposition to Booker T. Washington, who advocated trade school education as a means to help gain economic freedoms for the Black population. Interestingly, W.E.B. Dubois’s philosophy of the “Talented Tenth” has finally been put directly into practice in the state of Texas. My individual presentation is meant to begin a conversation about the role that Texas’s 10% college admissions rule has had on the Black population in Texas. Has this new generation of “talented tenth” succeeded in higher numbers? What are their retention and graduation rates, and are they higher or lower? Have they “given back” to the Black community in positive ways? Or, does this experiment show that Booker T Washington was correct- that a technical/community college education, meant to increase economic opportunities for minority populations, could actually be more beneficial in the long term.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Raj Chekuri and Nancy Herschap Laredo Community College Curiosity: A Heroic Quest Many of our students are afraid to venture past the mundane and the everyday reality of here and now, the safe environment. They wonder what literature has to do with their life and career choices. Fear of exploring the non -familiar is a challenge for everyone, especially for students. As instructors, we are the bridge builders in showing the connections between literature and life, careers, and future. It is a heroic quest to connect these bridges to the world as well as the future. By transforming our students from passive receptacles to active learners, we can bridge the gaps, so they can negotiate the meaning out of the texts and relate them to life situations and see the connections. Using Alister Reid’s intriguing poem “Curiosity” and Tennyson’s classic “Ulysses”, my colleague Nancy and I are going to demonstrate some approaches and useful techniques in order to make our students understand that literature is relevant not just for a letter grade but much more, for both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, so they can construct their own body of work from school and life experiences.

HILTON D Sandy Longhorn, Amy Baldwin, and Jonathan Purkiss Pulaski Technical College Building Retention Bridges through Journaling Frustrated by retention rates? Feel like trying to improve retention is like trying to span the Grand Canyon with a bridge built of popsicle sticks? This panel will discuss and provide examples of how members of the Pulaski Technical College English Department used journaling techniques to uncover tangible trends in retention issues. Using qualitative data analysis, those participating drew conclusions across sections within the same institution about why some students fail to succeed. Instructors journaled daily or weekly, taking notes on attendance, classroom materials, activities, assignments, attempts at reaching out to students one-on-one, and making notes of any students who withdrew, were administratively withdrawn, or failed. Results and templates will be shared.

9:30 a.m. – 10:20 a.m. – BREAKOUT SESSIONS VII

LITTLE ROCK SUITE AB Clint Gardner Salt Lake City Community College The Effects of Working as a Peer Tutor on College Students Traditionally, assessment instruments of peer tutoring programs measured what students are learning in tutoring sessions, or how effective the tutors are in their work. The aim of such assessment is to determine the impact of the service on the service’s primary audience—the student. The theory of peer tutoring is that both students learn from the situation. In other words, there is a measurable effect on both parties in the tutoring situation, not just on the student who is seeking tutoring. According to Kenneth A. Bruffee who was an early pioneer in developing peer tutoring programs in writing centers, “Peer tutoring made learning a two‐way street, since students’ work tended to improve when they got help from peer tutors and tutors learned from the students they helped and from the activity of tutoring itself” (“Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’”) In this presentation, I will focus on an often overlooked subject of assessment: what the peer tutor learns and the impact that working as a peer tutor has on one’s educational career and one’s life in general. Through use of recorded interviews and other assessment instruments, I will demonstrate the impact that working as a peer tutor has on college students. I will also present methods others can use to assess the impact of working as a peer tutor at their own institutions.

HILTON A Jacqueline Jones NorthWest Arkansas Community College Updating Question One: Rethinking Traditional Classroom Assessment Techniques and Fostering Diverse Learning Styles Quiz, quiz, test, quiz: This sequence epitomizes nearly all traditional classroom assessment techniques (CAT). Pedagogical practices such as these cater to a select number of learners and emphasize outdated paradigms of teaching. In order to bridge the gap between the course materials and objectives and the students, the instructor must then consider the diverse ways of learning as well as assessment. Sensory experiences and active learning are ways that we negotiate and learn the world. Why should the classroom be any different? By engaging the senses (yes, even taste) and active learning activities, composition and literature facilitators can pull students who have been marginalized by traditional CATs out of the shadows. The individual presentation, which can also be made into a workshop, will challenge instructors to assess their own CATs; “Take out a sheet of paper… Question One” needs an update.

LITTLE ROCK SUITE C Antoinette Brim Pulaski Technical College Dr. Seuss teaches the Academic Essay Composition II students are often tentative while transitioning from the personal essay to the more critical academic essay. This anxiety can create a tense classroom environment that thwarts learning. The introduction of Dr. Seuss’ whimsical language into the college classroom disarms and intrigues students. They soon find his stories are rich with social commentary and sub-text. Subsequently, these stories become excellent opportunities for instructors to introduce critical thinking, the thesis statement, logical progression and even source integration. Ultimately, students learn that Composition II can be kids’ play, as well as, the foundation of future college writing.

HILTON D Marlea Treviño Collin College Bridging the Gaps: Can Graduates Write Successful Professional Documents? In their article summarizing a survey of National Council of Teachers of English members, Dudley-Marling, et al. (2006) observe that the efforts of many English/Language Arts teachers are focused on preparing their students to write well in school rather than to be effective communicators in their jobs and civic lives: NCTE members define success by how their students perform in the academy rather than the workplace. This has significance in terms of how the public views the role of English language arts and how English teachers view the role of English language arts knowledge. This is a finding that should spur more conversation and debate about the values of NCTE members regarding the relationship between school literacies and the literacies students will need for their lives as adults, including their work lives. If students graduate having been prepared with only “school literacies,” how will they fare when they have to write a proposal, design a brochure, organize a manual, or even dash off an email? A number of recent national studies prove the value of applied skills as opposed to simply subject knowledge in an increasingly global workplace (The American Diploma Project Network, The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills.) The following are sources of students’ and teachers’ problems effectively using professional writing principles: • High school graduates are often not equipped for real-world writing success. Students do not receive scaffolded instruction in technical writing principles throughout their primary and secondary education. • Secondary English teachers, college English teachers, and employers often do not communicate expectations to each other. • Many educators are themselves poorly trained in professional writing techniques.

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 LUNCHEON Hilton BC

Featured Speaker: Kevin Brockmeier Literary Reading with Q & A Despite what many people believe, not all of the best literary talent in America comes out of New York and San Francisco. There are amazing writers living among us, and Kevin Brockmeier is a stellar example of this phenomena. Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Brief History of the Dead and The Truth About Celia, the children's novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery, and the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. He has published stories in The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's, Zoetrope, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. Recently he was named one of Granta magazine's Best Young American Novelists. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised. 12:30 - 2 – Executive Committee Meeting Little Rock Suite AB

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Sponsorships Pearson – Silver Sponsor

The following ads need to be in the program: Bedford (half page ad) Cengage (half page ad) Pearson (half page ad) Call of Manuscripts for Journal of Developmental Education (half page ad – it’s free so whatever works) Student Success Symposium (half/ full page? – it’s a free ad so it doesn’t really matter)