Today the Disability Rhetoric blog published my essay, “Voices in Error: Counting against Competence.” In this essay, I describe an ongoing conflict in my teaching practices – counting errors and standardizing student voices. Here is how the essay begins: “Before I begin teaching in any classroom, I must tailor the environment to my specific needs. … More Essay: “Voices in Error: Counting against Competence”
This semester, I am living out one of my long-cherished dreams: teaching a series of intensive grammar workshops for multilingual learners and struggling student writers. On Friday afternoons, my colleague and I face a group of students who willingly admit their bad relationship with grammar. So far, we’ve had four sessions, teaching anywhere from 2 … More Total Revision: Conversations in the Red
This semester, I teach my three courses in two different classrooms, located on a back hallway crowded with benches, recycling recepticles, and lounging students. I enter the building, veer left, and travel down a long, wide hallway—dodging drinkers bending over the water fountain and near-invisible columns guarding arbitrary places. Just where the hallway begins to … More An Unlikely Pair
If you are asked to dredge up the principles of grammar you learned in middle school, you might give voice to the following claims: An independent clause can stand alone A dependent clause can’t stand alone. A sentence fragment is an incomplete thought. When I hear these claims from grammar unenthusiasts, I notice two things. … More The Sensuous Semicolon—and Other Romantic Punctuation
As a writing instructor with low vision, I spend my life trading between a large white stick and a small white stick. The large one, of course, is the cane that helps me navigate my work environment. I open my classroom door, cane in hand, and proceed to my desk. At the desk, I fold … More I Only Have Eyes for…Grammar: Creating a Multi-Sensory Method for Teaching Writing
On the Blink 