About Orientation (2008)

From: Peggy Woods, Assistant Director for Teacher Training

The Writing Program’s four-day summer Orientation is the first part of the Program’s teacher training program.  The training you receive during Orientation will be followed up by Course Director meetings every other week throughout the academic year and seven workshops during the Fall semester.  Attendance is required at every session of Orientation and all subsequent components of our training program. 

Orientation will be held from 9am to 4pm on August 25, 26, 27, and 28 in the Berkshire Dining Commons in the Southwest Residential area of campus. Breakfast and lunch will be provided each day; you are free to come anytime between 7:00am and 9:00am to eat breakfast in the Commons.  We will begin promptly at 9:00am.  On Monday, our first day of Orientation, make sure to leave yourself extra time to locate the building. We have included a campus map, but the Southwest area of campus can be a bit tricky to navigate. 

To prepare you for Orientation, we are enclosing the Orientation schedule; the College Writing (Englwrit 112) syllabus, course calendars, and sample Unit I assignments; your desk copies of The Text-Wrestling Book and The Student Writing Anthology; the Writing Program’s Handbook for Instructors 2008-2009, which contains valuable information for Writing Program Teaching Associates; and your Course Director assignment.  Before Orientation, we ask that you become familiar with all of these materials.  In particular, please carefully read the “Planning Your Course” section of the Handbook, which outlines the 112 course goals and describes its five core units. We will be referring to the information contained in this section throughout Orientation.

We design Orientation both to introduce you to the Writing Program and to prepare you to teach College Writing.  In order to do this, we attempt to strike a balance between explaining the theory that underlies the course and the nuts-and-bolts information that you need to actually begin teaching. During Orientation we will foreground the practical side of teaching.

You will find two calendars in your packet. The first, the Student Standard Calendar, is a skeleton of due dates. College Writing is a fast-paced course; this schedule serves as a guide to help keep you and your students on track. The other calendar, the Detailed Teacher’s Calendar, provides you with suggested lesson plans for each day. As the instructor for your section of 112, you are free to adopt the suggested activity as is or modify it to suit your particular class.

In order to help you to teach your students, we feel it is important for you to experience the 112 writing process for yourself.  On the first day of Orientation, you will be asked to develop a 2-3 page draft from the generative writing exercises we do together. On Tuesday you will use your draft to participate in peer response groups and do other revision exercises. You will also be asked to do reflective writing about your draft and about the writing process. Each Orientation session is designed to work you through the same steps as your students and to provide you with the rationale behind each activity.

In order to prepare for this, we ask that you look through the sample Unit I assignments we have included in your packet.  Inquiring into Self, the first unit of College Writing, asks students to use writing as a means of discovering new insights about themselves. (Refer to “Planning Your Course” section of the Handbook for a fuller description of this unit.) Please read through these sample assignments, as well as the related essays in The Text-Wrestling Book and The Student Writing Anthology, and begin thinking about what you would like to do for this unit.   

It is important to remember that although we try to cover as much as possible in our four-day Orientation, teaching is an ongoing process. Just as our students grow and develop as writers by writing, you will grow and develop as a teacher by teaching. Questions, concerns, and issues will arise as you move through the semester, and these will become the topics for your biweekly Course Director meetings. Also remember that the Writing Program staff are always available to work through any problems or to talk with you about teaching.

In addition to the support provided by Course Director groups and the Writing Program staff, the Resource Center is also here to help you.  The Resource Center staff is composed of five experienced Writing Program TOs trained to mentor and assist incoming teachers.  This year, we are happy to have Leslie Bradshaw, Amber Engelson, Emma Howes, Mark Koyama, and Denise Paster serving on the Center staff.  They are all excellent teachers who bring to the Center a range of teaching experiences, strengths, and interests.   You will meet Leslie, Amber, Emma, Mark, and Denise at Orientation where you will have the opportunity to discuss with them your concerns and questions about starting 112. 

Within the Resource Center, Leslie will serve as our technology coordinator. She is available to discuss ways to incorporate technology into your writing classroom. She can help with everything from posting your syllabus online to creating an online ’zine to developing a multi-media essay unit. Feel free to bring any technology-related questions to Leslie at Orientation.

It is also important to remember that our primary focus at this Orientation is the teaching of College Writing. However, we realize that since many of you are new to the University you may have questions about being a graduate student at UMass. We encourage you to attend the campus-wide Teaching Assistant Orientation hosted by the Center of Teaching on Friday, August 29, 2008. This Orientation will include sessions that will enable you to become familiar with UMass.  If you have questions about your own graduate studies, please contact your graduate program office directly. 

If you have any questions about teaching College Writing prior to Orientation, please feel free to contact me at 413-545-6313 or at pmwoods@acad.umass.edu. I am looking forward to meeting you and working with you this upcoming academic year.