What a whirlwind of a semester!

Since my last update I presented at LSU’s Mardi Gras Conference with several of my colleagues. We formed a panel entitled BAM! POW! CRASH!: The Under-Appreciated Power of Comics as Social Texts. My paper was on David B.’s Epileptic and discussed his work as applied to disability studies. My paper title was “Seizures, Samurai, and Saving the Family: Epileptic’s Reappropriation of Disability Stereotypes” and I feel like the panel was well-received. I enjoyed attending this graduate level conference, but look forward to pursuing larger and more prominent conferences in the upcoming semesters.

My ENGL 101 course is going well. I have been struggling to keep up with my grading, but that pain is self-inflicted. Seven writing assignments in a semester? Never again! The students seem to have enjoyed the format of the course otherwise, so I will be integrating some of my original ideas into my next syllabus with much more sensible applications. I have loved teaching Composition this semester and cannot wait to be able to focus my energies exclusively on teaching.

I received word today that I was accepted to a position at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, ID this summer working for their Institute of Intensive English where I will be tutoring and monitoring the language lab as well as teaching a Conversation course. This will be a fantastic opportunity to work with international students and experience an ELL classroom. Wonderful professional development and well worth the hour commute.

Additionally, I will be participating in the grading positions the university offers to 101 instructors. In this position I will be reading entrance exams and placing the students into an introductory composition course. This job will be sporadic and I will only be able to attend about a session a week due to conflicts with my IIE job, but it seems like a great way to experience the testing side of college composition.

I have submitted proposals to a few semi-local conferences for next semester including but not limited to PAMLA and Sirens.

I’ll try to keep the blog updated more frequently in the future.