The Experience of Writing (ENG 710)

July 21 to August 1      

9:30 am - 4:00 pm

Strategies for Teaching Integrated Language Arts Standards (ENG 717)

July 7 to July 18  

9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Teaching College Composition as a Dual Enrollment Course (ENG 780)

June 16 to June 27

9:30 am - 3:30 pm

July 21 to August 1 9:30 am - 4:00 pm Are you interested in creative writing?  Do you want to write a story?  A poem?  A memoir piece?  Would you like to teach creative writing?  Would you like to help your students write their stories, poems and memoir pieces, but don’t for fear of failing to meet Ohio’s Language Arts standards?  Well, “The Experience of Writing” could be just the course for you.  It is a creative writing course in which every thing we do – timed writings, brainstorming for story/poem ideas, reading & reacting to stories, poems and memoirs, drafting, critiquing, revising, rewriting, and publishing our own stories, poems and memoirs – is presented, explained and experienced in the terms of Ohio’s Language Arts standards.
When you take this class, you’ll do some writing, enjoy yourself, and use the course and its syllabus as a blueprint for your own creative writing unit. You’ll discover how having your students doing the same things you do – timed writings, brainstorming, reading & reacting, drafting, revising, etc. – can help you and your students master the Ohio Language Arts standards.  And you’ll be improving your students’ writing performance while enhancing their chances for success in college.     Instructors: . Jimmy Chesire teaches Fiction Writing and is a lecturer and full-time faculty member in the Department of English Language and Literatures at Wright State University. He is a writer, teacher, counselor, and coach. He teaches first year composition, undergraduate and graduate fiction writing, and a special course on enhancing one's creativity. He has also been a home school teacher and special tutor, teaching reading and writing to kids ages 10-15.  . He's published a couple of short stories, a memoir piece, a novel, Home Boy (NAL Books, 1988; Penguin-Plume, 1989), and, with photographer Irwin Inman, a second book, A Thousand Strikes: T-Ball Yellow Springs Style (Wild Goose Press, 2004), which chronicles Jimmy's 19 years as coordinator of the Yellow Springs, Ohio, unique T-ball program. Jimmy -- Mr. Jimmy to many of his students -- has finished and is trying to sell his second novel, MIssion of Love, and is busy working on Seeing the Light, his third.     Cathryn Essinger's first book, A Desk In The Elephant House, won the Walt McDonald First Book Award from Texas Tech University Press. Her second book, My Dog Does Not Read Plato, was the runner up in the Main Street Rag book competition. Essinger’s poems have been anthologized in The Poetry Anthology: 1912-2002, Poetry Daily:  366 Poems, and in O Taste and See:  Food Poems.    Her work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac.  Her new work has appeared in such places as The Southern Review, New England Review, and Quarterly West.  She received an Ohio Arts Council grant and was Ohio’s Poet of the Year in 2005.  She is a member of The Greenville Poets, a small but well-published poetry group that does workshop presentations.  She is a professor of English at Edison Community College, in Piqua, Ohio. . Kimberly Willardson teaches Creative Nonfiction and Memoir and is the founder and senior editor of The Vincent Brothers Review.  A remarkable teacher and a fine writer, Kimberly has been awarded Individual Artists Fellowship grants in fiction writing from the Ohio Arts Council and the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District. She was a member of the Ohioana Library Association's Fiction Awards Screen Panel for the past three years -- she picked the winner in 2003: The Shell Collector by Anthony Doer.  . Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has appeared in The Dayton Daily News, Whiskey Island magazine, Nexus, Rosebud Magazine, The Dayton Voice (now The Dayton CIty Paper), and The Ohioana Quarterly. Her essay, "Dreams as Big as the Blimp," was illustrated and mounted as the lead piece in the Ohio Bicentennial Celebration of Ohio's Writers at Thurber House and is now part of the the Ohioana Library's permanent collection. In 1987 she founded and has served as senior editor for) The Vincent Brothers Review (TVBR), an award-winning literary journal with a national reputation and readership.  . Click here to read what others have said about this course.

July 7 to July 18 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

English 717: Strategies for Teaching Integrated Language Arts Standards will help you love teaching again. We offer innovative teaching strategies that stimulate the type of improvements you want to see in your students’ writing. We will show you how to meet state standards and prepare for proficiency tests without making yourself and the students miserable.

This class is not a series of lectures but a hands-on experience that will involve you in exciting instructional methods through demonstration lessons. Our favorite lessons have been developed over the years from feedback from past participants while other ideas are brand new discoveries from recent research and publications. Routines and organizational tips will help you to integrate reading and writing into your daily plans and keep skills instruction within a meaningful literacy context.

You will learn how to use art, visuals, and graphic activities to turn your most reluctant students into allies. You will become familiar with brain-compatible learning while you stretch in new directions, building confidence as both a writer and a teacher. You will walk away from this class with a notebook full of invigorating ideas.

Topics:

• Writing prompts that promote personal connections
• Innovative prewriting gambits that improve writing quantity and quality
• Concrete revision strategies for targeted skills
• Methods for introducing students to the power of literary language
• Guided writing and supportive structures that lead to proficiency success
• Nonfiction reading and writing tools
• Art prints for visualizing writing and improving vocabulary
• Collaborative activities to make poetry come alive
• Teaching grammar with pattern poetry
• Multigenre research writing
• Editing and proofreading instruction that works
• Publishing and celebrating writing with handcrafted bookmaking
• Making writer’s notebooks more visual and graphic
• Reading journal bookmarks for independent reading accountability
• Tips for keeping organized and on track
• Brain-compatible learning
• Metacognitive moments of reflective thinking
• Keeping assignments, standards, and assessment in alignment

Instructors:

• Nancy Mack teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the teaching of writing as well as graduate courses in memoir and composition theory at Wright State University. Nancy is a veteran classroom teacher who has won several teaching awards and has taught in many different contexts: middle school, high school, college, and prison. Nancy is a dynamic speaker and an interactive teacher who has done numerous presentations at state and national conferences. Working in conjunction with PBS stations, Nancy developed teaching materials for the Write Site Journalism, Ohio Reading Road Trip, and Jumpback Historical Fiction programs. Her book, Teaching Grammar with Playful Poems has been published by scholastic, and she has two new articles on multigenre writing.  Visit Nancy's website at http://www.wright.edu/~nancy.mack

• Margo Fisher has been teaching sophomores and seniors at Miamisburg High School for two years. Previously, she taught in northwestern Ohio at Tiffin Columbian High School where she also co-directed the annual spring musical. Margo has sat on various committees for the Ohio Graduation Test, including her present seat on the Writing Rangefinding Committee. This past school year, Margo spent her time working toward National Board Certification.

• Stephanie Corcoran has been an English Language Arts teacher at Northmont High School for six years. She taught junior high English Language Arts for ten years in Las Vegas and Ohio prior to coming to Northmont. In addition, she is currently an adjunct instructor for preservice education majors at Wright State University. Her greatest accomplishment is finding a way to implement Reading and Writing Workshop successfully into her English Language Arts classes, from seventh to eleventh grades.

• Joan Smith  has many years of teaching experience in the Westerville City Schools. Joan is presently working as an educational consultant conducting writing and math inservices in Ohio and across the United States. Joan has written textbooks, curriculum guides, NCREL math lessons, as well a collection of her own poetry. She has woven her creative passion for paper arts into teaching strategies for generating ideas for writing and publishing. Her time spent creating handmade journals, boxes, paper, and beaded jewelry in her art room is greatly treasured.

Click here to read what others have said about this course.

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