RHE 398T: Teaching First-Year Writing, Theory and Practice

Most college and university course catalogs list an expository prose class, sometimes categorized as "intermediate" or "advanced" and sometimes simply called "prose" or "creative non-fiction." The ubiquity of these types of courses indicates their popularity. Here at UT, intermediate and advanced expository prose get filled almost immediately, often long before other lower-division classes have sufficient enrollments. Being able to offer a polished and tested syllabus that will fit into a prospective employer's curriculum will make you much more marketable. Furthermore, learning to effectively teach a class such as RHE 310 will make you a more careful and more effective editor of your own and of other people's prose. Close attention to style is a requisite for anyone interested in a career as an academic in the Humanities. Finally, learning to teach RHE 310 will give the instructor an opportunity to develop and master the art of teaching a skill-driven course. A number of pedagogical skills are requisite to RHE 310 and not necessarily (though surely applicable to) other lower-division RHE classes: the ability to theorize pedagogy that emphasizes stylistic resources for tone and voice; groupwork; in-class workshopping of students' papers; putting students' work at the center of the curriculum; developing exercises and assignments that do not depend on some imported content.

- Course Description
- Course Requirements
- Course Paradigms
- Workshopping Student Papers