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Foibles, Follies And Fantastic Occurrences: First-Time Teaching And The Composition Classroom, Susan Swanson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Foibles, Follies and Fantastic Occurrences: First-time Teaching and the Composition Classroom explores incidents that expectedly—and often, unexpectedly—occur in any instructor's classroom, but especially focuses on the first-time instructor. Following the author's journey from graduate student to graduate assistant to teaching assistant, the thesis describes the steps along the way to teaching that many who have written about the subject leave out—how to negotiate the days before classes begin, what to do to appear older than the students themselves, how to create an interesting and creative syllabus. Once classes begin, instances involving student competition, peer review, responding to student essays and …