To help students become active, careful thinkers, I build many opportunities for low-risk writing into my classes. These safe response moments bolster confidence and skills, allowing me to work with students to come up with individualized learning plans for significant assignments.
My grading strategies are realistic and accessible and are informed by current scholarship about best practices in assignment design and evaluation. For example, I use 'stretch' principles to encourage students in the drafting stages; at various critical junctures students workshop their writing and get practice giving and receiving formal feedback, thus learning to internalize the principles of effective revision. I am attentive to the fact that plagiarism is, for many students, a term loaded with threatening consequences but whose actual avoidance remains fraught with misunderstanding and unclarity, and so I regularly review citation practice and principles. To encourage students to become responsible participants in their learning process, I frequently use contracts, a technique that also allows students to tailor their assignments to their writing goals
My past teaching experience has included courses in business, technical, and academic writing. I revised and designed standardized exams in academic programs in the GTA. I have extensive experience in placement test evaluation and teaching writing to multi-language learners and new Canadians. Currently, I teach courses in the fundamentals of grammar, business writing, writing for diverse audiences, and advanced composition. I also design and teach courses with Concordia's GradProSkills program.
I am especially committed to non-traditional students, and I work hard to ensure that my composition and professional writing classrooms are places where clear thinking, diversity, and tolerance are prized.
