Why HSE?
HSE allows the instructor to connect more closely with students--building on each student’s strengths, addressing their specific questions and challenges, and facilitating their growing confidence as writers. HSE also provides an inclusive space for students to connect with other students, a place where we learn firsthand that writing is not meant to be a solitary experience. HSE offers a safe, supportive, and motivating community for students to enjoy and thrive in their learning. This is why I enjoy teaching HSE.
Themes
When I look over each class roster, I see a range of declared majors, so I try to design the course to connect to your academic/personal interests as well as to challenge you to think “outside the box” of your current experiences. Overall, I provide you with opportunities to explore self and career intersections, research critical questions that matter to you and others, and flex your writing skills to express yourself effectively in academic, career, and personal contexts.
Reading Examples
Since the focus of this course is learning to communicate effectively in different contexts, we will read a broad range of “texts” to analyze how speaking and writing adapt to specific audiences and purposes. Personal readings include first-person perspectives such as interviews, opinion pieces, poetry, and testimonies. Informational readings include research from popular and scholarly sources. Analytical readings include texts from across the disciplines depending on your topic’s significant questions and related solutions. Your readings not only model how others write rhetorically but also provide models to guide your practice of writing for diverse purposes.
Assignments
Writing assignments are grounded in specific contexts that your interests and goals will refine. You will discover new ways to invigorate assignments into real-world writing you can use to get a scholarship, market yourself, prove a point, inspire an audience, and fulfill the rhetorical expectations of your major or discipline. These assignments include adaptations of the following: Personal Statement, This I Believe, Motivation vs. Manipulation (Rhetorical Analysis), Everyday Persuasion, and Search for Answers to Your Significant Questions through research and critical thinking. Each assignment builds upon the other by deepening your awareness, skills, and sense of accountability for the words you choose. Thus, a major part of each assignment is to reflect on the decisions you make as a writer/speaker to see if they “fit.” My hope is that each assignment is relevant to your life, challenges and supports your learning, and gives you the opportunity to take pride in your writing.
Personal Interests
On the top of my passion list is returning to college to earn my Yoga Teaching Certificate as I feel strongly about the unity of mind, body, and spirit. Being a mother, grandmother, sister, dog-mommy, and friend is also high on my list of priorities as I strive to share moments that matter to each of them: swimming in the ocean with my son and shopping sprees with my daughter; soccer with one grandson and reading books with the other; paddle boarding with one sister and going to the zoo with my friend. My other interests include deepening my understanding and skills in the following: Spanish and Sanskrit languages, home and garden projects, piano, dance, Tai Chi, chess, healthcare/medicine/community nursing, geography/culture, and writing non-fiction and fiction.
