Slices of Cake » Mary Ellen Bertolini

What I’ve been up to . . .

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:37:10 +0000

My summer was marked by several events. First, I spent three weeks working with a faculty group looking at examples of student writing from the class of 2010. To do so, we worked collaboratively to create a rubric to assess college-level writing. The rubric-making process was as enlightening as the information we gleaned from the assessments. The faculty members came from various disciplines–literature, film, math, foreign language, and political science. Ironically, my assessments were closest to those of the math professor! Second, we presented some of our findings at the 22nd International Conference on The First-Year Experience in Montréal (July 23, 2009).

Jane Austen's house in Chawton

In June I took a long longed-for trip to England with my younger daughter to visit Jane Austen sites. I hope to write more about this trip later. (In a few weeks, I will be on leave and will be immersed in all Austen all-the-time), but here are a very few of the over 3,000 pics I took on my trip.

This fall, I’ve spent most of my professional time tutoring writing, an experience I have thoroughly enjoyed. I have some thoughts about the process of turning good high school writers into good college writers that I hope to write about once the semester is over. Another thing that has filled my time is Middlebury’s Web Redo project. With two other colleagues, I’ve been working on the four sites for our offices (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research; Office of Learning Resources; Writing Program, and First-Year Seminar Program). I’m not linking here because the old sites will disappear, and the new ones aren’t ready yet. I’m saving my opinion of Drupal until the process is complete. I’m guessing when the process is finally complete, all the work and frustrations will have been well worth the effort. Stay tuned.

Tech Fair

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:46:14 +0000

Participated in Teaching with Technology,

Tech Fair, Co-sponsored by the CTLR and LIS @ Middlebury on Thursday, June 4th.

I looked at some of the ways I’ve used technology in four classes:

Mack made posters for all of us who presented:

Speaking to the Choir (the Jane Choir)

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:16:20 +0000

I had such fun speaking to Jasna-VT last Sunday about Jane Austen’s Persuasion! Janites Deb and Kelly have created an articulate and welcoming group that sponsors a variety of Jane-related talks and events throughout the year. One of my favorites has been the Birthday Tea complete with Regency Dancing by the Burlington Country Dancers.

The great joy I felt in speaking to this group came from the fact that the audience knew their Austen backwards and forwards– not only Persuasion, which was Sunday’s topic, but the whole Austen corpus as well. I love to introduce Austen to my students, some of whom have only a fleeting film familiarity with her work before the course begins, but what a treat to share my thoughts with the Jane Austen Choir in Vermont!

Thank you, Janites in Vermont and everywhere.

The Two of Us

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:31:50 +0000

I don’t ordinarilly talk about my personal life too much on this blog, but our local campus newspapers did a Valentine article about campus couples, and I can’t resist linking to it here. Mr. B. and I are the first couple.

Time

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:50:44 +0000

One of the wonderful things about working at Middlebury College is that every three Januarys, I have a month off from teaching. Don’t get me wrong. I love teaching, and my students bring me great joy, but a bit of time away from the classroom means time for longer projects, time to indulge in a sustained thought. This January, I’m working on two projects: revision for an article about how I use writing workshops in my Writing to Heal course and preparation for a JASNA-VT talk on Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Certainly, immersing myself in the Peninsular War and the Convention of Cintra have helped me weather the snow, ice, and cold that has descended on northern New England this year.

International Conference on The First-Year Experience

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:32:53 +0000

The National Resource Cent er 21st International Conference on

The First Year Experience

Dublin Ireland

June 23-26, 2008

Presentation:

FYS as a Locus for Faculty Development: Creating Mini Learning Communities

Handouts:

Dublin:minicommunities

Moved to WP

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:23:19 +0000

MT blogs have been down for a bit at Middlebury, but one by one they are resurfacing on WordPress.

Workshopping Without a Paper

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:33:10 +0000

Yesterday, I was asked how to conduct a writing workshop without a particular paper due. Although nothing can quite replace the immediacy of a newly-written paper, we and our students can benefit greatly from a look at past work. In fact, sometimes a little distance from the due date of the assignment can add a much-needed perspective to the writing discussion.

One of my favorite non-specific paper exercises is Sentence Clinic. I ask students to do the following before class.

Write down two sentences from your paper or journals we will discuss today :
1. A sentence that you think worked well, one that makes you feel proud (Why do you like this sentence?)
2. A sentence that never quite worked, one that we will look at in the sentence clinic (Why do you think this sentence does not work?)

During class, we use this worksheet. What happens in this exercise is two fold. First, students articulate what they like about their good sentences. From this discussion, we can develop norms and expectations for sentence writing. Second, they bring their bad sentences to the clinic. Depending on the size of the class and the time we have to devote to this, the clinic will either be the whole class or smaller groups within the class. Students discuss what these sentences fail to do, and the other clinic members make suggestions for improvement. I like to do this exercise in the middle or towards the end of the semester when students have developed their vocabulary for discussing writing as well as some trust in each other. Always I want to emphasize the “Why” factor—Why did you like this sentence? Why did you not like that sentence? The “Why” discussions are the best part of the whole exercise.

Another quick exercise I like around the middle of the semester is Thesis Blitz. Students write a current or past thesis statement at the top of a paper, and we send it around the class, so everyone (including the faculty member) and comment quickly. I do this after I have already introduced and discussed thesis statements quite a bit, so this exercise is usually a wake-up call to students. By looking at some better thesis statements, students quickly become exposed to good models. By seeing not so good models, students understand better the importance of the thesis statement. Finally, this exercise has the value of producing a preponderance of evidence. When students see that nine people think a thesis is not specific enough, they begin to take that comment seriously.

Finally, some of my favorite workshops are the ones on style. I usually conduct these between drafts two and three of a paper, but they can work any time. For these, I use the work of students long graduated to illustrate style concepts, such as clarity, coherence, emphasis:
Finally, some of my favorite workshops are the ones on style. I usually conduct these between drafts two and three of a paper, but they can work any time. For these, I use the work of students long graduated to illustrate style concepts, such as clarity, coherence, emphasis:

Downloads:

Retreat again and more Syllabus Building

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 02:05:17 +0000

I’m heading back to our Annual Writing Retreat tomorrow, to talk about Syllabus Building and Assignment Sequencing again. My top three points for this presentation are:

Start at the back end, and know your goals.
Build forward, adding challenges and difficulties to achieve those goals.
Make your pedagogy transparent to your students.

Last fall, I followed this last advice to the extent that I shared part of my presentation to the faculty with my students and discussed with them the way I structured the course to achieve specific goals.

In an optional journal entry, some of my students discussed whether or not we had met our goals. Here is one of my favorite comments:

We achieved all these goals! Wow, we did learn a lot in this class, didn’t we? In retrospect, I am so glad I got into this seminar and wrote/revised papers every week because they really shaped me as a writer. We achieved Goals #1, 2, 6, and 8 through posting online discussions, Goals #2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 through writing papers, and Goal #9 through participating in class discussions and giving oral presentations. I definitely learned how to compare and contrast between the novel and the film and to compare three different things in a paper. We all did an awesome job in our digital media projects, and of course, after Jane Austen dance dinner, we can call ourselves dance masters

Syllabus for this course is here.

FYS Support Teams Bring Success to Middlebury’s First-Year Seminars

Mary Ellen Bertolini — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:55:12 +0000

The following is part of the Middlebury College panel: “Keeping the Fires Burning:
Ongoing Innovation in a Nineteen-Year-Old Program presented at the “First-Year Programs and Liberal Arts: Best Practices and New Thinking” June 2007 at St. Lawrence University.

In order to help faculty achieve their First-Year Seminar goals, Middlebury offers each instructor a support team composed of two professional staff members and two student peers. Instructors may choose the whole team, parts of the team, or no team if they wish.

Two components of the team, a research librarian and peer writing tutor, are well-known support components of many first-year programs. In addition, Middlebury has added two other members to our team, an Educational Technologist and an ACE or Academic Consultant for Excellence. All team members are attached directly to a specific FYS, and I’ll briefly give you an overview of the contributions of these four team members.

The first member of the team is a Reference Librarian.
Middlebury no longer gives students a stand-alone orientation to its libraries, so the FYSE is the place where students really learn to use the libraries and their resources. Having a librarian attached to a specific seminar means that the librarian can plan instruction and resources tailored to the demands of the particular class. What the librarian does with each class depends on the goals we have outlined for all FYSEs as well as the goals of the individual FYSE instructor. The librarian can prepare a site that gathers research tools for a particular class and can vary instruction from basic assignments, to assignments a bit more complicated to assignments that are quite complex.

The next professional member of the team, the Educational Technologist, also, offers an array of service–from no instruction-to-instruction in quite complex technologies. Again, Middlebury does not give its students a stand-alone tech orientation, so we recommend to faculty that they, at least, have the Educational Technologist do an orientation to our servers. All FYSEs have an e-mail list that even the most low-tech faculty use for class updates and for sending attachments. Some faculty chooses to have their own course web sites, and in addition, Middlebury has its own course management tool, SEGUE. Many faculty uses SEGUE–even if it is just a place to house a syllabus on line. Others take advantage of Segue’s Web 2 characteristics. So SEGUE can prove useful to instructors with very little technical knowledge as well as those with cutting-edge expertise.
Every page in SEGUE can be discussable. And many instructors use SEGUE for robust on-line class discussions. Finally. The Educational Technologist supports high end use, and can instruct the class in digital media projects. The Summer Workshop series provide faculty with great ideas for using technology. In order to help faculty realize their individual seminar goals, the workshops feature faculty exploring specific technologies and discussing their pedagogical reasons for choosing them.

The Educational Technologist and the Librarian are the professional members of our team, but we are very proud of the two students members in the team. The newest member of the team is our Academic Consultant for Excellence, or ACE. ACEs have GPAs of 3.7 and above, and they work with students on TM, stress reduction, and are excellent student role models.

Peer Writing Tutors are trained to help students with every phase of the writing process and can also assist faculty with in-class workshops. Both ACEs and PWTs complete over ten hours of training.

The support team has been an innovation that has helped faculty teach challenging and fascinating courses that guide, support and instruct students in their first semester at college.