Two-Year College English Association of the Pacific Northwest

TYCA-PNW is proud to announce that, due to high demand, we are expanding our fall conference to include sessions on Friday afternoon. Come early to get the full conference experience.

All conference activities will take place at Hopf Student Union Building (HUB) or in the Deccio Higher Education Center. College parking is still being negotiated, but there will be free parking along 12th Avenue and Arlington Avenue, near the Deccio Building. For a map of the Yakima Valley Community College map, please click here.

FRIDAY “KICK-OFF” SESSIONS

“Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Teach: Strategies for Responding to Students in
Trouble”:
This workshop will begin with an overview of conditions that spawn self-disclosure and crisis for college students today. Participants will then analyze two video case studies of potentially dangerous or awkward situations as well as excerpts from student papers to determine how teachers can best respond on paper and in person. Specific Guidelines for Teacher Response will be given as a handout.

Marilyn Valentino, TYCA Past Chair, Lorain County Community College, OH

“Responding to Hate on Campus”:
A young woman with an Arab surname is taunted at the water fountain. Male students proclaim “P-Day” to combat “V-Day” and parade a giant penis across campus. “Gay” jokes pepper class discussions. This session will explore how to recognize and respond to hate on campus.

Gail Pearlman, Yakima Valley Community College

“Sabbatical Notes: Exploring the Culture of Turkey. What do we learn when we go on sabbatical?
Join me for a slide-lecture on my journey through Turkish culture -- from Ottoman palaces, Iznik pottery and tiles, Turkish carpets, and the concept of the harem, to Greek ruins (Ephesus) and Christian caves, and a look at the Islamic religion (the Blue Mosque, Sufi poetry) and Christian heritage (Hagia Sophia) – all to answer “In what ways has Turkish culture influenced the West?”

Beth Camp, Linn-Benton Community College

Opening the Way: Collaborations Between the Classroom and the Press
This session explores how the small press impacts the classroom and how the classroom impacts the small press. We will cover the ways Yakima Valley Community College has reached out to Blue Begonia Press in recent years and how the press has touched lives at the college.

Jim Bodeen, Blue Begonia Press (and retired Davis High School teacher), and Dan Peters, Yakima Valley Community College

SATURDAY SESSIONS

“50-something Professor Meets Playstation = Videogame as Contemporary Literature”:
What happens when an old white feminist writing teacher picks up a controller and
plays Grand Theft Auto for the first time? Guilty pleasure--and an appreciation of the narrative, character development [& acronyms] of rpg’s, fps’& mmorpg’s. The results included powerful literacies, a challenge to the social assumptions about violence in videogames—and guaranteed retention!

Angi Caster, HighlineCommunity College

“A Gaze on Our Learning Community”:
We will share and engage in discussion about our learning community which combined Visual Culture Studies and composition. The core questions of the class challenged students to begin with examining their own values and beliefs, interrogating their communities, and then coming back to their identities to see how their communities have altered/defined/revised their identities.

Debora Barrera Pontillo and Lauren Craft Servais, Cascadia Community College

“Aristotle Goes Hollywood: Video Clips for Freshman Composition”
Short video clips can be used in English Composition to demonstrate the power of
Aristotle’s persuasive appeals ethos,logos, pathos, and nomos. With instructor guidance and written follow-up, film clips serve scholarly purposes while illustrating rhetorical strategies.

Annie Oakes, Iris Gribble-Neal, Eastern Washington University, and Betsy Lawrence, Spokane Community College

“Designing Assignments with Big Ideas in Mind: Opening Student Connections to the Power of Language”:
How do we cultivate a passion for language in the community college setting? We’ll discuss an English 101 assignment we collaboratively developed at the Big Ideas Conference, designed to assess acknowledgment of the power of language as part of lifelong learning, and its results for both students and instructors.

Todd Johnson, Charlene Sain Green River Community College, Jill Kronstadt, Highline Community College, and Michael G. Hickey, South Seattle Community College

“Finding a Way to Connect: Adjuncts, Administrators and Online Courses”
This session will discuss the isolation adjuncts face and that is amplified as adjuncts move into the world of online instruction. Additionally, this session will reflect on what administrators can do to ensure quality online instruction and to build connections with adjuncts.

Kris Fink and Samm Erickson, Portland Community College

“Finding a Way to (Full-time) Work or Buscando hacia un trabajo
Panelists representing both sides of the hiring process—two screening committee members and a successful applicant—will share the texts surrounding a job and analyze those texts in such a way as to suggest strategies that would serve people seeking a tenure-track appointment.

Connie Wasem, Laura Reed, and Alexis Nelson, Spokane Falls Community College

“Finding a Way to Get Beyond ‘Correctness’: Inquiry in Advanced Composition”
Scholarship in teaching and learning suggests that the major difficulty in teaching
advanced composition is getting beyond the advanced writer’s mastery of
“correct” This session suggests one way to move beyond, to tap into voice, style,
and to revise the advanced writer’s thinking about what constitutes quality.

Jill Darley-Vanis,Clark College

“Forging a Way: Identities, Curricula, and Communities in Transition”
This session explores the interlocking set of constraints—social, cultural, bureaucratic, and technological—faced by students and instructors working for change in academic settings. The first presenter discusses the difficult process of revising basic writing curriculum at a two-year college. The second presenter turns to the role instructors play in changing academic culture for and with students who remain marginalized in higher education.

Winona Beck and Cori Brewster, Washington State University

“Hey,This Way! The Play Starts in Five Minutes”
Come hear about an innovative learning community “Drama in Relationships” which leads students toward thinking and writing analytically while putting drama at center stage in the writing classroom. We’ve found an entertaining way to collaborate as instructors, get students to collaborate with each other, and make a difference in our community.

Dodie Forrest and Sandra Schroeder, Yakima Valley Community College

"Hyphenate-American Criticism: The Rhetoric of Dual-Consciousness”
This interactive presentation will allow participants to develop a praxis for teaching Black American literature by introducing the rhetorical elements of black criticism as based on West African oral traditions, i.e. Toasts, the Dozens, Signifying, Testifying, Call and Response, and Double Voice, and the African trickster Esu-Elegbara

Patrick and Jenna Williams, Eastern Washington University

“Improving Students’ Writing Skills without Going Crazy”
When teaching writing becomes stressful and frustrating, it’s time to revise and
invigorate your writing program. Two teachers will share their units, lessons, and innovative materials for improving instruction, sequencing, and feedback without increasing teachers’ workloads. Student motivation, technology integration, correcting techniques, and more will be covered.

Christian Birrer, Gonzaga Preparatory High School

Integrating Popular Culture into the Curriculum.
“Connecting the Horror Genre and Descriptive Writing”
Many times students struggle with typical descriptive writing prompts. Additionally, students may have a hard time connecting academic voice with their familiarity with pop culture. This presentation will examine how using a unit involving the horror genre can be a bridge from pop culture to academic writing and can often produce successful descriptive essays.

Heather Elder, Spokane Falls Community College and North Idaho College

“The Oprah Effect”: What Can Literature Instructors Learn from Oprah’s Book Club?”
“Oprah’s Book Club” began in 1996 with the intent of getting people reading “serious
fiction”— 15-21 million viewers responded by making Oprah’s book choices bestsellers. Literature teachers also responded either with awe or horror. This presentation explores the success of the book club and its effects in the literature classroom.

Stacey Donohue, Central Oregon Community College

“Logic and Exposition in Composition”
As we integrate more critical thinking into our curriculum, we must also examine the skills with which we equip students as they move through their first terms. Basic skills students, and often their college-ready peers, are infrequently equipped with skill and practice in reasoning necessary for success in a student-centered, critical-thinking rich academic environment. This presentation deals with deemphasizing personal writing and integrating instruction in basic reasoning in an effort to enhance the success of basic and college-ready Composition students across the disciplines.

Jana Carter, Montana State University, Great Falls College of Technology

“Path-Finding in Writing Classrooms and Centers”
Working in the gray area between student writers and instructors, we writing center tutors hope to act as abrecaminos as “those who open the way.” Through small- and all-group discussion, this session will explore how educators in the classroom and in writing centers can help students find meaningful intellectual paths: how we can cultivate animated, genuine involvement in academic pursuit. The focus will be on how writers' individual knowledge, interests, and insights can meet the requirements of
academic writing and how educators can encourage students to have a personal
stake in their work.

Michelle Pavan, Katie Chugg, and Sherri Winans, Whatcom Community College

“Philosophies That Shape Our Practice: Examples from Two Worlds”
Abrecaminos: Finding Ways to Enact Feminist Pedagogies in the Classroom.” In this presentation, I will discuss efforts that I have made to enact feminist pedagogies in the classroom. I will explain why I have chosen to use the plural terms “ways” and “pedagogies,” and I will provide specific and concrete examples of activities and assignments from my teaching.

Lisa Ede, Oregon State University

“All This and Convergence Too: A Journalist in the Developmental Classroom.” A professional journalist enters the developmental classroom while simultaneously taking on the world of media convergence (learning radio after more than two decades in print) and finds commonality with students in our writing challenges.

Michael Van Meter, Central Oregon Community College

“Progressive Inquiry and the Reactive Research Paper: Notes toward a Narrative Approach to Comp II”
Many college English faculty teach a 100-level writing-with-sources class. This interactive session will explore how such a course might become focused on inquiry rather than on abstract notions of research papers or rhetoric or writing across the curriculum. Participants in the session will explore the process of inquiry and
approaches to support students in that process

Todd Lundberg, Cascadia Community College

“Senderos Electronico en Escritura: Electronic Pathways in Writing”
The advent of computer technology forces the English instructor to find ways to incorporate these seemingly cold and non-interactive electronic tools into writing pedagogy. We will present interesting uses for computers and programs to increase student engagement in the writing process.

Jim Coy and Maria Griffin, Eastern Washington University

“The Path of the Academic Gypsy: The Role of the Adjunct in Writing Programs”
A major portion of writing courses in our two-year colleges are taught by Part-time instructors, and many of these instructors teach on more than one campus. They are trained professionals with years of experience and exposure to a variety of programs and approaches to teaching writing, yet they seldom play a significant role in planning or assessment. This presentation suggests ways to get more Part-timers involved.

Todd Johnson, Green River Community College

“The Three I’s: Inspiration, Imagination, and Innovation”
This two-part presentation examines the value of imagination in the composition classroom. Part I looks at imagination from a theoretical standpoint while Part II focuses on practical application of imagination in the composition classroom.

Julie Marr and Ruth Williams, Eastern Washington University