Hello,
my name is Linda Aragoni.
If you meet me in person, you'll realize the pearl earrings and
colorful pin not my normal everyday work attire.
You'll also realize that I am passionate about teaching writing.
I went to graduate school because going to school was the only
thing I knew I did well.
Desperate for freshman composition teachers, the English department
offered me a teaching assistantship.
I grabbed it.
How hard could teaching be?
I had only an English minor, but how hard could teaching freshman
composition be?
Within three days, I had my answer. Teaching was going to be hard.
Very hard.
Just as quickly I learned that teaching composition the way
my teachers had taught me was boring. In fact, being the teacher
was actually more boring than being a student. Who would have believed
that was possible?
It wouldn’t be too far wrong to say I had to learn teach
writing in order to stay awake.
Then I woke up to teaching writing
I scrapped my lectures. I began having students write while
I walked around, offered comments, and made suggestions.
I started having fun — and student writing started to improve.
Within a few weeks, I was hooked on teaching writing.
Before I finished my first master’s degree, I’d taught
English 101 and 102 each four times, the whole shebang, from writing
objectives to final grades. Imagine if traditional English ed folks
had that kind of preparation!
Since then, I’ve taught variations on that freshman composition
course at four bricks-and-mortar colleges and for three online universities
— 19 times for University of Phoenix alone.
In all that teaching, I've never once had an English major in
my classes.
I write to finance my food addiction
Although I keep coming back to teaching, I haven’t been just
a writing teacher all my life. Through the years, I’ve financed
my eating addiction by writing and editing newspapers, books,
journals and magazines, and marketing materials.
It's all on my resume.
I still keep one foot in the news business as an editor for EmpirePage.com,
a website for New York's government and political leaders.
I wrote across the industries
Most of the stuff I write is material that nobody in his/her right
mind would read unless paid to do it. To give you an idea how exciting
my work is, my first book was about how to install steam
turbines.
In addition to stints in publishing and education, my experience
include working other sectors, namely:
- Government
- Manufacturing
- Medicine
- Engineering
- Hospitality
- Recreation
- Financial services
All that experience outside of education shaped my
philosophy of education�and gave me lots of gray hair.
This website began as a book
For years, my sister, who spent 20+ years in Christian school teaching
before re-careering, has been after me to write a book about
how I teach writing.
She said her teacher education program provided no instruction
in how to teach writing. When she got stuck teaching seventh
grade English, she had to figure out what to do on her own.
Her experience isn't unique. A study
at Vanderbilt University found half of teachers surveyed
said even with in-service professional development and their own
efforts they were not prepared to teach writing.
My friends who homeschool told me they couldn’t find
straightforward information about teaching writing geared
to people who had limited background and minimal resources to draw
on.
I checked. There’s plenty of material, but it’s
mostly in academic libraries and subscription-only
databases. All too often, the articles are written in polysyllabic
words and insider jargon that make my head spin.
I decided little sister was right. I needed to write a book explaining
how to teach writing.
Detour to build a writer's platform
I wrote the book. Then I realized I was either going to
have to publish it myself or convince a publisher that I had a ready-made
market. Either way, I had to find prospective readers.
A website seemed the best way to meet people interested in teaching
writing, since I live in rural New York where wild turkeys outnumber
English teachers 10 to 1.
While exploring my options, I ran across Site Build It!
The company offered a whole lot more than just web hosting.
SBI! said they would help me develop
a site that would build a business. I liked that idea a lot
better than grossing $5 an hour as an adjunct college teacher or
getting a penny a word freelancing.
I spent two months studying the SBI! manuals before I put up my
home page, then another four months building pages before I could
write a page without consulting my notes. (See why I get along well
with slow learners?)
Besides writing & teaching writing
When I get too tired to write one more word, I read what someone
else has written.
Rereading novels that topped the charts 50, 60, even 100 years
ago is my hobby. I put reviews of vintage fiction on my just-for-fun
blog, GreatPenformances.
I put the feed for the blog in the right hand column, so you can
see some of my reviews without going off site.
Have a question or comment?
Teachers, if you want to ask questions about my approach
to teaching writing or spout off about why what I do is totally
wrong, you can use the
teacher forums. Besides letting you get things off your chest,
the forums allow to get a publishing credit if you choose.
Students can get answers to their writing questions in the
essay help forum.
If there’s anything you’d like to know about me that
I didn’t mention (whether I like spinach, write poetry, or
love bungee jumping) or if you want to share something that doesn't
need to be in a public forum, you can use the contact
form. Be sure there are no typos in your email address. You’ll
get a response within 48 hours.
By the way, if you want to know what I do with information you
submit on my site, you can read my privacy
policy.
Please come back again to learn more about how you can teach writing.
We’ve got to keep meeting like this.
Linda Aragoni
