Writing develops through visible stages
Large projects become manageable through meaningful intellectual checkpoints, feedback on partial drafts, and revision.
Teaching
Confidence through visible progress
Many students enter my courses afraid of writing. My goal is for them to leave more confident in their abilities, able to recognize how their writing has developed across the semester, and prepared to make purposeful rhetorical decisions in new situations.
Five commitments
Confidence grows through evidence
Students should be able to look back across a semester and identify concrete changes in their choices, habits, and writing.
Students need opportunities to decide
Instruction should help students understand why they make rhetorical choices, not merely whether they followed directions.
AI policies should teach judgment
AI instruction should distinguish brainstorming, coaching, editing, option generation, revision, and ghostwriting.
Reflection supports transfer
Students should name what changed, why they made decisions, and what they will carry forward.
Course archive
Courses taught
Selected courses taught at Wayne State University, Oakland Community College, Macomb Community College, and San Diego State University. Student work and private instructional records are not displayed without permission.
Introductory College Writing
Wayne State University
Composition I and its embedded-support section
Oakland Community College
Composition II
Oakland Community College
Communication I
Macomb Community College
Communication II
Macomb Community College
American Literature: 1865 to Present
Macomb Community College
Rhetoric of Written Argument
San Diego State University
Rhetoric of Written Argument in Context
San Diego State University
Instructional design
Selected teaching sequences
These course-long sequences make purpose, feedback, revision, reflection, and appropriate AI roles visible across the writing process. Each project feeds forward, allowing students to carry rhetorical decisions, evidence, feedback, and revision into the work that follows.
Sequences marked Explore teaching case open a public overview. Course records and the remaining assignment descriptions are informational; student work and private instructional materials remain protected.
Creative-Analytical Composition
Explore teaching case →The Character’s Self-Portrait
Students create a character-based self-portrait and analyze how voice, detail, structure, and rhetorical choice construct identity.
The Worldbuilding Essay
Students design a fictional or speculative world, then examine how systems, values, rules, and audiences shape its meaning.
The Opposition Speaks
Students develop an opposing figure or antagonist and analyze conflict, motive, perspective, and rhetorical positioning.
The World Repair Proposal
Students research a problem, propose a context-sensitive response, and translate the argument into a public-facing artifact for a defined audience.
Research Writing
Explore teaching case →I-Search
Students narrate the development of a research question, making uncertainty, source discovery, and changes in understanding visible.
Source Evaluation
Students assess sources through relevance, credibility, authority, context, and rhetorical usefulness rather than treating credibility as a simple checklist.
Research Proposal
Students define a research problem, refine a question, identify methods and sources, and explain the project’s significance.
Annotated Bibliography
Students summarize, evaluate, and connect sources while identifying patterns, tensions, and gaps in an emerging conversation.
Argumentative Research Essay
Students synthesize scholarly and public sources to develop a sustained argument shaped by audience, evidence, counterargument, and rhetorical purpose.
Literature and Adaptation
Explore teaching case →Literary Analysis: Close Reading
Students build an interpretation from patterns in language, form, imagery, and context.
Adaptation Project
Students reimagine a literary work for a new medium or audience and explain the rhetorical consequences of their adaptation choices.
Creative and Critical Project: Imitation Portfolio
Students create an imitation portfolio and use critical reflection to explain how their formal and rhetorical choices respond to the literature they studied.
AI Literacy
AI-Role Mapping
Students identify which parts of a writing process require human judgment and define any limited, appropriate role for AI.
Prompt and Output Comparison
Students compare prompts and outputs to identify assumptions, omissions, variations, and rhetorical consequences.
Attribution and Reflection
Students document where AI entered the process, explain what they accepted or rejected, and reflect on the decisions they retained.
Ghostwriter/Co-Author Analysis
Students distinguish invisible delegation from bounded collaboration by tracing rhetorical labor, authority, visibility, and responsibility.
AI Policy Interpretation
Students read classroom or institutional AI policies rhetorically, then translate their expectations into accountable writing practices.