Featured Faculty Februrary 2007

Mildred Pate
Assistant Professor
Writing and Linguistics

Background
During my first, and only, year of teaching high school in 1977-78, I exploded with energy, writing brilliant lesson plans, creating intricate tests, supplementing lessons with film and role playing, and involving students in discussions and debates. However, the administration felt that my classes were too active, declaring that no student could possibly learn in such a noisy environment! Why couldn’t I have quiet classes, using worksheets and lecture? I chose to leave and moved on to teach adult education for the next five years, mainly for Army education centers, stateside and overseas: high school equivalency, competency refreshers, and college composition courses. Needless to say, these students were just as hungry for knowledge and willing to work as my former high school students. But this time though, I had no intrusive administrators; only results counted, the students’ achievement scores and grades.

My first teaching experience at Georgia Southern began in 1985 in the Learning Support Program, a program that offered first-year students an opportunity to heighten their knowledge and skills in a non-threatening environment before they were enrolled in regular first-year core courses. More specifically, the outcomes for these students were stronger writing, and academic English skills, and demonstrated critical thinking skills. Teaching these students to strengthen their literacy skills gave them that “extra” edge to become acclimated to college life (all phases) and mature academically and socially. Simultaneously, I taught in the English department, the first-year composition sequence and world literature.

Teaching first-year composition has been the guiding professional and scholarly motivator for my twenty-one year career at Georgia Southern University, first in the English Department and later in its offspring, the Department of Writing and Linguistics, which has four concentrations: creative writing, technical and professional writing, linguistics, and writing and culture. Our department also houses the Georgia Southern Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project, and sponsors two conferences: Information Literacy (in conjunction with our Library) and Student Success in First–Year Writing. As the only such department in the state of Georgia, we recognize and address the particular language and literacy needs of our regional community, while granting them access to a professional degree that will allow them to be successful in the marketplace.

I have taught in several programs, participated in numerous service activities, produced many scholarly papers (delivered at conferences), and further enhanced my professional and educational background through the Georgia Southern Writing Project.

Presently, I am teaching the two levels of first-year composition and co-direct the Invitational Summer Institute for the Georgia Southern Writing Project (and was a 2001 participant). In previous years, I also taught world literature classes, basic composition and critical thinking, and Introduction to Africana Studies. I was Interim Director of Africana Studies and I chaired Black History activities for five years.

Dr. Pate (center) and Students

Teaching Philosophy
Throughout my teaching, I believe that no matter how weak or advanced the students, they all must be challenged to move beyond the place they begin because they are capable of doing so. There is no need to play the blame game and point fingers at the students’ previous teachers and accusing “them” of not preparing the student. Instead, as an educator, I must be prepared with a variety of strategies and steadily acquire more as learning environments change. Although students today have varying levels of preparedness, they are capable because they are intelligent and have more access to and interaction with an enormous catalog of information. Hence, the challenge to reach them is mine.

For example, I observe many students busily pointing and clicking through myriad links in order to download, post, or play. So, they are information savvy - to a point. They fail to realize that, through no fault of its own, the burgeoning Internet is loaded with both excellent avenues to valuable resources pertinent to any type of research and inferior routes to ineffective and unverified babble that has little worth. But wouldn’t you know; students are most attracted to these pools of website slug because they are convinced that the flashy, brash sites (like a stereotypical used car salesman’s cheap suit) offer choice information. They decry, “but it’s just what my topic is about.” To meet this challenge, I provide opportunities so that they can acquire new habits, such as researching and building self-directed projects using trusted academic sites.

I have become more involved with technology in the classroom in order to show students that their technological experience must advance beyond e-mails, Facebook, MySpace, and music downloads. They must be able to manipulate the Internet as a viable research tool: discerning reliable web sites, using subject links properly, and understanding intellectual property. I continue to emphasize writing in all areas of their interests, driving home the point that their writing skills will increase their marketability.

Teaching Strategies
I have always used pragmatic theory, and I have always been aware that students learn differently and have different strengths. Most importantly, I model what I ask of my students; I write, research, download, upload, shoot video, and create movies. Several reasons led me to redesign my courses along the lines of students’ individual learning styles and interests. The first reason is that many students claim to be bored and uninterested in learning the coursework because it didn’t fit their majors or concerns. Second, other students flounder because they have untapped talents that should be valued and displayed. They may create the same depth of thinking through writing lyrics, narrating a story, or drawing a series of cartoons. A third reason is some students are not linear thinkers and learners; they need more visual cues and kinesthetic interaction with their material.

Consequently, over the years my goal has been to raise my first-year students’ learning curve so that they can join the ranks of retained, successful students. Thus to help them, I challenge them to become self-motivated, encouraging them to create and put their personal stamp on their learning, and experience traditional rigor that will aid them in staying the course.

In the past, I have asked students to develop their essays by using types of writing, composing a variety of expository, argumentative, and analytic texts; I have used the themes, models of writing, fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, news magazines; I have had students write... Now my courses have become more effective because I am able to match the technologies with the learning experience for the students. As a result of two Innovative Teaching Strategies Retreats in November 2003 and May 2006, I learned about video editing programs: clipping, digitizing, importing, transitioning, and narrating; and I learned instructional technology design: visual and explicit instruction through course mapping and digital support for class activities, examples, and resources.

Most recently, the reshaping of my English 1101 course came as a result of working with challenges brought on by the brand new living/learning communities where students have chosen majors (business administration) in the same college for my composition students. The singular learning outcome on which I based their composition course was to help them connect their business major with writing. Not only did I ask the students to research national and international business persons, research franchises, write feasibility reports, write business plans, and storyboard scripts for commercials, but also I matched digital text with each project. Therefore, the students also created PowerPoint presentations that supplemented (not repeated) their research projects, built web pages as a model of the products they delivered, and they each shot a commercial that advertised their franchise’s services and products.

Also, I teach the second level composition, English 1102. I developed the course as multi-genre/multi-media inquiry, which grew out of my wanting the students in my classes to take their flat texts and put them in motion. The purpose is to give the students more confidence to go beyond the traditional expressions and to tackle multiple literacies. As Patricia Dunn (2001) posits in Talking, Sketching, Moving: Multiple Literacies in the Teaching of Writing, students need to recognize that “the metacognitive distance writers need – on a draft, on an idea, on their thinking - can come through visual, aural, spatial, emotional, kinesthetic, or social ways of knowing or unique combinations of them.”

This means that I need to encourage my students to learn to step back and “see” their writing in other ways, the other “seeing” could inform them of how their ideas fit into to wider scope of meaning. They could see relationships, make inferences, form analogies, and/or redefine through recasting their words into pictures, sounds, lyrics or drawings. The activities we engage in over the semester gives them the “metacognitive distance,” to think about thinking so they can then summarize, analyze, or synthesize more aptly. So, my students take their self-generated arguments and incorporate articles, pictures, music, art, etc (at least 5 separate genres) that speak to their arguments because the course strategies helps them plan, tracks their understanding, and given feedback through the semester, not just at the end. Therefore, over the course of the semester, each student develops a self-chosen argument, and analyzes at least five separate genres that speak to the argument, and produces a 5-minute, multi-media movie that reflects the research he or she conducted.

Most recently for English 1102, in order to accommodate the students’ various learning styles, I felt motivated to create a set of visuals: instructions, suggestions, and samples. The Center for Excellence in Teaching helped me develop instructional PowerPoint slides that re-deliver the same material that I had developed over the years. I was able to eliminate stacks of handouts and avoid days spent “backtracking” for students who missed class. My students now follow a map that guides them through the objectives, activities, and teaching strategies to fit their structured community of learning.

In the end, both teacher and student benefit greatly; my students learn and become more motivated, and I connect the students to new knowledge and skills and subsequently meet the many standards and outcomes set for the course curriculum and the overall academic development that is a springboard for the remainder of my students’ college careers.