My+Publications

Below are articles and book chapters I have authored or co-authored. Most of these are available through journal websites or university libraries, except of course the book chapters; please read them only and do not share them without permission from the publishers. Thanks!

**"Looking in the WPA Mirror: Balancing Roles and Taking Action."** //Forum: Issues About Part-Time and Contingent Faculty// 16:2 (2013): A3-A6. Published as an insert in //Teaching English in the Two-Year College// 40:3 (2013). In this article I write about the competing roles I have played as a Writing Program Administrator, including “director” or “boss” and “colleague” or “advocate.” I place my own work as a supervisor of and advocate for contingent faculty in the context of scholarly discussions of the tensions WPA’s face in this ongoing crisis of the status of college writing instructors. I was invited to write this essay by the editor of //Forum//, with whom I serve on the Labor Caucus (now Labor Interest Group) of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Kim Brian Lovejoy, Steve Fox, and Katherine V. Wills. **“From Language Experience to Classroom Practice: Affirming Linguistic Diversity in Writing Pedagogy.”** //Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture// 9.2 (2009): 261-87. This article demonstrates how language experiences and reflection can create paths that lead to renewed pedagogy and classroom practices that embrace linguistic diversity. We describe some of our own language experiences and how they lead to specific teaching practices that we have used as a way of valuing students’ language, moving them forward in their learning about writing and language, and teaching all students the rich meanings embedded in linguistic differences. In my section, I write about my early experience teaching English as a Second Language in a Hong Kong Chinese-language school; then I explain the ways I have incorporated my understanding of language diversity in teaching first-year writing. We conclude with an assessment of our pedagogy and classroom practices, and how we can build on them to improve our teaching as well as shape the contour of our writing program.

Higgs-Coulthard, Katherine, and Steve Fox. **“Creating Space for Wanna-Be Writers: Reflections on Our First Summer Youth Writing Project.”** //scholarlypartnershipsedu// 4:2 (2009): 38-51. This article describes a two-week summer writing project designed as enrichment for young writers. Intended for children in grades 3-5 who have an affinity for writing, the project provides a space in which students may develop and improve their writing. Higgs-Coulthard and I explore the components of the program, providing insight into the hands-on activities and the behind-the-scenes planning that culminated in a public reading and book signing party. We show how such a summer writing project re-creates for students the valuable experience teachers have in National Writing Project summer institutes. Ultimately, these summer projects can become valuable professional development for teachers as well. Higgs-Coulthard is a Hoosier Writing Project teacher-consultant who ran the youth writing project; she wrote about the design and implementation of the project, and I provided the theoretical context for this work.

Nicolini, Mary, and Stephen Fox, with contributions by Beau Sousa, Paul Hankins, Christian Knoeller, and Ray Palasz. **“Learning the Tune: Writing Teachers Write Together.”** //scholarlypartnershipseduI// 4:2 (2009): 82-91. This article explores the benefits that accrue when teachers of writing write together in community. It argues that teaching writing is a craft, and so teachers of writing must practice that craft. The National Writing Project summer institutes give teachers this opportunity to write together in a supportive group. In Indiana, NWP teacher-consultants look forward each year to a renewal of that summer institute experience at the statewide retreat. The article explains how that happens, illustrates it through the teachers’ own writing, and shows how this represents exemplary professional development for teachers. Nicolini is co-director and I am director of the Hoosier Writing Project. The other contributions are pieces by those NWP teacher-consultants that were written and shared at the statewide retreats.

In this chapter, I explore what difference being working-class (or not) makes to students and to me as their teacher in first-year composition. I describe a first-year writing curriculum that I helped design for IUPUI, where we had many students from working-class backgrounds. This curriculum focused on the role of work in our lives as its theme, using readings such as Studs Terkel’s //Working// and Juliet Schor’s //The Overworked American//. I describe assignments from this curriculum, including a work experience narrative; an interview with someone about their working life; analysis of how work is represented in some medium, such as advertisements or television shows; and a paper about a work-related issue using primary and secondary research. I also examined the writing of several of my working-class students in first-year composition. I concluded the chapter this way: “Educators and students together can investigate what it means to be working class in our society, and through that inquiry create opportunities for people to celebrate their working-class origins and identity and accomplish their goals. Listening to the words of working-class students, helping them build bridges between their personal literacies and academic literacy, encouraging them to make their mark on the page and perhaps thereby on the world—that is our work, our art and our craft.”
 * "The Work Of Composition: Helping Students Mix Function and Art to Become Carpenters and Poets." **// Academic Literacy in the English Classroom: Helping Underprepared and Working Class Students Succeed in College // . ed. Carolyn Boiarsky and William J. Macauley, Jr. Boynton/Cook. 2003.

Budden, Herb, Mary Nicolini, Steve Fox, and Stuart Greene. **"What We Talk About When We Talk About College Writing."** //Teaching Writing in High School and College: Conversations and Collaborations//. ed. Tom Thompson. NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). 2002.

This edited collection presents the joint work of high school and college teachers of writing. Our own chapter was conceived out of the cross-level work we were all engaged in. Budden and Nicolini, high school English teachers, worked as co-directors of the Hoosier Writing Project with me; Greene worked with several high school teachers while directing first-year writing and graduate programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Notre Dame. The four of us write about our sense of what “college writing” means on both sides of the high school/college divide. I pulled together contributions from the four of us to create a focused conversation among teachers who respect each other’s work and allow it to inform their own work.

**"Working Together, Advancing Alone: The Problem of Representing Collaboration in Teaching Portfolios."** //Composition, Pedagogy, and the Scholarship of Teaching//. ed. Deborah Minter and Amy Goodburn, Cross Currents series, Boynton/Cook. 2002. 132-142. Teaching Documentation from Tenure File included in accompanying website: []

In this chapter, I write about the challenges composition professors in particular face when presenting collaborative work in a teaching portfolio. Although much of our work in composition—including curricular development, writing program administration, and scholarship—is done in collaboration with colleagues, we must advance in an institution that values individual effort and achievement. I argue that we need to apply theory and scholarship on collaboration, ranging from feminist theory to learning theory to social views of language, to our own work as faculty. I examine the literature on teaching portfolios and find little discussion of this problem of representing collaborative work. I analyze the ways I represent collaborative work in my own teaching portfolio, and conclude with recommendations for further work on this issue, both in fostering collaborative work on improving teaching and developing ways to represent that work in promotion dossiers and scholarly writing.

Weese, Katherine L., Stephen L. Fox, and Stuart Greene, eds. **//Teaching Academic Literacy: The Uses of Teacher Research in Developing a Writing Program//.** Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999. With Weese and Greene, I co-wrote the introduction, “The Value of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s First-Year Writing Curriculum,” xiii-xxvi.

As the back cover notes, this volume examines “the evolution of a first-year writing program. . . . [h]ighlighting the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s unique curriculum.” Stuart Greene was the director of this program; I was his first assistant director, and Katherine Weese succeeded me. The chapters, written by the three of us and other instructors in the program, describe the curriculum and a number of classroom research studies conducted by those instructors. Our analysis of student writing and student understandings of writing and reading helped us develop and revise our pedagogy.

// Chapter // : **"Inviting Students to Join the Literacy Conversation: Towards a Collaborative Pedagogy for Academic Literacy,"** 21-43.

In my chapter, I examine the rationale for using literacy materials with first-year student writers and enunciate five principles that have guided the design and teaching of the academic literacy course. I argue that the principles of process and collaboration can be revitalized within a first-year college writing course designed to foster academic literacy. When literacy becomes both the goal and topic of an interactive classroom, students can explore connections among diverse forms of literacy and situate academic writing conventions in larger societal contexts. A collaborative pedagogy that respects student language can equip students to act through academic literacy on behalf of themselves and their communities.