Joyce Mosher Shares Materials: Student Performance of Texts

Joyce Devlin Mosher, Associate Professor of English Communications at Summit, presented Sound Practices: Performing College Reading and Writing at two conferences recently: the National First Year Experience Conference in Denver in February, 2010, and Teaching English at the Two-Year College Conference in Little Rock in October, 2009. Drawing on current research, Joyce has developed methods that make student voices and performed texts the central learning events in the classroom: Download a Copy of Sound Practices

The booklet contains many sample exercises that can be adapted to any college classroom and faculty training program. Contact Joyce with your ideas and questions, as this pedagogical approach is a work in progress.

Delectable Curriculum Innovation: An Interview with Todd Rymer

Why is Todd Studying a Seed Catalog?

As a food professional, Todd Rymer, Director of Culinary Education at the Vail /Eagle Valley Campus has been following Chefs Collaborative, one of the first organizations to directly connect chefs with food growers, for over a dozen years. Todd helped found a Slow Food convivia (chapter) in the Vail Valley about six years ago. Slow Food is an international organization promoting food that is “good, clean, and fair.” The movement focuses on local food as well as food free of chemicals, and food that provides a fair wage for the agricultural growers.

In addition to these important issues, a sustainable foodservice operation must also consider issues of energy, water consumption, chemicals, equipment, to-go containers, recycling and marketing of “green” practice. About three years ago, CMC added a course in Sustainable Cuisine to the CCCNS. As consumers and foodservice operators have further embraced sustainability, market research provided support to move this knowledge and practice into the CMC curriculum – an academic process that requires patience in the face of curriculum development that can still be timely and competitive.

So starting next fall, CMC will offer a certificate in Sustainable Cuisine Operations. In addition to many of the culinary courses already in the curriculum, the certificate includes: Intro to Sustainable Cuisine, Sustainable Food Operations and a revised course that adds vegan and vegetarian entrees preparation to Center of the Plate courses that formerly focused on beef, pork, poultry, and seafood entrees. As the certificate is expanded, courses will be offered in agro-ecology to help students learn about the environmental impacts of food production for restaurants that not only buy food, but grow it.

As we ended our conversation last week, I noticed a seed catalog on his desk—why was it on his desk? It’s part of his ongoing professional development—he’s taking a Colorado Master Gardner’s Class to forward his own expertise and share that development back with the newest of practices.

Olympic Poetry in Motion and More

Steamboat’s Johnny Spillane (who took classes from CMC) won a silver for USA in the Nordic Combined. This is a new accomplishment for the USA in an event that Europeans have owned for a long time: http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2010/feb/14/silver-spillane-lodwick-fourth/

Other poetry is also on my mind: Here’s a performance from the Olympics opening ceremonies from Canadian Slam/ Spoken Word Poet Shane Koyczn:

What is a poetry slam? What makes that rhythm of Spoken Word and Slam Poetry?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_slam

Well, some deliveries style after hip-hop, and some from prose poems, according to the entries above.

However, they would still have some commonalities to other types of poetic traditions—and the Kennedy Center provides some exercises to have students compare elements of hip-hop to say, even Shakespeare:
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/3656/

This poem uses repetition for rhythm and many metaphors in these lines:

“Let the page be your doctor…”



CMC Upcoming Poetry Events

Poetry Slam at Summit on March 17th

Second Life Poetry Celebration at ColoradoEduIisland in mid April. (More to come)