Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Kick Off of Fall

The Blog Goes First

With the semester kicking into gear, the first victim has been the neglect of my blog. However, I have been putting in some work and updating my website: http://cruznmedina.wordpress.com/


My website is a much more straight-forward platform, but I've still seen some interesting political satire on Arizona and the proud uber-conservatives like Jan Brewer, who was recently accused of race-baiting President Obama.

In the spirit of archiving interesting Arizona-related satire that illuminates current dynamics within Arizona, I'm posting the link to a recent Funny or Die video:

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/745u

Friday, August 17, 2012

Back to School

The Preparation for Fall 2012 in Full Effect

My department had their general meeting to start the semester this past Wednesday, and I had a chance to speak about my role as Collaborative Coordinator for the Developmental Writing course. It's exciting because my fellow coordinator was a participant in my collaborative group last fall, and the course coordinator was also a participant in my group--onwards and upwards for my fellow collaborators!

The first class meeting of the semester is Thursday, and I'm looking forward to getting to know this crop of my first year writers. After a great summer with New Start, and winning the Instructor of the Summer having taught an amazing group of students, I'm planning to carry the positive energy forward starting next week; perhaps, if I'm lucky, I'll also channel that positivity into last minute tweaks to my syllabus as well.

(My New Start Class)

This semester, I'm also looking forward to participating in this program the Writing Program is piloting for graduate teaching associates with Superior Teaching ratings. I'm pairing up with one of my mentees in the Rhet/Comp department to set and plan goals for our teaching this semester. It might comes as no surprise, but I'll be focusing mine on applications of technology in the writing classroom.

Monday, August 6, 2012

After School Encuentro with Curtis Acosta

From Three Sonorans, Video of Acosta's Community Lesson

Last night, former TUSD Ethnic Studies teacher Curtis Acosta gave a lesson at the John Valenzuela Youth Center 1550 S. 6th Ave. Tucson.

Three Sonorans put together a five minute version of Acosta's lesson, which I was interested to see because Acosta was discussing a piece by the author that the MAS Banned Bookclub is reading this week.



Three Sonorans also provided and entire recording of the talk:



See this article and others at Three Sonorans:
http://threesonorans.com/2012/08/06/video-mas-teacher-curtis-acosta-teaches-a-banned-in-tusd-latino-literature-class/