I have enjoyed teaching writing at Queen’s for over 20 years. At the Queen’s Writing Centre, now Student Academic Success Services, I was a writing consultant and program coordinator, assisting students at all levels with a variety of writing projects, delivering workshops to undergraduate and graduate classes across the disciplines, and training writing consultants in the effective delivery of 1:1 writing support. For many years, I have been an instructor of online undergraduate courses in the fundamentals of effective writing and essay-writing. I also instructed the in-person experiential learning course Writing in the Community, which will once again be offered in the fall of 2024.
Teaching Approach
My teaching goal is to support students in becoming not only more proficient writers but also more aware, empowered ones. Because good writing follows good thinking, my courses promote the development of students’ critical thinking and research skills as well as their writing skills. Students learn to analyze their own and others’ writing rhetorically and to identify and apply genre conventions. I use a process approach that allows students to practice their skills as they plan, draft, revise, and edit their writing and workshop their writing with their peers.
A priority of WRIT courses is to provide students with the detailed, individualized feedback they need -- on larger concerns such as thesis development, cohesiveness, and organization as well as grammar and style -- in order to improve their writing. Overall, through various teaching approaches and types of assessment, I try to engage students in a way that is relevant to them.
Other Areas of Interest
Experiential learning; Indigenous ways of learning and writing
Creative Writing: I write in the genres of memoir, short fiction, and poetry.
Coming Home: A Spiritual Memoir. Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing, 2022.
“A Village at Lakeside,” short fiction. The Dalhousie Review, Spring 2016.
“L.” Ruminate, Spring 2014 (winner of Ruminate’s 2014 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize).