I have been giving much thought over the past few weeks as to exactly what to do with creating a course theme. I am sure that we are all in the same boat here, confused about exactly what to center our course around, worried about the possibilities of not only creating a course that we will be able to teach, but also a course that will encourage our students to become engaged in the classroom. Zebroski really seemed to be a huge proponent of the writing course theme, but while he was in favor of it, he doesn't offer much help in attempting to figure out what kind of theme is right for each individual teacher.
Obviously each teacher, while attempting to create a good course for their students, brings with them a certain set of skills or backgrounds in their individual fields. Our classroom has MFA students, Literature students and LRSP students, and each one of those fields endows us with a certain background, a certain area of interest, and a certain amount of knowledge within a given field. For example, I pretty much know absolutely nothing about multimodality, I am learning slowly about it, but it is not an area of study. I also know very little about creative writing composition. I am a Literature person, and with my area of study being 20th century American, and more specifically American Modernism, I would say that I know a lot about maybe 30 years or so of American writing. Obviously I have other interests in the field of Literature, but it still comes down to the point of; How do we (especially as first time instructors) create a class that we can teach and not look foolish, and teach a class that our students will enjoy and become actively involved?
I don't know if anyone has given extensive thought to the "Course Theme" element of learning how to become a good teacher, and perhaps I am jumping the gun. But overall I would have to admit that this has become my single biggest concern with regards to teaching in the Spring.
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This may be a bit of a simplistic answer, but you don't HAVE to have a theme. Zebroski suggests it as a possibility and says it worked well for him. But it's probably better if everybody makes their own decisions as to how to construct a first-year writing course. If you like modernist American fiction, use modernist American fiction.
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