English Teaching Undergraduate Course Descriptions 

ENGL 3500/SCED 3300 Teaching English and Clinical Experience I (Dougherty)

Admission to STEP is required.

The Teaching English course supports students in pairing educational theory and content-area knowledge explored throughout their undergraduate education with practical, hands-on experience in the secondary English Language Arts classroom. Students will be able to further their knowledge of instructional models and strategies while contextualizing their learning first-hand in classroom settings. Specifically, students will observe host teachers’ functions in the classroom, approaches to instructional design, classroom management, relationships with students/parents/colleagues/administrators, approach to assessment, differentiation, cultural sustainability, and rationale behind decision making. To afford such observation and teaching experience, the Teaching English course is paired with a one-credit course, SCED 3300 Clinical 1 (English) and will require 45 hours of field observation. In person. Logan.

ENGL 3500 Teaching English (Piotrowski)

The goal of this course and the clinical experience is for preservice teachers to begin to view the classroom and its students from the perspective of a teacher. Throughout your undergraduate education, you have focused on subject matter content; in this experience, you’ll be looking more closely at the process of teaching and learning. In particular, you’ll be observing how a teacher functions in the classroom as well as the teacher’s relationships with students, parents, colleagues, and school leaders. We will learn about teaching English/Language Arts as a subject, and we will reflect on teaching and learning. You will also have the opportunity to practice teaching in the classroom. You will enroll in the instructor's section of SCED 3300, Clinical Experience I. The clinical practicum requires 45 hours minimum in a middle school or high school setting. Virtual.

ENGL 3510 Teaching Young Adult Literature (Piotrowski)

Through the process of reading and discussing a wide range of diverse young adult literature, we will explore central trends and issues in the field of Young Adult Literature and a variety of ways of interpreting, analyzing, and teaching Young Adult Literature. During the semester, we will examine young adult literature from two angles: first, that of literary analysis. We will interpret and evaluate young adult literature as readers. Second, we will practice thinking like a teacher-scholar. We will practice looking at young adult literature for pedagogical possibilities and examine our own assumptions about young people, reading, and learning. This course, then, will ultimately help you understand who you hope to become as a literature teacher and participate in our profession’s conversations about the teaching of young adult literature. Virtual. 

ENGL 4210 History of English: Change and Diversity (McLaughlin)

*skai- > *skeinan > scinan > shinen > shine. Every language has a history and so we will be looking at the known history of English from the earliest reconstructed forms from 6000 years ago to the present day. But language history isn't isolated from the world in which it occurs so we won't just be looking at the linear progression of forms and structures from the Ukrainian steppes to the mountains and deserts of Utah, we'll also be looking at all the other languages whose speakers interacted with English speakers and added to the rich vocabulary, and sometimes even the complex syntax, of the English language. We'll see how the richly complex soup of dialects on the island of Great Britain influenced the changing forms that were acceptable to the ruling classes and how those forms influenced the day-to-day speech of the working classes. And finally, we'll see how the language of an island on the far edge of the "civilized world" was transformed on the new continents where its speakers settled and became the universal lingua franca of the modern age. Online.