Now that you’ve taken a look at some material, let us tell you a bit about where we come from.
We are, Dan Curtis-Cummins and Jolie Goorjian, teachers and colleagues who over the past three+ years have been helping to reshape General Education Requirements in the Department of English for students, like you, to succeed at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
From Dan
Ending with a focus on “the Sociology of Knowledge,” I earned my undergraduate degree from. U.C., Santa Cruz in 2005. I wrote a memorable Sociology thesis exploring student views towards various types of reparations for African American slavery, from direct payments to reparation through a decolonized education system. After earning Master’s Degrees in Education and Composition at San Francisco State University, I worked my way into the Lecturer pool of the Composition Program starting in Fall 2016. Through my work, I have developed an approach to critical pedagogy that revolves around Students’ Right to their Own Language, Integrated Reading and Writing, active learning, and labor-based contract grading, with a recent added emphasis on First-Year Experience. In addition to my teaching, I have recently accepted a position as the Director of the Experimental College of SFSU, where students use Critical Active Pedagogy (CAP) principles to teach and learn through entirely student-directed courses—students teaching students. I am excited about sharing my approach to teaching and learning with you, the readers of this textbook!
From Jolie
As a graduate of SFSU, I earned my undergraduate degrees in French and Geology. At SFSU and for a wee bit at the Sorbonne in Paris, I completed my graduate work in Comparative and World Literature, with specialties in Postcolonial literature—literature written by formerly colonized people—focusing on Anglo-Indian, Franco-Moroccan, and South African writers. I began my teaching career as a seventh and eighth grade French teacher, and as a volunteer teacher, I have taught inmates at San Quentin Penitentiary in Literature and Critical Thinking courses through the Prison University Project, as well as French and English lessons to children in Siberia and Russia. I currently specialize in curriculum development for writing classes in the Department of English and Comparative and World Literature, both departments I teach in. I have partnered with Project Rebound, teaching English 114 to formerly incarcerated and traditional first-year (FY) students, and am one of two teachers to create and teach English 114 with a 20-hour Community Service Learning component, for which I serve the community of Sunday Streets alongside my students with my five-year-old son. I recently not only had my 114 classes CAP certified, so students can teach in the Experimental College, but also became an EXCO Faculty Advisory Boardmember.
Reading and Writing Your World 