SF STATE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CONFERENCE
FALL 2019
Fall 2019
English Department Conference
December 6, 2019
9:00am-5:00pm
The SF State English Department is excited to announce its third bi-annual conference that will together faculty and graduate students in our TESOL, Composition, Linguistics, Literature, and Technical & Professional Writing concentrations. Join us to learn, collaborate, celebrate, and explore the ways our disciplines overlap and inform our research and pedagogy!
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The Panelists
CAPSTONE PRESENTERS
Cheryl Eccles
Cheryl most recently worked as an advanced-level oral communication skills instructor for multilingual speakers at the American Language Institute at San Francisco State University. Her primary area of interest is on discovering innovative methods for engaging students in classroom learning. Her long-standing career as a creative drama instructor, a teaching assistant in a college-level composition course, and her most recent ESL teaching position, have helped shape her Capstone exploration of integrating drama and movement practices in a first year composition course curriculum for English language learners. She received her B.A. at Wesleyan University, and will soon graduate with an M.A. in TESOL, and certificates in teaching composition, and post-secondary reading.
Trillian Donahue
Trillian is currently finishing up her MA in English Literature. Alongside the MA, she will be receiving a Certificate in the Teaching of Composition. Prior to transferring to San Francisco state to earn her BA in English Literature, she was awarded three Associate's degrees, including a teacher preparation degree. Her professional interests focus around the intersections of various academic fields, finding connections between them in order to create a more meaningful and engaging experience for her students. After graduating, the dream includes teaching post-secondary composition courses, utilizing collaboration within the classroom as much as possible. Trillian participated in the SFSU English GTA fellowship where she applied these professional interests in a first year composition course.
Ryan Hoyt
Ryan is completing his MA in Composition at San Francisco State University. He received his BA in World Literature and Cultural Study at UC Santa Cruz and taught English in the San Francisco Unified School District for four years. Ryan teaches Freshman Composition at SFSU and is developing research utilizing the fields of ecology and contemplative practices in order to design what he calls Regenerative Writing Pedagogy. With this research, Ryan is seeking ways to design meaningful writing experiences that repair and/or promote intrinsic motivations for reading and writing.
Jasmine Giblin Ingaramo
Jasmine is currently completing her M.A. in TESOL at San Francisco State University, where she also works as an English language instructor at the American Language Institute, an academic English preparation program. She received a B.A. in International Studies, and a minor in Latin American Studies, from the University of San Francisco, and then worked in community and international development. She is a writing instructor focusing on social justice and community inclusion. Her research interests include how community development, social justice, and language learning intersect. She has experience working with both community English learners and international students. She hopes to continue to work with multilingual speakers of all backgrounds in order to bring communities closer together.
Ryan D. Lee
Ryan has taught English to speakers of other languages for 10 years in Ecuador, New York City and San Francisco. Having a BA in Cultural Geography from the University of Missouri and soon graduating with a MA in TESOL from SFSU, he hopes to continue his practice of building communities of diverse populations of students in language classrooms in order to promote confidence and help students realize their own personal relationship with the English language. His capstone project focuses on the nature and benefits of the interactions between students and their teachers in language learning contexts.
César Olivas
César is a first generation college student currently completing his MA in linguistics at SFSU. César’s interests are focused on cognitive linguistics with emphasis on questions of how we understand, organize, and categorize abstract concepts. César’s thesis is an investigation into the language of Spanish-speaking ghosts stories and what it reveals about the way we think and talk about death. With his MA work exploring theoretical frameworks within cognitive linguistics, César is fascinated by the conceptual structures which support our linguistic choices.
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Stanislava Petrova
Stanislava is a Russian Muslim immigrant who arrived in the U.S at the age of seventeen hoping to pursue the American Dream. Following her passion for learning languages, she received a bachelor’s degree in linguistics at San Francisco State University. Currently, she is obtaining a master’s degree in TESOL at San Francisco State University. Her professional interests include the integration of technological tools in traditional ESL classrooms in order to create a modernized student-centered environment and enhance learners’ motivation. Reflecting on her experience as a former ESL learner and knowledge of a TESOL professional, Stanislava hopes to help other immigrants in pursuing the American Dream.
Dottie Pratchard
Dottie is in her final semester of graduate studies at San Francisco State. She is majoring in English/Composition and has a passion for sharing the benefits of close reading techniques to her students. She is currently managing a successful tutoring business and upon graduation, is planning on directing a reading lab for learning difference students. She completed her BA in creative writing, also at San Francisco State. Dottie has had eleven magazine articles published and has won writing contests, including first place in a contest that was open to all community colleges in America. In 2014, she traveled to Ecuador and taught English to seven and eight graders at House of Happiness, an orphanage.
Jessica Marcela Racca
Jessica is currently attending San Francisco State University where she is completing her master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages; she also received her B.A. from the university in English Literature. Jessica has worked as a tutor in a variety of contexts: literacy tutor in elementary school, after-school tutor in middle school, and embedded tutor in the CMS (Composition for Multilingual Students) program at SFSU. Her current research centers on developing a tutor-training guide for student teachers who do not have the opportunity to be formally trained. This project combines research on the topic with her personal experience as an ESL tutor in the university context.
Michael Walsh
Michael is completing an MA in TESOL at San Francisco State University. He has obtained a BA in Humanities and a MA in Poetics from New College of California as well as a Single Subject Credential in English from San Francisco State University. He previously worked in high school settings teaching composition, grammar, and literature in both a charter school and public schools in San Francisco. Currently, he is working in the field of vocational/workplace ESL with the English under the Arches program as well as English for Academic purposes at Skyline Community College. His interests include cooperative and participatory learning, promoting student centered curricula as well as student empowerment and issues of student identity.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHTS
Dan Curtis-Cummins
Dan has been a Lecturer for SF State’s Composition Program since Fall 2016, developing an approach to critical pedagogy that revolves around Students’ Right to their Own Language, Integrated Reading and Writing, and antiracist Contract Grading, with a recent added emphasis on First Year Experience and active learning methods. In addition to his teaching, Dan works with the Experimental College of SFSU to promote “Critical Active Pedagogy (CAP)” Certification for Writing instructors, which takes “active learning” to a new level by inspiring and preparing students to teach and learn through entirely student-directed courses offered through the Experimental College Program.
Brandon Diaz
Brandon is a Department Award winning graduate of SFSU's Creative Writing MFA. He completed his Composition certificate in 2016, and now teaches in English Composition and Rhetoric full-time between Sf State and Los Medanos College. Previously, he has worked as a music journalist and culture writer, contributing for OkayPlayer, The Hundreds, and Another Planet. As a writer, Brandon is a strategic rhetorician, prizing the nuance present in messaging. He believes that form itself is an undervalued segment of rhetoric. As a teacher, he values deconstructing messaging, as a tool for growing the analytical mind. His current projects include a collection of essays on the teaching of writing, and some fiction (hopefully soon, maybe).
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Jolie Goorjian
After starting her career as a 7th and 8th grade French teacher, in 2001, Jolie began teaching at SFSU. She specializes in FYE curriculum development for writing classes, collaborating with colleagues to create equitable and active learning courses for the Departments of English as a Faculty Coach and Comparative and World Literature. She partnered with Project Rebound, teaching English 114 to formerly incarcerated and traditional FY students. She is one of two teachers to create and teach English 114 with a 20-hour CSL component, for which she serves the community of Sunday Streets along side her students with her four-year-old son. Jolie recently not only had her 114 classes Critical Active Pedagogy (CAP) certified, so students can teach in the Experimental College, but also became a CAP coordinator. As a volunteer teacher, she taught inmates at San Quentin Penitentiary through the Prison University Project in Literature and Critical Thinking courses, and children French and English in Siberia, Russia. She currently serves as Interim Associate Director of Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Discipline.
Ileana da Silva
Ileana is a lecturer at SFSU, where she works primarily with first-year students in exploring their identities, personas, and passions through critical reading and writing. Before she began her career in teaching, Ileana worked for start-up companies as a technical writer and marketing specialist. She brings that experience to the classroom and to her curriculum, which emphasizes the transferability of skills, real-world writing environments and tasks, and rhetorical consciousness. Having worked in the technology sector, Ileana encourages her students to craft hybrid and multimodal projects to promote active learning and provide avenues for creativity. She was recently featured in Academic Technology's Faculty Voices podcast, in which she discusses the value of multimodal writing and open educational resources/zero-cost course materials as methods to promote engagement and equity.
