Meet Rebecca Gose
Associate Professor of Dance
When did you start teaching in the WIP
RG: I believe I began teaching in the Writing Intensive Program in 2011, subsequent to my year as a Writing Fellow.
What courses are you teaching/have you taught?
RG: Issues in Dance Education and Pedagogy (DANC 4700). This is a rather broad upper-level undergraduate course targeted for dance majors and minors.
Why did you join the WIP?
RG: I applied to this program mostly because I enthusiastically believe in the value of writing and enjoy facilitating writing within the courses I teach. Specifically, I wanted to enhance the effectiveness of my students’ thinking processes within this subject area. Most dance students have spent much of their time in the dance studio developing physical and artistic skills, and although they are skilled in academics, many are very intimidated by writing, scholarly research and critical thinking processes. They are very familiar with certain aspects of the art form (as practitioners), but they have much less experience looking at this familiar practice through an academic or intellectual lens. I wanted to use writing as an explicit tool to help them consider the ideas presented to them in a deep and critical way, as well as a way to incite curiosity by getting them to reflectively grapple with their past dance training amidst new theoretical and pedagogical frames.
What have you learned from your experiences as a WIP faculty? About teaching? About writing? About your students?
RG: Each time I teach my course (bi-annually), I feel that another layer peels away and I see deeper into what writing can do for my students. I develop keener insights as to what the core challenges are for them that show up in discussions, writing processes, and products. In terms of my teaching, my collaborations with the WIP TAs help to provide a rich source for reflection and analysis of my current writing approaches, assignments and assessments, which I am always trying to improve.
WIP affirms my belief that writing is a valuable skill and one which can be improved with effort, curiosity, and focused attention. Writing can help students find gaps or obstacles in terms of how they pursue their thinking about the bodies of knowledge in which they are immersed.
What is your WIP teaching philosophy?
RG: Everyone can be a writer, and everyone should write! Practicing writing can enhance one’s level of engagement with any course/subject area and enhancing our writing makes us all more interesting and interested individuals.
How do you put that philosophy into practice?
RG: I try to be encouraging, inclusive, and enthusiastic about the integrated writing components of the class. I make numerous analogies to my students’ prior experiences in dance and how those skills can transfer into writing. I try to begin with and draw out what they are curious and passionate about. Ultimately, I want students to come away from this class feeling that improved writing is attainable for each of them and that they are able to successfully develop their ideas into quality written artifacts.
What are your biggest challenges you face as a WIP teacher/in your WIP course?
RG: Some of the primary challenges I face in this course are similar to those many of us face in other courses—namely, getting buy-in (interest, sustained engagement), and sustaining enough curiosity to be attentive to details and process. This challenge also includes facilitating change in students’ preconceptions and attitudes about the amount and particular kind of effort involved in writing a successful high stakes paper (revise, revise, revise!). An additional challenge is to help my students overcome their pervasive negative self-perceptions as writers—the notion that good dancers cannot also be good writers.
How do you address those challenges?
RG: I aim for small successes especially early in the semester, with simple yet engaging no/low stakes assignments.
What do you hope students take away from your WIP course? How do students benefit from the writing-intensive nature of your course?
RG: I hope that students will feel less intimidated by writing, be more confident, courageous writers, and perceive their writing ability more in alignment with (rather than divergent from) the creative pursuits they undertake in dance. I hope from such a writing-intensive course they are less intimidated to tackle writing in the future, to claim it and benefit from it both as students and professionals.
Why is it important that students write in your course?
RG: I cannot imagine teaching this course without a writing-intensive component. I have found a concerted emphasis on writing as a core instructional tool has given my course an additional, sharpened way of drawing out individual students into more active engagement. Writing is a communication tool, yet it can also be a personal, intimate reflection of our inner state. It is a way where each student’s understanding of both oneself and the subject can be developed and recognized in uniquely meaningful ways.
From Rebecca’s WIP Course—
The example I’m submitting is a single point rubric for our Vision Statement paper (for the rough drafts only). In this paper assignment, as a culmination of reflecting on their past training/teachers and reading in many areas of dance education theory and practice, students articulate their impassioned vision for some aspect of dance education/pedagogy, supported with evidence, in a 5-7 page paper.