Curricular Materials for Workplace Unit

Date:    Thu, 11 May 2017 10:59:37 -0400
From:    Ashley Kniss <ashley.anne.kniss@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Readings for Career Unit

Hello All,

I'm in the initial stages of helping put together a pilot unit for my
department's introductory writing course. The unit is called "Writing Your
Career," and the goal is to help students understand the relationship among
education, career, and vocation and to integrate this understanding into
their own personal career goals and values.

We are compiling a broad reading list that will provide instructors with a
wide variety of readings to choose from, some that will be assigned in
class and some that will be available for student research.

Below is a tentative list of possible readings, but I was wondering if
anyone on the list has further suggestions or ideas.

Thanks,
Ashley Kniss

*OpEds*

Mark Edmundson, “Education’s Hungry Hearts”

Alina Tugund, “Vocation or Exploration? Pondering the Purpose of College”

Carlo Rotella, “No, It Doesn’t Matter What You Majored In.”



*Essays/Speeches*

Adrienne Rich: “Claiming an Education”

Paolo Freire: “The Banking Concept of Education”

Alan Lightman: “The Art of Science”

Ellen Gilchrist: “The Middle Way”

Christopher Claussen: “Against Work”

Donald Hall: “Life Work”

Virginia Woolf: “A Room of One’s Own”



*Memoir/autobiography*

Frederick Douglass: “Learning to Read and Write”

Maya Angelou: “Graduation”



*Journalism/nonfiction*

Michael Lewis: “The Curse of Talent”

Atul Gawande: “Big Med”

Burkhard Bilger: “The Egg Men”

William Finnegan, “Dignity”

---

Phillip Levine’s great poems, “What Work Is” and “They Feed They Lion.”

---

Date:    Thu, 11 May 2017 12:52:28 -0400
From:    Kathy Albertson <katalb@GEORGIASOUTHERN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Readings for Career Unit

HI Ashley,
I have my students read "The Learning Curve," a report about graduates' difficulties with adapting to employers' expectations, especially concerning information literacy practices. I think Head is the author, but I'm not near my material at the moment. It contains employer and the student/employee's perspectives, which created rich discussion in class.

Sent from my iPad

---

Date:    Thu, 11 May 2017 13:20:10 -0400
From:    Thomas Wright <wrigh428@UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Readings for Career Unit

I haven't assigned it for years, but I still see some value in  "What We
Learn from Writing on the Job," by Lester Faigley and Thomas P.
Miller. *College
English* Vol. 44, No. 6 (Oct., 1982), pp. 557-569. It provides a point of
comparison for more recent studies, and demonstrates that even before email
and similar types of writing, people wrote a lot on the job.

More recently, I've used Elizabeth Wardle's "Identity, Authority, and
Learning to Write in New Workplaces," which you can find here:
http://enculturation.net/5_2/wardle.html.

Thomas

---

Date:    Thu, 11 May 2017 18:48:44 +0000
From:    "Liberatore, Rachel" <rliberatore@ALBRIGHT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Readings for Career Unit

Hi Ashley,

Your topic reminds me of this blog:
“What Do You Want To Be? vs. What Problems Do You Want To Solve? “
https://bayanprofessor.blogspot.com/2015/11/what-do-you-want-to-be-vs-what-problems.html

Happy reading,

Rachel Liberatore
Writing Center Director