Call for Pitches: Zoom In (A Teaching Series for ASLE)
ASLE is an organization full of brilliant teachers as well as scholars, and we have much we can learn from each other. ASLE members are invited to contribute to a series of teaching posts for the ASLE website in which they explore the pedagogical possibilities of a text by focusing on one detail at a time. Each post will put a handful of teachers in conversation with each other about the same text, giving readers a sense of the variety of approaches available while anchoring them in specific lines or moments from the text.
This series will offer a chance to zoom in on small teaching opportunities that can have a big impact. For instance, what line from a poem serves as a focal point for discussion in your class? What specific image or set of allusions do you use to get students engaged? How does even a single word connect this text to larger issues?
Pitches are invited for short reflections on teaching a specific element of environmental texts. We are currently particularly interested in pitches related to Richard Powers’ The Overstory, Jenny Offill’s Weather, Craig Santos Perez’s Habitat Threshold, and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, but we are also open to pitches about other texts.
The initial list is limited in its scope, but it is also meant to be only a starting point. What environmental texts from around the world have you had success in teaching? What films, games, TV shows, songs, paintings, websites, etc., have you taught? Especially when pitching a text not listed here, you also have the option to put together a small group of teachers to write about a specific text and pitch an entire post rather than pitching only an individual entry.
Send your pitches to ASLE’s Digital Strategies Coordinator, Christy Tidwell (christy.tidwell@gmail.com) and they will be considered on a rolling basis, with posts developed as multiple pitches for specific texts arrive. In your pitch, please indicate what text you would like to discuss, what element of it you would zoom in on (be as specific and concrete as possible here), and what larger environmental ideas or issues this particular point connects to or allows you to develop in class. Pitches should be very short (approximately 100-150 words) and completed reflections will be approximately 1000 words.
