Guidelines for the Academic Preparation for English Faculty

The first article in the September TETYC is a reproduction of “Guidelines for the Academic Preparation of English Faculty at Two-Year Colleges.” First released in Spring of 2005, this document outlines the academic preparation necessary to work with students at a two-year college.

The document gives a clear rational for a different kind of preparation than graduate schools may have considered before. Two-year college faculty members are teacher-scholars. Their practice is informed by their scholarship and their classrooms inform their scholarship. This work provides both the opportunity and the requirement for deep work theory and pedagogy.

To highlight the "Guiding Principles" section of the document, “effective community college English teachers exhibit the following characteristics:

They are reflective teachers.

They center their classrooms on the student, not the teacher.

They are flexible, not only in their teaching approaches, but also in the different roles they are asked to play…

Because they respect their students as learners, they treat students with consideration.

They ground their lessons in research and theory, and they are able to teach theoretical concepts through practical applications.

They continue to grow and learn themselves so that they can model for their students ways of reading and writing successfully.”

The complete document provides an excellent outline of expectations for professional life at a community college.