Anthony F.

Borrero
17725 Halton Park Drive, Apt. 2C Charlotte, NC 28262 aborrero@uncc.edu 910-286-6827 Letter of Application March 25th, 2013 Dr. Cy Knoblauch University of North Carolina Charlotte 9201 University City Blvd. Charlotte, NC 28223. Dear Dr. Knoblauch, My name is Anthony Borrero, and I am responding to the open call for the Lecturer position within the First-Year Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Please accept this letter, as well as my vitae and professional references as my application for the position. Although I am currently engaged in teaching, research, and professional development as a contingent, fulltime Lecturer within UNCCs First-Year Writing Program, it is important to retrace the credentials which brought me to this position, as well as the practices which have allowed me to further my development throughout my time in the program. Currently, my teaching practices center on the connection between writing, language, and discursive/social/political/cultural positionality, and my research responds to the transfer of writing skill and cross-disciplinary views of writing. Within this letter, I hope to convey the extent to which my exposure to various discourses of education and writing theory have informed my current teaching practices and research trajectory, as well as how my teaching, research, and service can contribute to this program as it continues to develop. Although my current location within the discourse of writing stems from my experiences teaching in UNCCs FYW program, as well as my studies which focused on the theories and practices of teaching college writing, my conceptual perspective is also greatly informed by my personal context and prior educational experiences. From a young age, I became acutely aware of how members of society use language as a means of locating their social and cultural positions due to my familys status as a marginalized Hispanic household within the largely non-Hispanic community of Throggs Neck, New Yorka position which more frequently than not, saw my family negotiating multiple languages and rhetorical modes of being in order to gain acceptance and authority in various contexts. I observed similar social, cultural, and linguistic tension in my future work, as my studies led me to work in the field of secondary education, and more specifically, at a high school in Cabarrus County situated at the edge of urban and rural cultural lines. In addition to my work in education, my undergraduate and graduate coursework also emphasized the study of English literature. While the context of my research in English literature was indeed different than the work that I currently do in the field of rhetoric and composition, these experiences still proved to be instrumental in fostering my current conceptual perspective, as my work in literature foregrounded how discourses and genres were situated within their cultural context; how authors used their writing as means to negotiate identity, as well as social and cultural politics; as well as the understanding that knowledge production and transmission are social actsall of which are key tenets of the theoretical perspective that I would come to know as social constructivism upon entering the field of rhetoric and composition.

In order to continue the study of pedagogical theory and enhance my understanding of how writing and culture are connected, I participated in Dr. Tony Scotts Teaching College English course. Within this course, I was introduced to the changing face of the field, and understood its movement from current traditionalism to the post-process views which pervade our current discourses of writing. As a writer, scholar, and educator, I found myself deeply impacted by views which these theorists offered. From James Berlins exploration of the connection between ideology and context, to Min-Zhan Lus post structural emphasis on the benefits of chaos and decentering authority, Nancy Sommers notion of situating our response to student work, and of course, Deborah Deans groundbreaking work with genre, each of these theorists helped me to understand how the positions we engage, the community we create, the response we provide, and the writing we produce cannot be reduced to a simple modes based approach. Instead, our teaching, research, and service must see beyond formalism, and continue to embrace the changing landscape of the field, that has since expanded to include discourses such as the digital turn, as well as the emergence of what Richard Fulkerson has referred to as critical/cultural studies, and the concept of transfer that Wardle and Downs have had a hand in cultivating. Nonetheless, while it is important to understand the ways that the discourse of writing have changed and developed, it is equally important to note how we are responding to that change in our teaching, and how our praxis is contributing to our knowledge of writing and writing cultures. While my statement of teaching philosophy can explain the specifics of my teaching praxis, I feel that it is important to introduce how I am interpreting and responding to the curriculum of this program. As stated in the introduction of this letter, the concept which is impacting my current way of teaching most significantly is that of positionality, or more specifically, the connection between the writer, the act of writing, and how language and constraints can be negotiated in order to identify or alter ones discursive, social, political, or cultural position. Within both 1101 and 1102, the primary focal point for me as an instructor is to stress the significance of voice. Although I focus on students discovering the voice which they are writing from, or what some would call our writerly identitiesa notion I stress heavily when examining personal and cultural literacies in 1101within my courses, it is of equal importance to consider how ones voice needs to be situated in order to respond to various contexts, audiences, and discoursesa point which is addressed by the discourse of inquiry in 1102. While the content of 1101 and 1102 differ dramatically in theme, focus, and purpose, the narrative which unites these courses is the notion that ones voice must be a fluid construct, and that the voices which we embody through our writing are the means through which our position can be negotiated, situated, and transformed. Through engaging with these ideologies in my class, I ultimately aim to use the discourses of literacy and inquiry to move students beyond a purely instrumentalist understanding of writing, and toward a contextualized understanding of writing that foregrounds rhetorical situations and how language can be used to respond to the conditions students live within. Aside from my statement of teaching philosophy, my curriculum vitae also demonstrates how my research and professional development are responding to the changing face of the field, and how my efforts are oriented toward improving my knowledge and praxis, contributing to ongoing discussions of writing within the program and university, and engaging the field at large. In order to contribute to my development as an instructor, I have attended workshops focused on teaching and learning, such as those about response, inquiry, portfolios, technology, and

genre usage. I have also presented at a variety of events within the program, such as FYWs Digital Technology and Reflective Writing seminar, where I presented on artifacts and using cultural materials for reflection, and the most recent Lunch & Learn, where I presented on goalsetting, response, and assessment. Aside from professional development within the program, I have also attempted to engage the broader university discourses of teaching and writing by participating in events such as UNCCs Summer Diversity Institute, which focused on service learning, intercultural awareness, and diversity. Although the list of development opportunities listed above represents a wide array of topics and discussion points related to the teaching of writing, cumulatively, these experiences have provided me with a more focused understanding of the diverse backgrounds of the students we teach, and the tools technology, and practices which facilitate effective instruction. Beyond using professional development to learn from the field, I have also used it as a way to contribute to the field, such as the prior research I presented at the 2012 NC State Symposium on Teaching Writing, which focused on how technology can be used to improve FYWs social practices and sense of community. With respect to my current research, which focuses on the transfer of writing knowledge and skill, I, along with Beth Caruso and Debarati Dutta aim to extend the discussion of transfer initiated by scholars such as Salomon and Perkins, Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, and Doug Brent in order to explore how we can re-imagine the design and delivery of writing instruction, and how we view cross-disciplinary collaboration. While my presentation with Beth Caruso at the 2013 NC State Symposium on Teaching Writing examined some initial ideas for how we can create the conditions for transfer in our own program, such as examining the rhetoric we use to discuss writing; learning outcomes, course designs, and assignments; as well as how we can think about inter-departmental collaboration to create a more situated context for discipline-specific writing, our upcoming roundtable discussion at the Elon Conference on Transfer this summer will focus on gathering ideas from other writing programs regarding how they facilitate transfer in their own programs and universities. Ultimately, through this project, we intend to examine the sites and values of writing within our own university, and initiate a cross-disciplinary dialogue with UNCC instructors regarding how writing is viewed, valued, engaged, and discussed across the university. Within the introduction of this letter, I stated that my purpose was to retrace the credentials which qualified my previous and current work in the program, but in the course of conveying these points, I have also provided a sense of the experiences and theoretical perspectives which have informed my voice as an instructor, and have positioned myself within the greater discourse of writing and writing instruction. While my investment in my pedagogical practices and research trajectory has shown that I am not afraid to extend the possibilities for how we view and engage writing instruction or how we perceive our position and presence within the university, I hope that this letter has also conveyed how I will continue to respond to the changing face of the field and the value of the voice I bring to this programs discourse of writing. Sincerely,

Anthony F. Borrero