Balancing a love of teaching and writing

Teaching is a siren song. But for Jenna Zan, the enticement did not dash her against the rocks. Instead, her passion and colleagues guided her into a career that took her from Virginia Tech Development, now the Office of Advancement, to the Department of English.

Zan, an instructor and associate director of the University Writing Program, said it all started when she began pursuing her master’s in English part-time. It led her to doctoral work in the university’s Rhetoric and Writing program. Along the way, she started teaching full time and working as a writing program administrator.

“Despite my anxiety that first semester in the classroom, I felt a refreshing amount of reciprocity between my writing, research, administrative, and teaching selves — and I never looked back," she said.

A recent winner of the Department of English’s Joyce Gentry Smoot Award, which recognizes exceptional teaching by a non-tenure-track instructor, Zan shared her thoughts on teaching in hopes of inspiring a new generation of educators.

What do you enjoy most about teaching first-year writing?

One of my earliest memories was lining up all my stuffed animals and dolls and then teaching them from a textbook that I had written in crayon, taking them through what was probably, even then, a very rigorous lesson plan. I loved creating a space and materials for learning. But I eventually grew bored with my routine. It turns out, a room full of stuffed animals can be quite predictable — and as such, quite dull.

What I love most about teaching first-year writing are those who keep it a living breathing process. They are the students. From semester to semester and even day-to-day, they’re always finding new ways to keep me on my toes and pushing me to keep my teaching approaches fresh and fluid.

What's that tried-and-true lesson plan on rhetorical appeals that kills it each time? Better come up with something new, because  judging by the sea of blank stares it’s not landing like it did three years ago.

Each classroom of students poses unique challenges and possibilities that prevent me from letting my curriculum grow static. They keep me in touch with the fluxing human concerns and patterns of the world. They keep me from feeling settled in my worldview. They keep me humble. I can’t say that about my stuffed animals.

What assignments or activities are you especially proud of developing?

One of the abiding challenges of teaching is to get students to collaborate and to show them how writing is a vitally social process. Social anxiety and self-doubt can often prevent students from fully opening up to one another, and if you can’t break that trend early in the semester, it can really stick around. An activity that has served as both an icebreaker and brainstorm for my students leads up to their very first project of ENGL 1105 —the Literacy Narrative.

In this project, students practice the narrative genre by documenting scene-specific experiences that were formative to their literacy growth. Often, students initially struggle to think of even one relevant memory. Yet, what gets their wheels turning? What sparks memories? It's conversation. So, I have students interview one another, asking a series of questions that encourage them to dig into their literacy memories and to figure out what literacy even means to them in the first place. The ensuing dialogue prompts students to build off one another’s ideas and experiences, recounting moments that may have otherwise remained buried. Through this process, they also come to realize how their experiences with literacy both overlap and diverge, shaping their unique relationships with language in the process. 

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

My partner, Joe Truscello (who also teaches writing here), is always reminding me to trust my natural voice. I often feel pressure to meet grandiose audience expectations that aren’t actually grounded in the living, breathing humans who are on the other side of the page. I end up using overly clunky language and writing sentences that obscure straightforward ideas rather than clarifying them. Sometimes this is because I haven’t yet taken time to fully understand what I want to say in the first place, which means more brainstorming is needed. Other times, this is because I mistake sound rhetorical performance for showiness. In any case, I overthink it, and craft sentences that drive a wedge between myself, my ideas, and my audience.

One of the most salient pieces I ever wrote was for a recent conference presentation. Because I’d essentially be reading my essay to a live audience, I wanted it to sound conversational. So, I wrote how I’d talk. Concise, clean sentences that would make my best ideas shine. Short paragraphs that gave each key moment space to breathe. As a result of this process, I ended up with an essay that lucidly mirrored myself and my work, which is something I always struggled with when writing for academic audiences. Then, I began to think, why not always challenge myself to write in this way? Who says academic writing must be in the form of dense prose? What might it look like if I make my work more accessible to multiple audiences?

What was your reaction when you learned you had received the Smoot Teaching Excellence Award?

It was a much-needed confidence boost, to tell you the truth. Teaching can be a humbling experience, and I think it’s very common for instructors to remember those few moments that didn’t go as well more vividly than all those everyday moments where things went smoothly. So, the award was a big, glaring reminder to believe in myself, and to give all those successful teaching moments I’ve accrued over the years just as much weight as the ones where things flopped or I didn’t feel I did the best job. They’re all valuable. I also felt gratitude for my students who both challenged me and lifted me up through their work and words over the years, and for all my colleagues, GTA mentees, and Ph.D. peers who have inspired my growth as an educator.