Meet Leslie
I've been teaching for nearly 10 years in a variety of instructional contexts: everything from theater workshops for Los Angeles preschoolers, to remedial Math and English classes for Oakland high school students, to advanced creative writing courses at the University of Oregon. In each teaching scenario, I found new ways to bring energy to my classroom and life to my subject. I’m happy to help any faculty who want to develop, refine or refresh their assignment portfolios, course plans, presentation skills and assessment strategies.
While the mechanics of instruction are essential, the interpersonal dynamics of the classroom and teaching relationship are just as important. In addition to my experience with academic discussion, I’m trained in Non- Violent Communication and have worked as a facilitator/mediator. I’d love to work with faculty who are managing difficult conversations with and between students, struggling to balance the competing commitments of teaching and their own academic inquiry, or just looking for ways to cultivate deep student engagement.
My own academic career has revolved around reading and writing; I have a BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Fiction from UO. So I've always been attuned to the development of student writers. Writing is, after all, thought, distilled and manifest. And the struggle to communicate our thoughts, at any level or in any discipline, can be transformative. Yet, having taught both remedial and advanced writing, I know there are times when it's challenging to see writing as an exercise in rigorous, critical thought. But I believe that, whatever the students' current abilities, writing and the process of revision can be an invaluable, liberatory learning experience.
My personal interests are numerous and various; I’m just as likely to be reading Harpers as Boing Boing. I’m especially enamored with low-budget documentaries, contemporary fiction and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim; this translates to a disturbingly comprehensive knowledge of the works of Alice Munro, Errol Morris and Harvey Birdman. I'm happy to discuss using any of these in the classroom.
Email me at lrutberg@uoregon.edu.
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Last Modified:
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