Episode 162 Innovative Approaches to Rhetoric and Composition Courses at Appalachian State University Part 2

Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations. I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll. In this episode, you'll hear Part Two of my conversation with Bill Torgerson, a lecturer in Rhetoric and Composition at Appalachian State University. My conversation with Bill took place before Hurricane Helene, which has had devastating effects on the campus and surrounding communities.

We have included donation information in the show notes for the App State Disaster Relief Fund and the restoration of the treasured Valle Crucis Park in Bill's neighborhood. More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

I was just curious if you'd stumbled upon some Uh, students in creating these recommendations, if you encountered work that may have been done beyond your course, that you could view in the context of what they had done during their time with you too. There's so much growth that happens. Yeah, I don't, um, You know, if I put your name in, you know, like a student turns in the wrong link or the links not working.

And so I search and that's another thing that's really nice about us all being on the same platform is, you know, I'll do a little extra work to try to find your portfolio because whatever you've turned in, isn't the right link. And then I'll see that you've maybe created other portfolios, but usually I have so much to read and respond to that. I'm not. Poking around others, perusing.

Well, so Bill, I, I also wanted to bring up, so you ha I learned a little bit about you from your own, um, kind of, uh, website when I was preparing to talk to you today. And there are some Lovely aspects. Uh, first of all, you have your own podcast.

Uh, I wanted to learn a little bit about that if you'd like to share that with our listeners and kind of your perspective on being a Writer that teaches writing, writing is still something that you're doing creatively today and how that ties into what you might be doing in your classroom currently.

Yeah, so I have a podcast that I call 'Torg Stories', um, and really the, the inception of it was, it was just an excuse to talk to people I wanted to talk to, which you've probably heard like that before. So I don't know if you know this, um, for a period of maybe five years or so, um, I was what was called the director of Creative Writing for the, uh, Rhode Island film festival. Oh, you were? No, I did not know that.

Okay. So, I've, you know, been on your campus, um, and had a film show there, actually, had one film show there. Very cool. Um, so that started because, um, I wrote a first novel called Love on the Big Screen. And, um, and I had studios, et cetera, interested in the novel to option it. No one ever optioned it. Um, and I thought, well, I'm going to write my own screenplay. I'm going to adapt my own novel.

Um, and so I did that and then, um, that won the grand prize of the Rhode Island film festival competition. Um, and so now I got like this, this all access pass at a film festival. And I really fell in love with the short films. Um, it just had so much in common with, uh, the short stories that I loved, for example, and documentary films, which I've done a couple of those independently.

Um, and that really paired with, uh, you know, like the idea of an electronic portfolio and creating in digital spaces. So I would watch these short documentaries, almost like character sketches, really. Um, and I thought I can make one of these. Uh, and so then I started, I mean, so being there led to me, um, going back to that idea of it's fun to make stuff.

I made my first one was about my father who hunted these things called Morale Mushrooms, which is a really cool family artifact that we have, um, but, I mean, for example, there was this guy named Chris Sparling. He was at the film festival, and he had just written this screenplay called Buried, and Ryan Reynolds was the star of this, this great, this, he wrote this screenplay so that he could star in his own screenplay, and almost the whole film takes place in a coffin buried in the ground.

I don't know if you've ever seen Buried, but anyway. Ryan Reynolds ended up wanting to do it. And he was like, well, I can't say no to Ryan Reynolds, but I wanted to interview this guy. So, um, and other people like him. And so I started this podcast called it Torg Stories. So if I was like, Hey, Chris, do you want to, you know, have dinner for an hour? Talk to me. You know, no, not really.

Um, I'm not too busy , but if I, if I get in touch and say, Hey, I have a podcast, would you be a guest on my podcast? People tended to say yes to that more than dinner with me. So that, that's kind of where it started. So it's been 20 years. They're not all available 'cause I've changed platforms a couple times. Sure. But it's just kind of turned into one. I get to talk to my sister. She's my most, we kind of co-host most of the time. Okay, great. And then it continues to be an excuse.

Um, to just invite anybody I want to talk to for an hour onto my podcast. Well, I certainly understand that. I mean, that's part of why you're here, Bill Yeah. I wondered what, like what you would say is your motivation. I mean, I'm sure it's multi-pronged to have these conversations. Yeah, well, it is multi-pronged. Um, I absolutely love the community that we get to work with and that we serve with our. platform.

Um, and I, you know, I often, I think, as I mentioned before we started recording, you know, I feel like I've known you for a long time, even though we haven't actually sat down to have a conversation like this. Um, and there's a lot of people out there like that, you know, I've discovered them. Um, through ways that they have been using the platform or things that they have shared in other social media areas where they may have tagged Digication or, um, been speaking specifically about.

using ePortfolios or, um, other kinds of high impact practices where they're using Digication. And it's just been such a joyful experience to see how, you know, people are using something that I've created and the value that they have found in their teaching, the value that students have found in, you know, learning about themselves.

Connecting to other people within their school communities or beyond, um, you know, we talked a little bit about these kind of shifting kind of life trajectories and kind of pinnacle moments and very often those Stories come out within the pages that they create within Digication. So you do get these kind of windows into the, the people that you're, you know, helping to support and serve. And, um, but I don't often have the opportunity to interact with everyone.

And, right that's something that really shifted when I, um, You know, began focusing on Digication full time and was no longer directly in the classroom working with students one on one. Um, so this is something that we've wanted to do for a long time. I think we're in our third year now and, um, it's just so much fun to have the, the chance to, to talk to people and to be able to share.

Their experience with, with other people that are kind of following our, our channel and interested in the, the bigger community that they've kind of become a part of through the use of this platform too. Right. Yeah.

Um, so I know another element of your life that's very important is your love of basketball. And I hope that you might share some stories about that aspect of yourself as well. Yeah, you know the first thing, I've always kind of balanced between Um, liking to make stuff, which started as writing and then just being a basket, a college, a small college basketball player and a basketball coach. And I used to like try to, I used to hide those parts of myself from each other's camp.

Like, um, you know, when I was applying for University jobs, I wasn't necessarily saying anything about basketball. And so I don't know if you'll know any of these names, but somebody like Pat Conroy, um, who wrote "The Prince of Tides." Um, so he, he was a Writer. Um, you know, a respected Writer at universities who also played basketball at the Citadel.

Um, and who kind of balanced, um, Sports and Academics and a guy named Richard Ford, uh, who won the Pulitzer and he wrote a book called "The Sportswriter." Um, and a guy like John Irving who wrote "The Cider House Rules" and was also the local high school wrestling coach.

Um, So like those are three people I think of who helped me sort of say I can proudly be a Creative Writer and I can proudly be, uh, heavily involved in sports and really, um, I kind of transitioned from coaching to, writing around 2002, and then I had, and I thought I was done with coaching, and I was done with sports.

Then I had two kids, and I used to, so I lived in New Canaan, Connecticut for a while, and I had a second grade daughter who's now a senior, and I used to play in this old guy pickup basketball game at lunch, at the Y, and I had signed my daughter up for second grade basketball, and they were like, and everyone calls me Torg. And they were like, Torg, you're not a bad player. We don't have anybody to work with these girls. Will you do it?

And so literally, I just went from being, okay, I'll, I'll work with these second graders. So that was like 15 little girls. And then I immediately started to see like, Yes, I'm connecting with my students in the classroom, um, but nothing like I'm connecting with these 15 second graders who I'm spending all this time with.

So I just, it's sort of weird, I just kind of follow my daughter Charlotte through school from second grade up through being a senior and then like one thing leads to another, you know, she's a seventh grader. And they're like, would you coach the seventh grade? And then I was an assistant and our head coach here at Watauga High School. Her name is Laura Barry. And she took an assistant job surprisingly to us at Davidson College last August.

And so it's like, she's like, I think you should do it. And you know, some of the parents were like, you should do it. Um, and there's trickiness in being that. So I have two daughters on the team. It's hard on them. You know, I make. Every day you make decisions that make some people unhappy. There's no way you can avoid it. Um, I'm sure you run into that managing your company. Um, and they, sometimes people take it out on my kids a little bit. Um, but they were all for it.

So we just had a really incredible season, uh, where we went to the final four and we played at Wake Forest. Um, so we lost in the final four in a close game, um, which was exhausting, but also thrilling. So, um, I've always kind of just like balanced those two parts of my life, my, my writing, teaching, writing self with my, um, spending my afternoons playing, you know, working with kids in the gym.

So it's much more, it started out much more as a way to be around my daughters and be around their peers and it did basketball, um, although I might be tricking myself a little bit on that. Oh, I mean, I just think that that is so wonderful and what an opportunity for your daughters to, to be able to watch you in this kind of leadership and mentoring and coaching role throughout their childhood. And, you know, you mentioned that.

Um, you know, you're making these decisions every day and that not, you know, not everyone's going to be happy with those decisions and even for them to be able to see that kind of decision making and response to, you know, certain times where there may be friction and, uh, enjoying the, the competition, even when, you know, the, the wind might not come through. Um, you know, what a wonderful experience. Right.

If you take it back to like Art and Sports, I mean, something I could start to see when my kids were very young was some of the things that I had learned from sports that had served me well, um, as being creative in that, for example, just the idea of perseverance or taking criticism. So, you know, I grew up a basketball player, constantly being evaluated, sometimes not very cheerfully, um, my performance. And so when I was in graduate school and.

Getting feedback on things I had written, you know, some people really struggled with that. And for me, it was something that I was used to, or, um, maybe, maybe set my first novel out, you know, 75 times, um, until finally someone, you know, an independent press took it. And just that it never occurred to me that I was going to stop sending it out. Whereas, I could see that other people without that sports background maybe were more apt to give up.

Or, you know, I applied for 50 jobs coming out of school and only had four interviews. So just like some of the things I learned from sticking with something in Sports or getting used to setbacks really transferred to lots of other areas of life. And so that's like something I wanted for my kids and the reason I sort of re engaged with Sports, which of course you can get in other ways from sports, but that was just a path that we took.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel really fortunate that, um, you know, I had a lot of support from my father and he always watched a lot of College Basketball. So, uh, I also played basketball growing up. Um, and, and soccer. I was better on the soccer field than on the basketball court, but I always enjoyed the game and being part of the team and I talked to my kids a lot about, you know, just go try out. You may not get to play most games.

You may end up sitting on the bench unless your team's really far ahead and you might get out there for the last five minutes or something, or you might find that this is something that, you know, becomes a new passion for you, but you know, you don't know until you, until you give it a go. And I loved being part of the basketball team, even though most of my role was just helping during practice. You know, I didn't mind that I was spending time just cheering on the the sideline.

Yeah, that's a hard sell probably always but today just that all the rewards there are for being on a team which have nothing to do with the number of minutes that you're on the court or the shots that you're getting. That's something that I'm always trying to point out and that I think kids would see if they were sort of left to see it on their own, but they hear so much from you know. 'How many points did you score?' You're not getting to play. You should be playing.

So it just always, you know, it is fun to do those things, but also just pointing out all the rewards there are that have nothing to do with play. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm sure so, and you may have some obvious parallels that you can draw from, but I can't imagine that this experience coaching doesn't somehow find its way into the way that you teach too. Are there certain things that you draw from? And I feel. I sort of try to not like behave totally like a coach in the classroom, but I think I fail in that. I guess I worry about that.

I know that the classroom is not the practice court gym, um, but even some of my students, I think there's just something about me that says coach because some of my students sort of fall into calling me coach. In the classroom, I think just because of the way I am, which is probably louder than most professors, more excitable, more like moving around the room, sitting down next to you like, what's going on here?

Maybe, you know, not not like confrontational, but just More like, I am a presence here that you're going to interact with when you're in this room. Um, and I think it, most of the time, in observations, you know, from superiors or colleagues, it's usually very positive, even though I feel self conscious about trying to tone that down a little bit.

Um, but I do think that this, this would be what I would point to as a coach and as a professor, you know, the ability to learn content, the ability to present the content in an engaging way that makes it easily digestible to the audience, whether it's a player or a student. Um, those are really important in both of those spaces and probably strengths of mine.

Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine that your students really Enjoy the level of energy that you bring to the classroom, and I think for many people, you know, that maybe don't know you and your classroom just listening to this and thinking back that your title is Lecturer and Rhetoric and Composition, and I can imagine that, you know, the first vision may have been someone standing at a podium at the front of the classroom and I

can imagine that, you know, the experience in your classroom is very different that, you know, you're moving around and talking to students and have a, um, high level of enthusiasm about, um, Storytelling and learning and student success. And I think that, um, one of the most transformative experiences I had as a teacher was I participated in what's called the National Writing Project.

And that's when I say I went from a person who set, who stood at the podium and prepared lessons to a person who sat next to my students as a fellow Writer and creator. So that changed everything. So it's even, even. Sometimes that's caused me, you know, cause I've also, I've taught every grade, um, six through graduate school. So I've taught sixth graders and I've taught every single grade in between sixth grade and seniors, uh, in high school.

And then all the way up to working with graduate students, um, in college. So, um, and one thing that ran into trouble sometimes Would be a supervisor like a principal would come in and observe me and they would be like, well, where's your teaching? You didn't do anything It's like everyone in the room has a book that they're really interested in and everyone is working on a writing project.

You know with enthusiasm and all I'm doing is walking around and saying keep going you're doing great as you ask questions So it's a style that sometimes I had to sell and frame to my superiors, but, uh, it's certainly a much more fun day working with students when that's the way that you're working. Absolutely. And that, you know, I wish that more classrooms could, could be that way. And, uh, I hope you get a lot of support from your superiors currently in, in that style.

I mean, great teaching is having that student engagement, right? Yeah. The last two stops for me, you know, St. John's, uh, and here at App State, um, incredible support. Just like, um, I feel like, um, yeah, everybody's concerned about how I'm feeling. It is my energy good. And, um, as opposed to like giving me orders about things. So, um, I, I, at App State, I feel like I'm with my people, uh, as far as pedagogy is concerned. Yeah.

Now, Bill, I have to. Mention this because it's behind you. In your video, you have a big, uh, the big word 'Believe' up there. Right. Would you mind talking about that a little bit? So does that mean that you've seen 'Ted Lasso' or you have not? I have seen a, I have not seen every episode, but I am a fan, but yeah. Um, it sounds like that might be coming from Ted Lasso That's right. So, um, I mean, I already had, uh, I can't quite remember the poster, but way before Ted Lasso.

I had a picture, um, of a unicorn in therapy. On the wall of my office, um, and the unicorn is being told you have to believe in yourself. Um, so just a super corny, earnest, perhaps midwestern - I'm from Indiana - um, you know, of just being a good person and being helpful and we can do it. Um, and so Ted Lasso was a really unusual show about, you know, kindness, uh, and it was weird to have, um, Such a positive lead character in a show.

Um, and so I, I also have some Ted Lasso figurines back there. Some of those, those are presents also from my family. Um, but, um, I just sort of load up behind me. With artifacts of family life, mostly a little bit of basketball. I got a little Larry Bird back there. Um, and then, and then Ted, you know, I like Jason Sudeikis, who I think co created Ted Lasso, um, college basketball player, which people don't know. Um, I'm also a big standup comedy guy. Um, so that's SNL and he was on SNL.

So there's a lot of intersections of like the stuff I love, which is sports and laughing and making stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it sounds like kindness also, and yeah. Thanks. Good. I, yeah. Great. Care for people. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Bill. It was wonderful to have a chance to connect with you and get to know you a bit more, even though I've felt like we've known each other a long time. I really appreciate it. Um, I'm excited to share your story with our listeners too. Yeah, I enjoyed, I enjoyed talking with a host for a change. Usually I'm the one who's trying to listen and also see what question I'm going to next.

So it was, it was great to have you, uh, carry the workload today, Kelly. Yeah. Well, my, my absolute pleasure. Take good care. All right. Thank you. Bye.