Comp Tales: An Introduction to College Composition Through Its Stories

I just finished my first semester of graduate school, and during it, I spent a lot of time in classes focused on teaching composition in college. The classes were largely focused on theory and were fairly helpful. However, the most valuable experience of the semester was reading this book (as a supplement to the actual classwork). These tales really helped to make the theory I was reading more relevant. The basic premise of the book is that there is a lot of knowledge to be found in the stories surrounding the teaching of college composition, and these stories are largely ignored by teachers and theorists of composition pedagogy. Comp Tales is simply a collection of these largely unedited stories from which the reader may garner what knowledge he or she may. These short stories themselves are often insightful, often humorous, and often heart-breaking. This is an excellent introduction to the adventure that teaching will be.