Welcome Page

Hi!  This is Deb Plummer and welcome to my site.  Thank you for allowing me to share some of my work and life with you.  I have taught English for over twenty-five years in Hampton Roads, and what I have learned most throughout this odyssey of life is that you are never too old to stop learning and changing, and when you teach, nine times out of ten, it will be your students who push you off into new territories and new journeys as it is with my web site.   While teaching ninth grade students at Bayside High School to create their own digital portfolios, a student looked at me and quite seriously asked, “Where’s yours?”  Of course I said, “I created our class web site.  You know-the one you forget to go to for your homework.”

“That’s not like what you’re making us do.  We’re making a portfolio about us.”

And they were correct.  A lot goes into creating, staging, editing, and revising the writings of life and these writings are “the portfolio of us.”.  On the pages that follow, I hope to provide an insight into the work I do both professionally and personally as a teacher of English and composition at Old Dominion University, and while doing so, I hope to create at least one chapter in “the portfolio of me.”

My teaching philosophy is at once a brief personal history and an ever evolving belief system about my profession.  On the English 110 page, the coursework and syllabus for this freshman composition class provides information on procedures, policies, objectives, and basic outcomes expected of students for the course.  Similarly, English 211 is an example of the syllabus and coursework along with policies, procedures, assignments, grading, and other useful information that students will need during their time with me in the study of rhetoric and argumentation.  I have also included some thoughts on the use of digital portfolios in the composition classroom as well as some examples of student work from the last three semesters.  I truly love teaching and using digital portfolios in my writing classes and feel both my own ability to teach and use digital strategies, and those of my students, are getting stronger and more accomplished with each new semester.  I am including my resume in order to provide further information about and continuity in my role of educator at the secondary and post-secondary levels and an original e-portfolio that has now evolved into course pages on weebly.com and edmodo.com.

I hope you enjoy some of the examples I have provided of my classroom and the work I do in the course of my voyage with students and my life in education and writing.