Graduate Instructor Spotlight: Amrutha Smith
Amrutha Smith is a graduate instructor and student at USU working towards her master’s degree in English Composition. Her research interests include translanguaging, multi-modal assignment design, Critical Language Awareness, and anti-racist pedagogy.
As an undergraduate, Amrutha studied English Education and Psychology. She also competed with and helped coach the USU Speech and Debate team. Her thesis advisor, Associate Professor Jessica Rivera-Mueller, comments, “She has been a leader in the classroom both at the undergraduate and graduate level.”
After student-teaching as an undergraduate student, Amrutha decided to pursue a master’s to continue expanding her idea of writing and what it means for her. She gravitated toward the idea of teaching English 1010 and reflects, “It has been so much fun and such a great opportunity of learning and growth.”
Amrutha’s thesis considers the multimodal social contexts where language occurs and attempts to invite those contexts into the writing classroom. It broadens the understanding of how to foster Critical Language Awareness through designing assignments to invite languaging and multi-modality. “My inspiration stems from my own languaging and my students. I would sometimes notice their conception of what it means to be a 'good' writer, and that included really advanced vocabulary and 'academic' writing, but I wanted to hear from them. So, I thought about why that might be, and how teachers should be advocating for rhetorically effective writing, not just ‘good’ or ‘bad’ writing,” she reflects. “This idea was further inspired by my recognition of the field of composition through its binary thinking. To teach grammar or not to. To teach standard English or to not. And I was like, why not do both? Why not do all of it? I wanted to deconstruct the and/or mentality and show that, actually, if we center our idea of writing as rhetorical effect, we can do this and more. We can use multiple codes/languages, and multiple modalities, and multiple audiences. We can do it all and do it well.”
Jessica says Amrutha has excelled as a graduate student: “Her thesis is an innovative pedagogical project that deepens the field's understanding of languaging in the composition classroom. She has presented her ideas at conferences and shared her emerging ideas in a book chapter for an edited collection on the high school to college writing continuum.”
Attending and presenting at conferences has helped Amrutha share resources and actionable items with other educators, which is important to her thesis. “I hope that this influences my field to broaden their idea of what the writing classroom looks like and needs to teach and encourages educators to find the middle ground in their teaching. Finding ways to invite languaging and rhetoric into the classroom, even in small ways like changes to activities, assignments, and even in-person class discussions, which I write about in my book chapter,” she notes.
Amrutha said her favorite part about being at USU has been getting to know her cohort. She comments, “I love having a community around me, made up of other students and professors alike, who support me, the work I'm doing, and who share my values and enthusiasm for learning and teaching. My mentors and friends have genuinely been so kind in helping me grow as a writer and a teacher.”
After graduation, Amrutha hopes to be a secondary education teacher. She says, “Now that I have some more experience under my belt, I hope to teach high school in Logan, which I think will be amazing as well!”