Karina McCorkle

Biography

I vividly remember the moment I opened a picture book and was first able to read it, and ever since I have devoted myself to reading, writing, and talking about these things with others. On the playground I held informal book clubs and in high school I was the proofreader and editor for my friends’ fan fictions and novels. While I was pursuing degrees in comparative literature and Slavic literature as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I also helped found and then taught at a free creative writing summer day camp for local middle school and high school students.

I moved to the Bay Area from North Carolina ten years ago to pursue a PhD in Russian literature at UC Berkeley, which I will soon complete. My favorite part of my program has been all the teaching I have done in a small department where I got to design my courses and be the professor instead of just an assistant. I have five years of experience teaching college-level introductory writing and research courses, and another three years of experience teaching beginning Russian language. Many of the students in my writing classes had prior experiences with English and language arts that shook their confidence and made them believe that their skills as readers and writers could not improve. Finding creative ways to help students realize they are capable and seeing their opinions of both themselves and the subject change is how I knew teaching was my calling.

An important part of my teaching philosophy is open dialogue – I give extensive feedback, but I also want to hear my students’ ideas and follow their thoughts. My pedagogy has improved the most from simply listening to my students when something goes wrong and working together to find a solution. While there are benefits to the community of a classroom, I have seen students make the most progress when working with me 1-on-1 – that is where difficult concepts click and they most readily express themselves. I especially like helping students try out and customize a writing process that works well for them instead of imposing a set of unchangeable steps, and I strongly believe that there is no such thing as bad writing, just writing that needs more drafts. My experience as a foreign language teacher has also made me especially attentive to problems with grammar and mechanics, and I try hard to demystify these rules and show that grammar is not a torture chamber, but instead a beautiful system which helps us all communicate better.

In my free time, I enjoy reading everything from contemporary horror to classic world literature, trying out new vegetarian recipes, and working on embroidery and lace tatting while my cat purrs in my lap.