Fresno Pacific University

Single Subject Program Director

Bartsch Hall, Room 124
Telephone: 559-453-2204
Fax: 559-453-2001
Email: remason@fresno.edu

What programs do you teach in?

Education

Share why you teach at FPU

I teach at Fresno Pacific because it gives me the opportunity to engage pre-service teachers with what I am passionate about regarding adolescents and literacy. I take great delight in seeing our candidates become academic leaders. demonstrating the power of engaging curriculum as they begin their teaching careers.

Scholarly interests

Publications

"Adolescent Literacy Perspective," in The Adolescent Literacy Case: A Video Ethnography of Teaching Second Language Students Content Through Literacy Development (CD-ROM), edited with S. Pinnegar, A. Teemant and C. Harris, produced by Brigham Young University, 2003
"Enriching the transaction: Making reading and writing processes more explicit for adolescents," doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 1998
"Organizing units around powerful contrasts, concepts and content," with Y. Freeman in The Whole Language Catalog, edited by K. Goodman, L. Bird and Y. Goodman, published by American School Publishers, 1991
"Strategies for perceiving text organization," master's project, Fresno Pacific University, 1986

Honors and awards

1998 California Teacher Educator of the Year, California Credential Analysts Association

Professional and service experiences

As a representative of the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities (AICCU), I served as a committee member establishing performance standards and assessment criteria which were presented to the California Education Round Table, fall 1997 - spring 1998.
Whole Language Umbrella, executive board member, elected summer 1998 for 3-year term
Fresno Area Reading Council, executive council, member-at-large, 1995 - 1998
Literacy Task Force, Fresno Unified School District, Fresno, California, 1995 - 1996; member of the 9-12 Best Practices and Professional Development committees

Professional affiliations

Personal experiences

The Learning Edge project, developed 20 years ago for under-prepared incoming freshmen at Fresno Pacific University, has helped me refine my sensibilities regarding adolescent literacy issues. The opportunity to create a Learning Edge experience for Roosevelt High School in the early 1990's continued to fuel my desire to help high school teachers consider the importance of literacy as well as other curricular engagements across the content areas. The chance to reinvent Learning Edge for Roosevelt High School students in 2007, after several years of hiatus, has again energized my conversations with the teachers around what it means to be literate in the 21st Century.