teaching – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Flipping Your Classroom with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Screenwriting Research Network Working Group on Comparative Screenwriting [Video]

Many thanks to SRN member Romana Turina for inviting me to give an online seminar on the benefits of Flipping Your Classroom for the Working Group on Comparative Screenwriting in the Screenwriting Research Network that she leads.

Every month she presents and records a guest lecture for our membership that is then open to the public once she posts it on YouTube.

This month she asked me to speak about the pedagogy of flipping your classroom to enhance learning which, while created with K-12 students in mind is equally effective – and I would add necessary – in the world of MFA candidates. I use this practice in the teaching of screenwriting in our low residency Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

It involves the professor providing less “Sage on the stage” performance and more student-focused opportunities. I’ve also come to describe it as not teaching (as defined by dumping all my info into their heads) but as curating an experience from which they glean the knowledge they need.

In the lecture I give examples of the kinds of activities I curate, keeping in mind the different learning styles each MFA candidate presents.

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Dr. Rosanne Welch and Rashaan Dozier-Escalante Speak On on Writing as Activism [Video]

I’m pleased to have been invited as a guest panelist for a Kopenhaver Center Conversation as I share in their goal to “empower both women and non-binary professionals and academics in all the fields of communication, in order to develop visionaries and leaders who can make a difference in their communities.”

Along with my friend and colleague Rashaan Dozier-Escalante we discussed “Writing as Activism: Creating for Inclusion

We empower women in all fields of communication

As a satellite location of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication, we share the organization’s primary mission: To empower both women professionals and academics in all the fields of communication, in order to develop visionaries and leaders who can make a difference in their communities and their profession.

What a Great Week! — Speaking to Sorbonne Masters Students, a discussion on Writing as Activism, Cinestory Workshop, SeriesFest, and More!

What a Great Week!

I started out last week bright and early Monday morning (6 am LA time/ 1500 Paris time) giving a Zoom lecture to the Masters students of the Professeure au département Cinéma et Audiovisuel at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – yep, the Sorbonne.

Department Directrice Kira Kitsopanidou had a Ph.D. student who was using the book I edited – When Women Wrote Hollywood – so they looked me up online and found all those marvelous lecture clips that Doug posts for me and decided to ask me to deliver a lecture on Early Women Writers and Writers Rooms in the U.S.

They wanted an international focus for their students who already know some of the great French female screenwriters in history so they ask academics from other countries to speak about their industries. It was lovely and will result in having an article I wrote for them translated into French, which will be a new experience for me.

Then I capped the week off as an online guest panelist for one of the Kopenhaver Center Conversations along with my friend, colleague, and MFA mentor Rashaan Dozier-Escalante as we discussed Writing as Activism: Creating for Inclusion on the Screen. Moderated by Dr. Bethanie Irons of Stephens College we discussed the lack of representation for writers of different genders, races, ethnicities, and abilities and how writers can make the needed changes because we all recognize that Representation Matters.

The Sorbonne lecture was a private event but you can find the Kopenhaver Center Conversation here. It will be hard to top a week like that BUT then again this weekend I’ll be at the BEA (Broadcast Education Association) conference in Las Vegas on a panel about Writing as a Career and 2 weeks later I’ll be mentoring new writers at this year’s Cinestory weekend workshop in Idyllwild, California – followed by our MFA commencement at Stephens College and a weekend at the SeriesFest in Denver where I’ll have the honor of introducing this year’s Jan Marino Scholarship recipient at their annual Women Creatives Brunch.

So I guess I can top last week!

Rosanne presents to Oxford Brookes University Students in transatlantic creative education exchange

Previous, on-site, presentation at Oxford Brookes

Thanks for our meeting at a Screenwriting Research Network conference almost 10 years ago Dr. Paolo Russo (of Oxford Brookes University) and I have been able to engage in a few transatlantic creative exchanges.

He’s come to speak on Italian Neo-realism to my MFA candidates and I had the pleasure of visiting with his masters candidates (in person! when that was still possible) and giving them notes on their drama series treatments.

This week I’ll be doing that again on Zoom with the help of Shannon Dobson Fopeano, my Graduate Assistant in the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting. Paolo and I are both interested in expanding the reach of this cross-ocean collegiality in the future!

Teaching one of my 3 classes today for Cal Poly Pomona via TikTok [Video]

@drrosannewelch

##Teaching one of my 3 ##classes today for Cal Poly Pomona. This has been my classroom for the last year, like so many others. *DW (from Rosanne’s Prod)

♬ Pieces (Solo Piano Version) – Danilo Stankovic

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A professor’s work is never done via Instagram

I promised to clean my desk before a full semester of online learning began… and I did. See? There’s room for my cat Spotted Leaf (named after a character in the Erin Hunter series of books about cats who live in the woods – Warriors). Spot (as we call her for short) enjoys hearing me talk to students about everything from films to fiction. Maybe in one of her past 9 lives she was a humanities professor, too!

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Speaking with students on last day of @mfascreenwriter@stephenscollege January workshop session

Speaking with students on last day of @mfascreenwriter @stephenscollege January workshop session.

Many, many thanks to the soon-to-be-graduating Class of 2019 from the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting who presented me with a marvelous photo of them all posed in front of the mural that adorns the conference room where we hold so many of our classes. It was a great final week of workshop for this low residency program, topped off with excellent Q&A sessions with producer Karen Loop (“On the Basis of Sex”), executive producer Aaron Thomas (SWAT), producer (and current mentor) Valerie Woods (Queen Sugar), writer (and alum) Sahar Jahani (Ramy) — and lectures on Italian neorealism from visiting professor Dr. Paolo Russo (Oxford-Brookes).

I look forward to working with all our future alums as they move forward in their own exciting careers!

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In Conversation With Cari Beauchamp, author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood via Instagram

In Conversation With Cari Beauchamp, author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

My Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting students are in town for the next 20 days and we are diving into our work.

This is a low-residency program where most of the work is done online but each cohort (1st year and 2nd year) comes to LA twice each year and meets for 10 days of intense workshops and research at the Jim Henson Studio (originally the Chaplin Studio) in the heart of Hollywood.

This week is the first workshop for our new class of 2020.

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