"It's the Email that's stupid, not you? Right?!" - Nick Burns

I just had to share a clip from one of my favorite SNL sketches (it is technology-related)! If you have never seen Nick Burns, you have to check it out! MOVE!

I’ve always been interested in technology, and I’ve picked up on it fairly easily ever since I took a class on computers in the workplace my senior year in high school. In 1997, the class focused on basics like word processing programs, PowerPoint, and how to format resumes and memos. But, it was a good introduction that helped me become more familiar with the language and general functions of computers, which in turn helped me through college as technology quickly advanced. In my first-year English class, we designed our own web pages, and I enjoyed the challenge of learning some basic HTML. I am by no means a technology expert, but my friends and family seem to call me first when their computer crashes or they want to know how to change the margin size in a Word document. My undergraduate work was in Communications, specifically graphic design and desktop publishing. During this time, I cultivated a love for visual design and the power of images, and I still enjoy graphics as a hobby. I enjoyed Diana George’s article “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing.” I too am interested in “a clearer understanding of what can happen when the visual is very consciously brought into the composition classroom as a form of communication worth both examining and producing.” I have found that as a student in writing courses, most of my instructors only used visuals as supplemental to writing or as prompts for writing. I think it would still be controversial today to suggest that a “visual argument” is no “less complicated” than the “typical argument essay” that is assigned in a writing classroom.

As I entered the workforce and gained experience in the field of graphic design, I discovered that my true passion was for teaching instead. But, as I entered into that new profession, I took with me my zeal for technology as well. In one of my education courses, we created a philosophy of teaching, in which I included the following:

"I believe that it is essential for an instructor to incorporate computer technology into his/her classroom. Reasons for this are that students will need to use computer technology in their future educational and work endeavors, the Internet can help to keep educational topics relevant, and some students learn better by seeing the information in colorful and interesting formats such as MS PowerPoint presentations. I incorporate the Internet, Email, homework chats, PowerPoint, movie clips, distance learning, and other technologies into my classroom."

I still agree with most of what I wrote, but I would add that I also think it’s important for teachers to make use of literacies that are already familiar to their students and consume their lives outside of the classroom. I think new media intimidates some teachers, but we don’t need to be experts in order to incorporate some of these genres (such as the blogging presented in Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd’s “Blogging as Social Action”) into our instruction. In fact, we can learn from our students and they can learn from each other in a collaborative classroom that uses new media. However, I do know that there are many challenges, such as the issue of students’ private lives being broadcast to the public in blogging or chats or other social media like Facebook or Twitter. But, as George states, “students (today) have grown up in what by all accounts is an aggressively visual culture.” Just as we can’t ignore the social and cultural issues that exist for our students outside of the classroom, we can’t ignore the technological and visual influences saturating their lives.

My son Max (2 1/2) loves to take pictures of himself using our laptop's webcam. It's amazing that his vocabulary includes Internet, Ebay, Dot Com, and others that would have been foreign to me at his age. To think of how familiar he'll be with technology when he enters school makes me even more enthusiastic about its inclusion in education. We need to make use of what the students already know (and enjoy).

Looking back, I didn’t get the chance to incorporate all of the technologies listed in my philosophy during my three years of teaching, such as homework chats and other forms of distance learning. But, I did incorporate it in other ways, and I often had assignments that included a variety of choices, some that allowed students to use different technologies like graphics programs or video editors. I was continually impressed with the creative products that students submitted, from slide shows that incorporated text, pictures, and music to videos to comics illustrated using MS Paint or Adobe Illustrator. These projects were not easier and did not use any less of the higher order thinking skills we expect from students than those projects submitted by their classmates that used only the written word. I found that some of my colleagues underestimated the imagination of their students and followed the philosophy that using visuals and technology was a way of “dumbing down” the English/Composition classroom or was only “play” to make a “required class more interesting” and therefore not up to their academic standards (quotes from George’s article). I questioned, as Diana George does in “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing,” “Why it is that we (their teachers) don’t seem to understand how sophisticated these literacy practices actually are.”

Although I thought it was not exactly relevant due to it being outdated, the Charles Moran article “Technology and the Teaching of Writing” did at least demonstrate the remarkable advancement and changing nature of technology since the 1990s. For instance, some of Moran’s statements seem to illustrate that he may not have anticipated just how rapidly technology would grow. He writes, “We will always be teaching students for whom writing online is a new or strange experience.” I think writing online is probably only new or strange to a very small percentage of our students today, even if they don’t all have the same access to it. Also, his discussion of whether teachers will or won’t decide to incorporate Email in a course seems like an ancient debate, as I think most teachers do in some way (even if only to offer it as a means of communication). Today, I think debating social media or blogging and its inclusion in the classroom would be timelier. The one thing he discusses that I do think is still relevant is the issue of access. For example, even today, one of the elementary schools in my district cites that 70% of their students have home computers. I’m sure this figure is even lower in some inner-city districts and much higher in more affluent, suburban districts. So, I agree with Moran that “Access is the issue that drives all others before it.” I think we need to get to know our students and understand their experience with and access to technology. That way, we can work with them to revise an assignment based on these factors.

This chart is from the Pennsylvania Technology Inventory. It shows that within the Capital Area IU 15, although computers are available to students before and after school, they are not able to access them on weekends or holidays. This gives students with home computers an unfair advantage. I'm sure that in other areas of the state or other states in the country, access is even more restricted. Therefore, the "digital divide" must be at the forefront of discussions surrounding technology in the classroom. Wikipedia defines the digital divide as "the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all."

For this class I chose to do my journal overview on Computers and Composition Online, and I’m reviewing a book titled Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers, edited by Cynthia Selfe (who was mentioned in some of this week’s readings). It explores the use of multimodal assignments, which incorporate words, still images, audio, and video, in composition classrooms. It also discusses the challenges posed to composition instructors who incorporate this type of technology. I am definitely a proponent of using technology in any educational setting, and I’m particularly excited about the possibilities that link composition and new media in the classroom.

If teaching is "a small miracle," then teachers are miracle workers.

“Teaching is an impossible chicken-and-egg dilemma. It’s a small miracle whenever it works” (Lynn 250). Absolutely, and anyone who says differently has never been a teacher. There are many obstacles to overcome in order for teaching to “work,” and Richard Haswell’s article on the complexities of responding to student writing outlines just one of the numerous challenges for any teacher, particularly one who teaches composition. I think his warnings against shortcuts taken for teacher convenience alone are good reminders not to forget the goal of education, student learning. I love his candor in saying that “if productive response to (student) writing, despite all the shortcuts we can contrive, still is laborious, that is what we are paid to do.” Yes, the life of a teacher is not glamorous, and there are weekends or evenings taken up with reading and responding to student writing. Anyone who has spent any time in a teacher’s lounge is familiar with all of the teacher gripes, but in the end, we are getting paid (even if it’s not enough) to do a job, and nobody said it was going to be easy.

The teachers' lounge was a place I usually stayed away from, in part to avoid listening to all the gripes and complaints about students. It can be a disillusioning place, and so my t-shirt would more aptly say, "What happens and what's said in the teachers' lounge is best to be avoided," although it's certainly not as catchy.

Still it is comforting and “uplifting to know that less can sometimes be better” in regard to responding to student writing. I think Haswell gives some excellent examples and practical advice, and I like his philosophy of “minimal marking.” If only I had known about it before I entered the classroom; again I’m angry at the inadequacies of teacher education, mentoring, and on the job training. I may have used a pencil instead of a red pen for my marks, so my students’ papers looked like explosions of ashen smudges instead of blood baths, but they were of course no less detrimental. I remember in particular one student who was so distraught by all of my markings on a paper he thought was going to get an A. He was totally disheartened and lost all interest in revising his work. I had gotten into teaching in part to make a difference, to build students’ self esteem, not to break their spirit. And I can’t wait to try again someday, this time older and wiser, stronger and more assured.

Am I the only one who thinks it should be the cat instead of the dog who wants to annihilate his human's writing? I just know my cats think they're smarter than me.

Once again, I found Lynn to be a pleasant read with much sage advice, such as: “Give assignments that will inspire and educate your students; mark their papers fairly and constructively in ways that help them.” I also like that he advocates for teachers to do what works for them as far as what to be called, how to dress, how to format a syllabus, etc. These types of concerns were covered extensively in my education courses, but often with more biases towards the conservative, like wearing pantsuits instead of khakis and button-downs. I also remember the clichéd advice, “Don’t smile until Christmas.” Come on! I knew that wasn’t and never will be me, and I appreciate how Lynn understands that everyone is different and what works for one might not work for another.

Lynn believes that "writing pedagogy begins with your answer to the question of the meaning of life" (257). Let's just hope you don't get your answer from a bathroom stall.

But before Lynn gets to this practical new teacher advice, he discusses the theories that underlie composition pedagogy, and he even delves into politics in the classroom. Although I see where Hairston is coming from in her assertion that “the classroom is not the place for politics, progressive or otherwise,” I also think that it can’t be ignored, much the same as cultural and societal issues can’t be ignored (as discussed in last week’s class). Although I feel like it’s not a teacher’s role to advance his/her political agenda, it also isn’t right for a teacher to have to “disappear” and take on a neutral identity. As a student, I am always disappointed when a teacher refuses to answer a question like, “Well what do you think about gay marriage?” I think honest and open discussions are a hallmark of a good teacher, and when students are writing about and peer editing papers on issues that affect their lives, these political questions will arise. In the end, I agree with Lynn that “we are better off if we pose the right problems and give students the right tools, trusting them to find the right sides for themselves.”

"Learning is a place where paradise can be created." -bell hooks

bell hooks

I have enjoyed the bits and pieces of bell hooks's writing that have been presented in our readings, and I found the following quote that is relevant to our readings on cultural studies:

"The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom." (bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom)

I love how she presents the idea that a true learning paradise is one where we don't ignore the realities of our world outside of the classroom, but instead face these realities in order to imagine and discuss the ways that we can move past our differences and our "boundaries."

For one year I taught both English (grade 11) and Journalism (grades 10-12). It was an interesting year juggling the two disciplines, and the writing requirements for each were very different. In the English classes, both college prep and basic levels, I focused on research papers, literary criticism, and the infamous five-paragraph theme. On the other hand, in Journalism, where I was completely free from the pressures of standardized testing and a strict curriculum, my students chose their own topics, experimented with style, took risks, and delved into the controversial topics of race, class, sexual preference, and gender. My Journalism classroom was one in which my students and I negotiated topics and there was much more “social interaction” and collaboration to “find a best path,” similar to how Freedman describes the traditions in the British classrooms of her 1985 study. However, my English class resembled the U.S. classrooms where teachers “expected everyone in the class to engage in the same teacher-assigned activities.” In Journalism, we chose topics that were, as George and Trimbur describe, “right under our noses, in the culture of everyday life.” My student journalists were trying to find stories that related not only to what they were experiencing in their lives, but also to what their peers were experiencing, and each student tackled a topic that interested them, related to them, and challenged them. On the other hand, all of my English students in the college prep section were writing reaction papers to The Scarlet Letter and all those in the general section were writing five paragraphs in response to a PSSA writing prompt. Looking back, I wish I had brought more of the spirit of the Journalism class into the English classes, infusing them with authentic and relevant assignments that sometimes also explored class, race, and gender.

However, the articles this week, particularly George and Trimbur’s “Cultural Studies and Composition,” also brought up valid critiques. For example, I can see the truth in Gary Tate’s comment that “the desire to find a ‘content’ for composition can all too easily lead to the neglect of writing.” If too much attention is paid to finding topics and discussing cultural differences, precious time may be taken away from giving students the opportunities to practice and improve their writing. I agreed somewhat with Maxine Hairston’s suggestion that “the way for writing courses to become responsibly multicultural is not through the course content the teacher assigns but through the diversity of life experiences reflected in the students’ writing.” Although this may suffice in an inner-city classroom where the students are culturally diverse, there won’t be the same variety in an all white, middle-class, suburban classroom. For those students, it seems that it would be beneficial for the teacher and students to choose content for readings or topics for writing that bring in diverse and multicultural perspectives. I think it is important for teachers not to submit to the view that Brodkey describes as one “that insists that the classroom is a separate world of its own, in which teachers and students relate to one another undistracted by the classism, racism, and sexism that rage outside the classroom.” Again, there must be a middle ground between ignoring the outside world and becoming overwhelmed by it. I think we need to be honest about these issues and create the “safe environment” that Freedman describes, where teachers encourage “students to take the ‘risks’ that are necessary to learn to think independently and to speak honestly." Continued research on this topic will be invaluable to composition pedagogy, and I like that Freedman’s article emphasizes the importance of “teacher research” in collaboration with “university research” because who better to “shed light” on the problem than those in the trenches, those who are teaching “urban youth in multicultural settings.”

Finally, I just want to add one quick comment about the Lynn reading, which I again found informative and interesting. In his advice to “read, read, read,” I completely agree that “in far too many classrooms, students are spending long stretches of time struggling to read through a work that is ill-suited for their abilities and their imaginations.” I know that requiring all my students to read The Scarlet Letter in its entirety was in no way helping them write more “fluently, correctly” or “effectively.” Instead—what an idea—allowing students to read different selections! Some of my colleagues would have fainted at the thought.

Who you callin' a grammar fussy?

All English teachers are not like this guy. Personally, I think he deserves what's coming to him. Chill out, man.

I just want to start out by saying that I loved the Lynn reading and also enjoyed his description of the “blessed day” when someone finally says, “Oh, you teach English! What a fascinating job! It must be inspiring to think about all the richness and diversity of language as people use it!” I hate the stereotype of English teachers as “grammar fussies.” I am not one of those teachers, and I don’t sit around correcting all my friends’ grammar in my head as they talk to me (or worse yet, stop them mid-sentence and correct them). When I would tell someone I was an English teacher,  if I didn’t get the reaction of, “I better watch what I say,” then it would be something like, “Oh, you’re very brave.” Well, when reading about those freshmen composition teachers with 250 or more students and 80 students per class, I can understand why people think that it’s brave to be an English teacher. Besides, you would have to be brave to teach kids grammar, right? To listen to their whining and moaning about memorizing rules (that almost always have at least one exception and are “hopelessly ambiguous and problematic”). This leads to Hartwell’s COIK (clear only if known). Yes, students do misunderstand those Grammar 4 rules all the time. I did have students who would tell me time and again that a sentence couldn’t start with “because.” What a shame how many student errors are actually due to instruction in “school grammar” rules!

I also enjoyed much of Hartwell’s article, and I feel it gave me some good ammunition to back up my qualms about how grammar is taught (and from my experience, I think that although many English teachers may tout grammar in context in public, they still revert to the traditional sentence practice and grammar rules in private). I loved how Hartwell starts his article with the Braddock quote: “The teaching of grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing.” Certainly I knew right away that I was reading someone with a likeminded philosophy about grammar. I think Hartwell’s definition of the five meanings of grammar is enlightening. I had only really known about or understood what he defines as Grammar 4, “school grammar.” I never really thought about separating usage and style, and I definitely never considered Grammar 1, the “patterns of a language” that we don’t know we have. I think that Francis Christensen’s analogy from 1962 that “formal grammar study would be ‘to invite a centipede to attend to the sequence of his legs in motion’” seems a strong example of the irrationality in teaching rules of grammar.

Along with grammar, comes style. Again, I enjoyed Lynn, particularly his look at style, and I connected the most with the “Individualist” approach. This does not surprise me because I have connected in other writings with Elbow and other (although I know Elbow doesn’t like to be called one) expressivists. I like Georges de Buffon’s statement: “Style is the man.” I think I could get students on board with that. I know I want to read more about Elbow’s views on ignoring the real audience in the early process of writing. Along with Elbow and friends, I also enjoyed the feminist perspectives, particularly Elizabeth Flynn: “Voice is more than the manifestation of an authentic self; it is in fact essential to developing in women students a strong self.” I want to be a teacher who helps her students find their “own most powerful and unique voice.” Lynn’s article also delved into issues about “goodness” and “correctness” and how this relates to minority populations and dialects. I loved Suzette Haden Elgin’s brave statement: “ONE FORM OF LANGUAGE IS AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. DAMN RIGHT!” I agree that saying one form of language is better than another is stupid and does reinforce the power of the majority. But, unfortunately, we also can’t ignore the fact that we “privilege Standard English” in this country, and that changing the world isn’t easy, although we can try. In the meantime, I think encouraging these students to be “doublevoiced” is a good way to help them adapt and succeed, without abandoning their culture. But, I have to add Genevea Smitherman’s quote: “Saying something correctly, and saying it well, are two entirely different Thangs.” Love it!

What if us Standard English speakers had to stand up for our way of speaking because "Black English" or some other minority dialect was the new accepted standard? Walk a mile in someone else's shoes.

So, as I scan my six pages of typed notes on this week’s readings, I can see not only that there was a lot of information to digest, but also that there was much that I connected with and found valuable and interesting. My view on teaching grammar has been that it is perhaps a necessary evil, but that there must be some way to make it more interesting and pertinent to my students. I do not have happy memories of learning the rules of punctuation, pronoun and antecedent agreement, misplaced and dangling modifiers, etc. So, I always told myself that if I became a teacher, I would make grammar fun. Well, probably needless to say, I didn’t succeed in that goal. I tried daily MUG shot activities and sentence combining along with more traditional methods, but I still didn’t see any concrete evidence that these things were helping improve my students’ writing, and now I know why. “Grammar…cannot be looked upon as a substitute for, or a gauge of, the ability to write. The only test of the power of expression is a test of the power of expression” (Joseph Meyer Rice).

All I Really Need To Know I Learned From The Beatles

“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup.” Who says it better than The Beatles? I think the eight-year-old mentioned in Britton’s “Shaping at the Point of Utterance” captures the same idea, just not quite as poetically as John Lennon did in his "Across the Universe" lyrics. He said, “(Writing) just comes into your head, it’s not like thinking, it’s just there.” I relate to this when reflecting on my own writing process. Sometimes it feels like there is some magical force compelling me to write more, my words flowing out from my fingertips as I rapidly type away on my little MacBook.

But, Flower and Hayes I think would call my “magical force” their “myth of discovery.” They believe there is no mysterious idea lurking in your mind just waiting to be brought out through writing. Instead, they believe that discovery and its insights are “only the end result of a complicated intellectual process.” As I read more, it seemed clear how their research showed that writers do make meanings instead of finding them. I think their definition of the Rhetorical Problem and the six parts they outline make sense. However, I did feel like something was missing in their findings. Is it the emotion that Alice Brand discusses in “The Why of Cognition?” I’m not convinced because I didn’t understand how Flower and Hayes’s model ignores emotion. Their test subjects did seem to follow their emotions when deciding how they wanted to be perceived by their reader or how they wanted to affect their audience. One study member said, “I feel enormously doubtful of my capacity to relate very effectively to the audience,” and she went on about how she would try to present herself in “a simple and straightforward and unpretentious way, I hope.” I don’t think that this statement implies “emotional neutrality.” I think these writers did seem to be exercising “inclusion and exclusion” based on their feelings.

I know that when I write my emotions play a role in deciding how to move forward or how to tweak what I’ve written. I feel like my process is much like the “Retrospective Structuring” of Perl and Egendorf: “shuttling back and forth from (my) sense of what (I) wanted to say to the words on the page and back to address what is available to (me) inwardly.” I think if I recorded my every thought during my process (as did the Flower and Hayes study participants) that I would see how I do have goals outside of just the assignment and audience. However, I know that sometimes those things come naturally, or I don’t consciously ponder over them. I think that this is why teaching this process is so challenging. I appreciate that Flower and Hayes say, “We can help (students) create inspiration” rather than just waiting for it by teaching them to “explore and define their own problems.” But, as I think it goes in most theories about teaching, this seems easier said than done.

English (or is it Engfish) 101?

When I saw this week’s theme was “Basic Writers,” I was excited for what our theorists were going to say about the topic. My “lower level” English classes were my most challenging, especially the writing instruction. Our junior English classes were divided into Honors, College Prep, General, and Low Level sections. Of course, all new teachers were assigned to the low level courses, the administration not so wisely giving the most challenging section to the least experienced teacher. The aim of the writing instruction in the low level course was to help the students score in the proficient category on the PSSA writing test. Unfortunately, as Mike Rose asserts in “The Language of Excursion,” “when in doubt or when scared or when pressed, (we) count.” The pressure was to get the students’ writing to the point where it would pass as proficient based on the PSSA writing rubric. Although the rubric is not all about conventions and counting errors, it still proves to be a “way out,” an easy method for objectively judging student writing.

As Deborah Mutnick states in “On the Academic Margins,” the “national mania for standards and assessment” does certainly complicate the debate over the best way to proceed with basic writing instruction. Mutnick says teachers are faced with a dilemma: “everyday work of teaching is shaped by institutional and political forces rather than by student needs.” I think this sums up what is happening when teachers are pressured to help students pass a test rather than to help students become better writers. In my school, if we failed to provide adequate instruction to help students pass the PSSA writing test, they were placed in remediation (this word now has a whole new meaning to me after reading Rose’s article). We were told to use the threat of remediation, endless drills and virtual workbook exercises in the computer lab, during senior year study period as a tool to get students to care about the writing test. Even if I had threatened burning at the stake as a punishment, many students still would not have passed. It was true that some had just given up on writing and didn’t try, but more often students just didn’t know how to write at a proficient level no matter how hard they tried. And I had not been adequately prepared in how to teach them to write, so we were stuck in a circle of continually disappointing each other.

Unfortunately, teachers are faced with political pressures of "teaching to the test" and cannot always do what they think is actually best for their students.

Although the articles we read this week were geared towards college writing instruction, I did find that much of it also applied to the problems I encountered in my secondary basic writing courses. I felt that these students were at a disservice by being separated from their peers based on ability. In Mutnick’s article, she quotes Peter Dow Adams, who was questioning “the benefit of homogenous classes.” Adams said the message we are sending is “We don’t expect you to be able to write well.” My “remedial” students definitely felt this way; they continually repeated to me, “I don’t know how to write. That’s why I’m in here.” This was the go-to excuse when I confronted students who would respond to writing prompts by slumping into their chairs and pouting rather than even attempting to write. I really enjoyed the idea of the “Studio” that Mutnick presents as an alternative to basic writing. I am usually drawn to ideas that are outside of what Mutnick calls “traditional educational frameworks.” However, I’m not sure how this idea could translate into a secondary classroom.

Another issue that was repeatedly mentioned in this week’s readings was the debate over how and to what extent grammar instruction should be included in basic writing courses. Sondra Perl’s “study of unskilled college writers” was mentioned in Mutnick’s article. This study “showed how overattention to editing undermined (students’) ability to compose fluently.” This stood out to me because I saw this all the time in my basic writing classes. Students were so afraid of making errors that they would freeze even in the early stages of writing. Actually, this fear of errors was present in my college prep sections as well. I am definitely on the side of those who believe that “correct writing” does not always equal “good writing.” I had to laugh at some of the research Rose describes that was concerned with “the particulars of language” and “listing and tabulating error.” I especially enjoyed Luella Cole Pressey’s research that concluded in the advice to divide up the “mastery of rules” between grades 2 and 12, with “an average of 4.4 rules to be mastered per year.” I was happy to see that there were pioneers like David Bartholomae who “helped shift the emphasis of instruction from grammatical to rhetorical concerns.”

Come on, lighten up. Not all grammar mistakes are going to end with such dire consequences.

However, that is about all I found sensible in Bartholomae’s position on basic writing. In his article, “Inventing the University,” he says that in order for students to succeed in college-level writing, they must “speak in the voice and through the codes of those of us with power and wisdom.” Maybe I’m not understanding him, but it seems that he is actually suggesting we not only embrace what Macrorie called “Engfish,” but that we should teach our students how to write in this way, to mimic the language of “the privileged community.” I thought we were trying to help students find their own voice in order to write effectively. He even says we should convince basic writing students that “it is better to write muddier and more confusing prose (in order that it may sound like ours).” Again, if I am missing something, please comment. But, I can’t imagine that simply mimicking what students think is “academic discourse” will help them to write better. It seems like Bartholomae is taking the stance of “If you can’t beat them, join them.” If writing in your own voice with your own cultural influences won’t help you in college, then pretend to be someone you’re not, and join the “privileged” by attempting to copy their voice and style. Although none of the articles solve the problem of basic writing, I enjoyed reading about its history and the many different viewpoints and theories that discuss its pros and cons.

Sunshine and rainbows.

Okay, so I feel a little guilty about all the negativity in my first post for this week. I had just finished the Covino reading that I thought I'd never get through, my cat sitting on the couch behind my head was incessantly licking her fur, somebody ate the last of my Twizzlers, and it's past my bedtime. So, I was in an annoyed, Mr. T. kick-butt kind of mood. Now that I've had my Sleepytime tea and have looked over my notes again, I just want to share a a few, more uplifting, thoughts on this week's readings. Now for the sunshine and rainbows.

My first happy thought comes from the end of Lynn's Invention chapter. I appreciate that his text adds suggestions of practical classroom applications based on the information he presents, and I particularly liked the fruit-poem. Lynn questions if any "bizarre practice" may serve as an invention strategy. Perhaps, and if so, I want more. I got the most attention from my students when I stepped out of the box and tried something unusual. For example, this is one free-writing type of activity that was always a favorite in my classroom: I would play new agey music, turn off the lights, have the students put their heads down on the desk, and then read from a script that took students on a virtual walk outside of the classroom and the school. Students were instructed to listen carefully for all the details and sensory images of the story. They walk through streams where fish nibble their toes and through dense forests with tropical flowers and all types of wildlife. They also go to their "special place" where they interact with a person of their choosing before coming back the way they came and "waking up" in their seats. They immediately upon opening their eyes must write without stopping about their journey. I have gotten the best pieces of writing from this activity. Students can't say they don't know what to write and it helps them try to connect with their "voice" and use vivid details.

 As far as the discussion on form, I think that Lynn's quote from Kenneth Burke is interesting. He says form is "an arousing and fulfillment of desire." Therefore, it's about writing in a prescribed manner so that your reader will anticipate what is coming next. But then it seems that veering from the expected would better serve to grab the reader's attention. In the movie Memento (which he mentions), the story is told from the end to the beginning. The scriptwriter did not want the audience to anticipate every move, but instead to be surprised and engaged by its form. So, to teach form using the five-paragraph theme, even though the audience feels safe and at home in anticipating the topic sentences, restated thesis, and generalized conclusion, they're going to be bored and forget whatever message it was you were trying to convey. Still, my students craved that fill-in-the-blank security blanket that is the five-paragraph essay. So, I guess it's good to know, sort of like backup ammunition, but I want to learn more about how to help my students step out of their comfort zone.

I pity the fool.

My head was spinning with this week’s readings. “Nineteen possible logical patterns that are valid” – give me a break, Aristotle! I pity the fool who had to memorize this nonsense. I was happy that Lynn recognizes that not many teachers or students are going to have the time or patience to learn these patterns. But, I do understand why some knowledge of the history of rhetoric is important for teachers and students of writing. Obviously Aristotle devoted quite a bit of time to his theories (too much time in my opinion), as did other theorists throughout the centuries. It is impractical to dismiss it all without consideration. Again, I felt as though the message was to find some type of middle ground – to “draw on both process pedagogy and classical tradition,” as Lynn asserts. Covino too says something along these lines about adapting the “best of the past” to our present classrooms.

Did anyone else kind of wish that Covino had started and stopped his paper with “Obviously, the definition of rhetoric is not going to be settled?” It seems that all the readings agreed that rhetoric is everything. What is the point in beating the crap out of that fact? I don’t think that texts can be classified; in trying to do so, we are wasting our time. I agree with D’Angelo’s statement that it seems the identification of the “modes” was not about function, but was more about trying to “get experience in order.” Still, trying to uproot what has been set down for so long is daunting. The PSSA Writing Guidelines includes scoring rubrics for narrative, informational, and persuasive writing. They also define focus as “the single controlling point made with an awareness of task (mode) about a specific topic.” Once again, teachers are faced with the dilemma of teaching to the test. If these modes are outdated, based on some faulty theory of psychology, why are the people writing these testing guidelines not aware?

Voice and Power

What seemed to be consistent across the readings on Expressivisim was the tenet that good writing has “a sense of writer presence,” as Burnham put it, and that through finding this “voice,” a person can be empowered to “act in the world.” Immediately I was drawn to what Burnham describes as the Espressivist’s ultimate educational goal: “fostering individual moral and ethical development.” I also liked much of the passages and quotes taken from the writing of bell hooks. Although I’m not really sure how to more “actively commit to a process of self-actualization,” I know that I want to be a teacher who helps students develop into “socially and morally aware citizens.”

Perhaps this child needs a dose of social awareness.

In class we have talked about why we teach writing and what we want our students to get out of it. My view has always been that I want students to learn from their writing and to discover something about themselves that they maybe didn’t already know or to be comfortable expressing something they feel without being ashamed and without the fear of embarrassment. I was always trying to get students to tell it like it is – be honest about their life, situation, and opinions. I wanted them to be comfortable in their own skins. I wanted to hear the voice of my students. I wanted them to hear their own voice too, which leads to a feeling of power and ability to make change.

Sometimes I felt like maybe I wanted too much, and I was also pressured by mentors and administrators to fall back into the comfortable, old, traditional way of teaching writing that culminated in painfully dull, lifeless essays and papers. Faigley writes in “Competing Theories of Process” that “expressive theorists validate personal experience in school systems that often deny it.” I do feel guilty that I was one of those teachers who denied students opportunity and didn’t give their writing the “value and authority” that it deserved. But, I will again assert my unapologetic cheesiness and say that they key word in that sentence is “was.”

It was either this illustration or a photo of David Hasselhoff holding two puppies.

Write for TRUTH!

 

My son Max dancing with no shame.

I don’t remember where or when, but I once heard the following story meant to illustrate how people lose their self-assuredness as they grow older. When you ask a class of kindergarteners how many of them know how to dance, they all raise their hands. When you ask a class of teenagers how many of them know how to dance, maybe only one or two will be brave enough to raise a hand.  I think that the same would be true if we replaced “dancing” with “writing.” I thought of this when reading Ken Macrorie’s “Telling Writing.” I was fascinated by his comparison of a third-grader’s writing and a college student’s writing: “One is dead, the other alive.” I struggled to think back to my own writing in elementary school compared to my writing in college or today. I scavenged for the only piece of writing I have from my youth: an autobiography written in sixth grade. Reading this again of course made me laugh, but some of it also made me wonder if in sixth grade I had already had enough training in “Engfish” to have lost my honesty. Still, there were a few places that I think were authentic, such as this passage: “I was very pleased to find out that my name, Margaret Rose, was the same as the princess of England. However I didn’t look like a princess because my legs were bowed and my toes pointed in and were overlapped.”

The Macrorie reading was by far my favorite this week, and I really appreciated how he used examples of actual student writing. I had much of the article underlined, strong points that resonated with me, such as “A honest writer makes every word pull its weight.” Now, although I felt uplifted that Macrorie says “there is a way out” of the “empty circle (where) teachers and students wander around boring each other,” I was also a little depressed thinking about my own writing. How often does my writing hit even one or two of Macrorie’s eight ways writings gain power? Do I reward my reader with meaning? Do I create oppositions which pay off in surprise? Do I waste words? This is a lot of pressure. These are high ideals. However, Macrorie does also say, “telling our truths is hard.”  I have to remember to keep trying. I have to remember that I may not be the next Steinbeck, but I can learn to write better, to forget the Engfish and “find a voice that rings true.”

Hang Ten

The writer as a surfer waiting for the perfect wave to ride immediately resonates with me (E.B. White’s metaphor in Murray’s “Essential Delay”), as does much of Murray’s article. I enjoy his style and look forward to reading more of his work. The concept of writer’s block as an “essential delay” is new to me, although I have experienced the phenomenon. Yet, I have never investigated it enough to realize that the waiting is actually a crucial step in the writing process. I also relate to Murray’s thoughts on how writers must write for themselves first and others afterward, that we must need to write like an itch needs to be scratched. However, this does bring up a question for me. Murray notes that when confronted with writing by assignment or invitation, experienced writers “will find a way to discover a personal need that parallels the external need.” But, how do we help our students discover this ability?

Another article I particularly enjoyed this week is Lad Tobin’s “O Brave New World.” I was moved by the passage from Murray about teacher-student conferences. I became a teacher to experience what he describes: that “good tired” feeling you get when your student’s writing speaks to you or when your lesson goes perfectly as planned. I also appreciate Tobin’s honesty in admitting that he wasn’t applauded and hoisted upon his students’ shoulders when he started his first class using process pedagogy. I think it’s sensible to follow his suggestion to use a combination of instructional techniques with process at the core.

What can we do as teachers to help students discover their own unique voice? (photo from www.postsecret.com)

Still, I found myself wanting to know more about how to help students “gain access to their ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ voice.” This is something I continually struggled with in my writing lessons. It seemed a lot of my students were one of two extremes: totally self-conscious and afraid to write, afraid to hear what their “voice” has to say, or overly confident to the point that their voice was lost amongst rare words and rambling passages. I’d like suggestions of activities to help students find and use their voice, because as Tobin suggests, we must treat students as writers.

Forgetting that students are already writers when they come to us is one of the reasons why writing classrooms lack “quality instruction,” which Rohman and Wlecke assert in “Pre-Writing” is at the core of the problem. Although I don’t find the passages about the “Archetype of the Plant” very thrilling, I do enjoy this quote: “The mind is not simply a mirror; it is in addition a lamp.” I really enjoy thinking of pre-writing in the way Rohman and Wlecke describe it: the period of discovery when writers uncover “how they and their subject ‘go’ together.”

In the Lynn reading, I gathered from the section on plagiarism that it's best to find a middle ground on the issue. On one hand, it's not fair to hold students responsible for accidentally citing something incorrectly; yet, allowing students to cut and paste a paper together is not acceptable. I agree that what is at the heart of plagiarism is academic dishonesty. I think that all too often teachers get wrapped up in the power they hold over the student and forget to be reasonable.

Sometimes teachers should give students more credit, like when they say they didn't know something was plagiarism.

Towards the end of the reading, Lynn refers to E.D. Hirsch and the 5,000 essential facts that educated people ought to know. Although I laughed out loud at Hirsch’s “audacity,” he does at least admit that it’s not the lack of formal skills that leads to poor writing, a fact that is frequently emphasized in our readings. I didn’t have any luck finding the episode of SNL in which Hirsch’s book is spoofed. But, what came to my mind was the Tonight Show’s “Jaywalking.” So, I’ll leave you with a link to one of the funnier ones I found. I wonder how many of these facts are on Hirsch’s list!

You spelled dinosaur so wrong you shouldn't even try.

Some of us wrote about peer conferencing in this week's blog, so I was searching for some thoughts on the topic and came across this video. These kids are so cute. You're going to laugh out loud at least once, I promise.

Paradigm Shift

My teacher education involved little of learning how to teach writing. Most of what I learned on the subject was from my mentor during that impressionable first year, when classroom management and other stressors sometimes overpower the will to step out of the box and create inventive lesson plans. As a “newbie,” I generally didn’t ask questions and took the advice of my mentor not to “reinvent the wheel.” I often used what she gave me or what was left in my classroom files from previous teachers, despite the state of the graying manila folders in which these handouts were contained or the crumbling overheads on which tedious notes were composed. As I read Hairston’s “The Winds of Change,” I began to recall the feelings I had as a new teacher, “exhausting (myself) trying to teach writing from an outmoded model.” I can easily recall the terror of the impending research paper due date and the dread and exhaustion that overwhelmed me when thinking about all of the unnecessary commas, fragments, misplaced apostrophes, and so on.

In the district in which I taught, all students in the same class, whether it was junior English or freshman biology, were required to take the same finals. This was despite the fact that different teachers with different styles and philosophies were teaching the classes. This certainly did not breed an air of individuality, and I felt that my mentor was quite conventional in her thinking, and she generally seemed more aligned with the traditional paradigm to which Hairston refers, emphasizing product over process, the linear progression from prewriting to writing to rewriting. There was little to no talk about intervening during the writing process, and it seemed there was a tipping of the scales towards the value of correcting mechanics in student writing over the value of helping develop content in student writing. I felt more pressure to be sure students completed all three of the required essays, than to take the time necessary to facilitate students to produce just one that was truly exceptional. This leads me to something that I thought hit the mark in the Lynn reading, that “the extent to which classroom teachers have been aware of a revolution” may be exaggerated and that we don’t know “how many teachers…continue to teach writing by doing worksheets, learning grammar rules,” etc.

As the new teacher fears started to subside, an inherent sense of wrongness in the way we were teaching writing began to nag at me, and over the next two years, I did finally begin to assert myself and get some of the final exam questions changed to reflect what I felt was important. However, I still regret that I didn’t have the chance (or take the risk) to step even further out of the traditional writing instruction comfort zone that was thrust upon me. When I realized that Hairston wrote the article nearly three decades ago, I started to feel embarrassed and cheated that I wasn’t more aware of this revolution in teaching writing.

Even ten years after the article was published, during my high school years, I don’t recall much instruction at all on the process of writing. We were given a topic about which to write, we handed in the paper on its due date (on most occasions), and a week later the proofread paper was returned with a mark scrawled across the top in red ink. In comparison, as a teacher I did experiment with some aspects of process writing, from different methods of prewriting, like free writing and clustering, to peer conferencing and keeping journals. So, I do have to assert that some strides have been made in the shift to the new paradigm; however, although Hairston hints at the slowness of the shift, I think it may be even more snail-like than she imagined.

However, I am still inspired about the future and motivated by the zeal with which Hairston discusses the Revolution, as well as excited by the possibilities that exist within Lynn’s chapter on invention. One of the most challenging aspects of teaching writing is helping students to use their imagination, to help them ignore the nagging self-consciousness that compels them to say, “I don’t know what to write,” and help them uncover that they actually do have something to say.