"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.