Syrup of Wahoo

NNS vs. NS: A Brief Reflection

2008-05-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

As the second semester of our first year of teaching draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on which group of composition students I most enjoyed teaching. And, to my surprise, I believe I’ve determined that I preferred the class of Non-native students (NNS) to my current class of native ones (NS). I’ve come to this conclusion based on a number of considerations, but there are two primary factors: One, and perhaps most obviously, NNS generally appear to be more invested in their academic success than the NS. Whether this is due to some fundamental contrast in cultural attitudes toward education, or to the reality that NNS have a more acute sense of the sacrifices made either by them or on their behalf for the opportunity to study at the university, I don’t know. Whatever the case may be, and it is probably some combination of those and other factors, NNS are no doubt more driven to succeed than the NS (based only on my limited experience with either, of course), which fundamentally affects student-teacher dynamics. So even though the language barrier I was so fond of bitching about all last semester presented an enormous pedagogical obstacle, I found that my persistent efforts at working over, around, and through that obstacle were more or less rewarded by the NNS’s reciprocal efforts at trying to do well on each assignment.

Moreover, I’ve also determined that, if given multiple opportunities to improve upon a particular assignment for the chance at a better grade, NNS are more likely to take advantage of them. I had quite a few students last semester that turned in three and sometimes as many as five or six drafts of a single paper. Granted, this presented its own challenges in terms of grading and trying to determine if some drafts merited a better grade or not. In contrast, I’ve only had two NS come to me this semester asking if they could potentially revise a paper for a better grade. And though I consented and explained to them how to proceed, neither student has since turned in a revision.

The second principal reason why I preferred my NNS to my NS is that, contrary to what I presumed going into this semester, I thought that having (almost) full recourse to my vocabulary would improve my efficiency and effectiveness, as well as student participation/feedback. However, this was not the case at all (with the exception of a few good in-class discussions/debates). Sure, it was much less time consuming for me to explain assignments and respond to student questions this semester than last. Nevertheless, my NS rarely asked questions or participated in any kind of class discussion unless I called them out. The same went for my NNS, too, but at least they have their legitimate struggles with the English language to help justify their relative silence in class and/or their failure to satisfactorily complete an assignment. Even if that’s a complete rationalization on my part, I still can’t help but notice that I felt a greater sense of accomplishment and success with regard to my instruction of the NNS than I do with that of my NS, at least in terms of my perceptions of what both groups learned along the way.

I may be making much of nothing, here, and I concede that many of my troubles and frustrations with my NS may be due to the whole Spring Fallout Syndrome that we’ve heard so much about; still I can’t help but feel a little disappointed with their overall performance and lack of enthusiasm. Turnabout being fair play and all, I acknowledge that they may harbor similar sentiments regarding my performance and enthusiasm, as well.

Poetry I Students: Insane?

2008-05-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard it said that one definition of insanity is when an individual does the same thing repeatedly but expects different results each time. This expression essentially sums up the actions and expectations of about three-quarters of my 203 students. Every week these students submit poems that exhibit precisely the same errors and shortcomings that I have hammered them for time and again: “Don’t end-rhyme,” “Don’t omit punctuation,” “Don’t end lines on prepositions or articles,” “Don’t end-stop every line,” “Don’t tell, show,” “There’s no use of imagery anywhere in this poem—why?” “Don’t assume the reader knows as much as you do about the dramatic situation,” “What is the dramatic situation?” “This is not a narrative poem,” “Don’t write poems only your mama/grandma/girlfriend/etc. are going to care about or understand,” and so on. I could extend this list by a factor of 3, at least, believe you me.

It has gotten to the point where I spend a lot of time critiquing about five students’ poems, and the rest I generally write something like: Again, there’s no clear dramatic situation, no use of imagery, and I can find no discernible reason why a reader should care about this poem at all. Revise accordingly. Sometimes I don’t even give them that much; instead, I simply circle the entire poem and write “NO”. That may sound unduly harsh, but when you spend several hours each and every week commenting on twenty-two poems and, midway through the semester, you’ve still not seen any discernible effort to improve, it is easy to become short-tempered and downright cynical with your comments. For instance, here’s an excerpt from a student poem in the FINAL packet of the semester (which means this student has already submitted at least 14 poems thus far):

In the same ocean where we swam,

15 feet long, over 1,000 pounds.

Menacing eyes

dark and cold.

Rows of razor sharp teeth,

some the size of my hand.

The ultimate weapon,

the ultimate predator,

the hammerhead shark.

There are only seven more lines to the poem, which I’ll spare you, but suffice it to say that they don’t come close to redeeming those first nine. Now, I’m not suggesting that the student who wrote this should be writing quality (i.e., literary) poetry, by any means. But at this point in the semester, s/he should be composing narrative poems that have a very clear, concrete dramatic situation, and which attempt to employ a more sophisticated grasp of sensory imagery than “dark and cold.”

That s/he isn’t doing these things wouldn’t bother me so much if s/he represented an exception to the majority instead of the majority itself. And I would gladly take responsibility for this trend if I thought it was merely an issue of my not providing them with appropriate instruction regarding the craft of poetry or not giving them quality examples of contemporary poetry that illustrate aspects of craft, but that’s not the case. (Which isn’t to suggest that I’m some kind of badass poetry instructor, because I know that isn’t true, either.) And yet, week after week, they turn in more of the same. So the question I keep asking myself, then, is: Are these students insane? Or are they simply so little invested in the course that they don’t much give a damn one way or the other? The answer is probably the latter, of course, but sometimes I strongly suspect the former—if only because being insane makes more sense to me when all that is ultimately required to get an A in the course is material proof of having made an effort.

Soliciting Feedback from Peers & Colleagues

2008-04-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Today I received an email (addressed to all of the student’s instructors, not just me) from a student that began thusly: “The information I will divulge in this email is confidential and though you are not legally bound to keep this between you and I, I do expect your discretion in keeping the following information private.” (The hyper-correction in that sentence is glaring, I know, but I can’t take the blame for it.)

Naturally, I will respect the student’s wishes by not divulging the particulars of what s/he went on to say (at some length, mind you), but let it suffice to say that it was way more information than I would have liked to know about a student. In a nutshell, it was basically a medical and psychological self-profile meant to illuminate the nature of the student’s rather erratic attendance and quality of work. (It’s worth noting, I think, that this is one of the students I had recommended to the department at mid-term.) And for what it’s worth, it was a thorough, warts-and-all kind of confession, complete with bulleted points, reasonably solid exposition, and everything. (Aside: I’m not making light of this student’s plight in the least, but I couldn’t help but think that this email would’ve almost made for a better memoir as is than the one the student turned in.) Ultimately, however, the point of the e-missive was to ask the following question:

“***What I need to know is if I can recover from my mistakes this semester? Also, what will happen if I miss more classes before the 8th, and if I can get my homework to do outside of class?***”

I should also add that I can vouch for some of the life details/information included in the email, because it so happens that I knew the student’s family when I was in high school—which is only to say that I don’t think this person is being melodramatic and/or making stuff up. Given this information, coupled with the fact that s/he has recently missed quite a few class periods, hasn’t turned in the final draft of the last paper (which was only a week ago at this point) or the rough draft of the current paper, and there’s only four class periods left (including the final exam one), what would you tell this student? And if you were to say that s/he’s pretty much SOL, would you assign an I or an F? Any feedback on this matter will be much appreciated.

Writing What We Teach

2008-04-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

I’ll admit outright that I found no joy in writing a textual analysis for the “writing what you teach” assignment. This is a sentiment shared, I feel reasonably certain, by most of us. I mean, we’ve got enough shit to do as students and instructors as it is, so the additional obligation of a paper that doesn’t directly serve the goals of our particular degree emphases—no matter how easy it might come to seasoned veterans such as ourselves—seems to be mostly an unnecessary burden.

And while I stand by the expression of the latter sentiment, I must concede that the assignment wasn’t without its merits. To begin with, and most obviously, we ended up with a text we could (or at least ought to) feel confident about using as a model for our students. The practical implications of having this text, in terms of teaching the textual analysis, should be obvious, not the least of which is that having such an intimate knowledge of the composition process and product permits us to speak definitively about how and why certain aspects of structure and content were made. Moreover, and more important to me, is that being required to not only write but also reflect on the process of writing a textual analysis (a kind of paper which, in and of itself, I’ve never before been asked to write) helped me become more acutely aware of some of the particular challenges attendant therein, and which I might not have otherwise addressed in class. Whether or not all of this had a positive qualitative impact on those textual analyses written by my students, however, is debatable. On the one hand, logic dictates that it couldn’t have but helped their performance; but on the other, it was hard not to question the veracity of that logic once I actually evaluated them. Nevertheless, I feel like it was a worthwhile exercise.

That said, I hope to never write another textual analysis. I mean, I’m glad for the insights and model text that I gained, but I really hope those will last me until such time that I’m either dead or not required to teach Comp I any more.

Being a Hard Ass without Necessarily Having to be a Hard Ass

2008-04-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

In response to the prompt:

This kind of scenario happens all the time, at least in my classes. Why students choose to ignore some component(s) of an assignment is beyond my powers of reckoning, especially when I’ve made it abundantly clear that a given assignment will not be accepted as completed unless they’ve satisfied each of them. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I still have students who ask if they need to bring two copies of a draft on peer review days, as if maybe I’ve changed my mind on the matter and simply forgotten to make an announcement to that effect. And still I am dumbfounded when I go around collecting their drafts and a handful of students who don’t have a second copy of theirs to turn in act all bewildered about it.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand: In a situation such as the prompt describes, I typically do two things. First, I remind them of the course policies as stated in the syllabus, and thus that I can exercise the option to assign a failing grade for any assignment that does not meet the stated criteria for its completion. If or when a student feels bold enough to pipe up with a slow-pitch softball lob of complaint by saying something to the effect of, “You didn’t say anything last time about needing all this stuff,” then I’m a big fan of the gospel-of-the-printed-word response: If I said it on paper and then gave you a copy of that paper (eg, syllabus, handout, etc.), I’m not required to ever say another word about it. Period. Any and all contestations beyond that are met with a firm and simple No.

Second, I collect what they do have and tell them that they have until noon the following day to submit whatever components they’ve failed to turn in or complete. If it’s not in my mailbox by then, I say, I simply won’t grade what they’ve already spent time and effort to get done, and I will thus have no choice but to exercise my stated right to assign the F. (And I won’t lie by pretending that some part of me doesn’t hope they won’t turn in the missing components. After all, having made it so abundantly clear and having given them a second chance, if they don’t get it done then I have less to grade. Maybe that makes me an asshole, I don’t know, but at least I’ll be an asshole with a little more time on my hands.) By painting it in such black-and-white terms, it’s rare that a student has failed to get done what he/she needed to get done once granted the mercy of an additional opportunity.

The underlying logic of this process is simple and obvious: it allows me to be a hard ass without necessarily having to be a hard ass. Moreover, this kind of response attempts to reaffirm the notion that the burden of responsibility for successfully completing a given assignment falls on the students so long as I am able to demonstrate that I’ve given them the information requisite for doing so. Additionally, I usually take moments such as these to remind them that the grading process is a subjective one. That is, I am not a machine and there are no Scantron writing assignments; hence, why risk putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage by giving me a less than favorable impression of what I should expect when I begin this evaluation process. Attend class, mind the criteria, ask questions, and do the work: this is a simple formula for doing well, I tell them. As for the two students who completed the assignment in its entirety, they will be rewarded according to those terms.

Transparency; or, the Whole Foods Management Approach to a Composition Pedagogy

2008-04-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

I recently asked my students to read Margaret Atwood's "A Letter to America" for the next class period and to come prepared to speak about it. Just to be sure there was no confusion, I reiterated several times the part about being prepared to make comments--aloud--on the reading. On Thursday. Read Atwood's two-page essay and come prepared. To speak. Have something to say about Atwood's perspective and how she couches her argument. Thursday is when this is happening. Atwood. Two pages. Read them. Make comments.

Come Thursday, however, the most thoughtful--and damn near only--response offered was: She's old and Canadian and obviously she's upset that things aren't the same as the good old days.

Not wanting to bore you with the details of how poorly I handled the situation, it should suffice to say that at one point I asked if they were actively committed to stumbling willy-nilly through their respective worlds like blindfolded sheep. Several students chuckled at this non-rhetorical question, and so I also laughed but mostly to help mitigate the poor form of my reaction.

Auto-browbeaten and otherwise non-plussed, I shared my lament with several colleagues (because whining and bitching to one another is apparently one of our chief coping mechanisms and ostensibly the best argument for communal office space). In so doing, one Steve Rucker--he being a scholar, gentleman, and otherwise real congenial bastard--shared with me his take on this problem. Fortunately for you, he elaborates this in his April 2nd blog ("I am the Joe DiMaggio...")--which I hadn't then yet read--and so I won't recount it here.

What appeals to me about Steve's approach, though, is that it attempts to demystify what seems to me are some of the more counter-productive aspects of the typical student-teacher dynamic by establishing a substantial degree of pedagogical transparency. Perhaps because I've had a consistently rough go at generating student participation (excepting the sport vs. game debate), and also because I share many of Steve's sentiments regarding what may be the source of their reticence to speak up, it strikes me as logical that elucidating one's teaching philosophy to students may go a long way towards alleviating their fears. Maybe more so, I think, if you subscribe to a Social Constructivist model, since alerting students to the notions that 1) you don't perceive yourself as the sole bearer of Truth within the classroom (ie, acknowledging your fallibility), and therefore 2) they are expected to be active in the construction of the truth-making process should help significantly undermine their fears of sounding "stupid" or what have you.

I feel like it's too late in the semester for me to implement this kind of pedagogical transparency with any sufficient impact, though I anticipate giving it a whirl next semester for sure. In the meantime, I'll be sure to stay apprised of how it's working out for ol' Steve "DiMaggio" Rucker.

Fear & Pain: Twin Pillars of Any Earnest Pedagogy

2008-03-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

Question: How do you respond to students who submit final drafts that do not reflect instructor comments from the rough drafts?

Maybe I was naive in thinking that I didn't need to discuss this particular issue with my students prior to collecting their first final drafts of the semester, I don't know, but it was made abundantly clear that I needed to afterwards. No shitting you, more than half of my nineteen composition students outright ignored all of my written comments on their drafts. And I don't mean only those comments where I wrote "offer some reflection on this point" or "how did/does this make you feel?" or "don't tell us, SHOW us" and so on. No, most of them chose to ignore even clearly-stated directives like, "Start your essay here, revise accordingly" and "This is extraneous info.--either make it relevant through revision, or delete it" and "Don't misspell your own name" (I've had at least three students turn in final drafts with the latter "error"). It literally got to the point where my only comment for an entire paper would be: No substantial revisions from the rough draft, refer to instructor comments made there. In the end, I didn't dock them any points just for ignoring what I had written, but rather graded the drafts on their own terms, so to speak. The result: three As, two Bs, and fourteen very generous Cs.

What I did do, however, is begin the next class period with the following question, without preamble: How many of you have ever played organized sports or been on a team of some sort? Every one of them raised their hands, of course, so I went on: When you were playing basketball or baseball or marching in band, or whatever, and the coach told you to do something, what was the purpose of his/her comment? "To help us win?" Now, did you have to do what the coach asked you to do? "Well, no. You could choose not to do it." And what usually happened when you didn't do what the coach asked you to do? "We'd get benched or have to run sprints in practice, or something." Okay, now we're getting somewhere; namely that fear and pain feature prominently as effective coaching tools. So let me get this straight: If the coach told you to do something, presumably his/her motivation for doing so was to help you succeed? Moreover, it was ultimately up to you whether or not to follow his/her instructions, since you were the one playing and he/she was on the sidelines, right? And win or lose, if you didn't follow the coach's advice, you could expect to be penalized in some way? Does that sound about right? "Yeah." Good. Now, tell me why you think I might be so suddenly interested in this topic. "Because we screwed up?" Bingo, jackass! (I jest, of course.)

As much as I hate resorting to sports metaphors, this one seems to have worked rather well for this particular situation. I explained that, similar to a coach, I invest a good deal of my time in trying to help my "players" succeed both on (in) and off (out of) the court (classroom). (Blech! It's awful, even if effective.) And when I don't see any attempt by them to provide a return on my investment, I quickly begin to lose interest in those players and whether or not they succeed, period. That's shooting pretty straight with them, granted, but I believe the direct approach is, in the end, better for all involved. And they seemed to get the gist of what I was driving at, so we'll see how it turns out.

Golf Ain't A Sport, And Neither Is Turkey Farming

2008-02-24T10:37:00.001-08:00

I stumbled upon a good catalyst, if you will, for class discussion regarding critical thinking. This past Thursday I was attempting to engage my class in a discussion on that particular topic by asking them what they thought constituted critical thinking, in the first place, and when they have been called upon to practice it. Unfortunately, and as usual, they were not forthcoming in offering any opinions and/or ideas on the matter, which left me looking out on a bank of faces so devoid of interest--intellectual, practical, or otherwise--that I was half-tempted to line them up and, one by one, show 'em both sides of my hand, in a manner of speaking. Instead, I asked how many of them were sports enthusiasts, either as participants, fans, or both. Naturally, most of them showed some sign of assent, even if they maintained their vigilant reticence. Venturing further, I asked if any of them were baseball fans, in particular. Again, many of them gave some indication that they were. "Good," I said. "How would you feel, then, if I told you that baseball isn't a sport, it's a game?" A small thing, really, but I shit you not, the room erupted in a cacophony of dissenting voices.

This may sound silly to some of you; I don't know and I really don't care if it does. But I was simply excited that I had finally said something to elicit impassioned responses from most of my students. From that point forward, I basically played devil's advocate by hammering their every emotional objection and logical argument against my declaration. This led to questions like, "Well, what about Nascar? Do you consider that a sport?" No, I don't consider it a sport because it's not one. "But it takes a lot of physical and mental endurance to drive those cars and those guys are drained when it's over." So? My old man was an over-the-road truck driver, driving sometimes halfway across the United States in a single run, at the end of which he had to unload his own truck. Needless to say, it took a great deal of physical and mental endurance, and he was surely wiped out at the end of his working day, but he was also drinking coffee and chain smoking the whole time. Would you consider truck driving a sport? "What about golf? Walking 18 holes carrying a golf bag is hard." Yeah, well, turkey farming is more physically demanding than that, and probably more exciting to watch than golf is, but you probably wouldn't consider that a sport, would you? "Of course not, that's stupid." I exacerbated the issue by conceding that, in my opinion, competitive ballroom dancing is a sport, as well as competitive cheerleading. And so on.

The trick to all of this, of course, is that eventually you have to come full circle by demonstrating how this constitutes critical thinking. For instance, there was one girl who got (I thought) unreasonably heated about my contention that baseball is a game, not a sport. So I challenged her to consider why she was so upset, especially since I had never once intimated that being a "game" was in any way a discredit to baseball. In fact, I had up to that point lauded baseball for its complexities in spite of having already stated that I find it boring as hell to watch and don't otherwise like it. I asked her why she was so married to this term "sport," and to ask herself whether or not one term or the other in any way affected her appreciation of the game. Moreover, I challenged the class to identify any assumptions they might have about those two terms and to consider, specifically, what differences exist between them. For instance, are all sports also games, and/or vice versa? Or is sport simply a sub-category of games and, if so, what criteria must be present to qualify as such? Blah blah blah, you get what I'm getting at. Mostly I just wanted to put this out there as an idea you might resort to in a moment of desperation for class feedback, and from which you can derive a pretty substantial lesson on critical thinking.

Critical Review as Transition

2008-02-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

Instead of jumping straight from the Memoir to the Textual Analysis (TA), I've chosen to include a transitional assignment in the form of a Critical Review (CR). By doing so, I am basically trying to employ (among others) Gerald Graff's thesis that we all have vernacular interests that, if carefully utilized in the classroom, can be successfully translated into a valuable academic experience. So, according to the criteria for this assignment, students are allowed to choose a short story, poem, CD, movie, etc., that they already either passionately like or dislike. Subsequently, they must then compose a review (850-1000 words) either recommending or condemning their choice by focusing their critique on two to four of its key elements (i.e., plot, character development, diction, imagery, cinematography, score, and so on). I think this is a relevant and beneficial lead-in to the TA for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that it challenges them to begin thinking critically (via analysis) about their chosen "text" in order to justify whatever opinion(s) they already have about it. Likewise, the CR is also helpful to the extent that students bring with them a fair amount of enthusiasm; that is, like most of us, they are relatively eager for an opportunity to share and discuss a vernacular (i.e., non-academic) interest about which they feel strongly, even if they have not yet made much effort to examine the precise reasons for their feelings.

As further preparation for the TA, then, I also required that they find and bring to class a published review of the sort they think they might do for the assignment (i.e., movie review, CD review, etc.). Then I had them get into to groups of three and analyze each other's published reviews with regard for the following: thesis, tone, assertions, evidence/support, and concrete examples. In this way, then, they gained some preliminary experience in formal textual analysis and acquired at least one potential model for their own reviews. Rough drafts aren't due until Thursday, though, so I don't yet have any concrete evidence to suggest whether or not this is going to work as well I hope it does. If nothing else, I think it will help mitigate the abrupt shift from the personal style of writing we encourage for the Memoir to the more strictly academic/formal approach and style of writing required by the TA.

More Vigor & Zest

2008-01-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

Two class periods into the spring semester, I don't find myself having much to say in the way of issues related to composition and/or rhetoric. (That is what this is all about, right? My brain seems to be missing on at least a couple cylinders lately.)

I can say that I've become suddenly and acutely sensitive to how bored my students appear to be while...well, pretty much during the entire class period. Granted, it's basically understood that many, if not most, undergraduate students are generally going to be uninterested in and/or resistant to their required (i.e., general education) courses, but my students' lack of immediate and abundant interest in 110 feels somehow personal. It (probably?) isn't personal, of course, but now that the seeds of this particular insecurity have been planted in my over-active head, I find myself increasingly concerned with trying to contrive ever more fanciful means of engaging my students. This is ridiculous, I know, and made more so by the fact that while I'm teaching sometimes I'm actually thinking about how I am not actually this dull (I hope)--that if I were attempting to convey this exact same information outside of class it would be with more vigor and zest. Instead, I've begun to feel like a vaudeville comic whose talent, charisma and good-looks aren't translating so well to the big screen. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Sara Biggs Chaney: All things to All Students?

2007-05-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve not yet taught a composition or basic writing course, so I’ve no first-hand experience of a situation like Sara Biggs Chaney describes in “Study of Teacher Error: Misreading Resistance in the Basic Writing Classroom.” And I hope that I don’t have that kind of experience, either, even if I recall one of my father’s favorite sayings as I type those words: “Wish/want/hope in one hand and shit in the other, then tell me which one fills up first.” (I think that was his course way of teaching me that hoping against hope and wanting what you cannot have is foolish and/or a waste of energy.) That said, I found myself sympathizing nonetheless with Chaney’s sense of disappointment upon learning that Amber had plagiarized much of her final paper for the BW course, especially after Chaney described becoming personally invested in helping her student, Amber, achieve the so-called “critical gesture.” I also admired her thoughtful and critical reflections about how she may have been able to better assist Amber. However, I found myself becoming somewhat irritated the more Chaney went on about how she felt she’d failed Amber by being “guilty of a misreading” the student’s expressed resistance to the academic institution, generally, and to composition, specifically (33). Not because I don’t appreciate her desire, as both an instructor and a caring individual, to help each of her students achieve academic success, because I really do. Rather, I am not convinced that she failed Amber in any sense of the word. Her solution didn’t work, sure; but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have worked, or that it wouldn’t have worked in a similar scenario with another student. Chaney’s article, at least for me, begs the question: Can an academic institution and its constituent programs (like Basic Writing) be all things for all people? Or more realistically, should they even try to be all things to all people? I don’t want to be misconstrued here as cynical and/or unsympathetic, but the fact of the matter is that educators cannot win them all, as the saying goes, no matter how sincerely or desperately they may want to. So while I truly appreciate the critical and rhetorical paths of inquiry (and their pedagogical relevance) Chaney followed in her search for answers to the Amber conundrum, it seems to me that ultimately an educator has to recognize that a student’s membership in the university classroom is elective, regardless of her educational experiences and socioeconomic status. She does not have to be there, she chooses to be there. Thus I’m kind of baffled when Chaney says that Amber “does not value academic essay writing, has no internal motivation to excel at it, and is nonetheless compelled to practice it by an institution that insists on a universal value for academic writing that she just doesn’t buy” (33-4, emphasis mine). It sounds like Chaney is indicting the institution as somehow oppressive by forcing its students to practice academic essay writing. She lends credence to this notion later when she rather absurdly remarks, “it was unfortunately not within my power to stop assigning writing in the writing classroom and take up some other topic Amber found more practical” (35). Really? It was unfortunate? What about the other students in that class? Besides also being so-called basic writers, did they find the practice of writing in a writing course impractical? Because, I mean, that really is a damn shame to make students write in a basic writing course, especially if one of those students thinks it’s “worthless.” Now I’m not suggesting that placing a universal value on academic writing is good or bad, right or wrong, or whatever. But it is the status quo of most liberal arts institutions and, so far as I know, enrollment is not compulsory. All educators can really do is give their students the best shot possible, working with individuals when they can, but in the end doing what’s best for the greatest number of them. What is “best” will change, of course, with experience and knowledge; but educators cannot be all things for all students. Though it’s good to reflect on relative successes and disappointments, learning what works and what doesn’t, Chaney should accept that she did for Amber what she thought was right at the time. It didn’t work, true, but that’s a far cry from “failing” her student.

Chaney, Sara Biggs. "Study of Teacher Error: Misreading Resistance in the Basic Writing Classroom." Journal of Basic Writing 23.1 (2004): 25-38.

"Paradigm Clashes Among Basic Writing Teachers: Sources of Conflict and a Call for Change."

2007-04-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

Above is the article I am recommending.
The title pretty much says it all but, basically, this article looks at sources of paradigm clashes (i.e. the linear narrative of writing ability, basic writers aren't basic thinkers) among BW teachers, discusses sites of resistance, the BW teacher's role, and suggests breaking down walls between different belief systems for the benefit of BW students.
Del Principe, Ann. "Paradigm Clashes Among Basic Writing Teachers: Sources of Conflict and a Call for Change." Journal of Basic Writing 23.1 (2004): 64-81.

Something Apropos, I Don't Know

2007-04-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

In "Literacies and Deficits Revisited," Jerrie Cobb Scott offers her definition of literacy as "ways of knowing, accessing, creating, and using information" (207). Though this is a rather broad definition—perhaps to the point of being nebulous—I find it valuable nonetheless in that it allows for the notion that all students come to the classroom already literate. Granted, many students are not literate in any ostensibly traditional or academic sense; but it is relatively safe to assume that every student has and employs ways of knowing, accessing, creating, and using information in his/her daily existence (per Scott’s definition), and is thereby literate. Understanding literacy thusly, Scott seems to suggest that the challenge—or at least one challenge—is to develop a pedagogy that not only acknowledges these kinds of literacies but also utilizes them as a means to academic literacy. This reminds me of an article by Gerald Graff ("Hidden Intellectualism") wherein he describes a similar scenario but with slightly different terms. Graff doesn’t speak to literacy or its various definitions per se, but rather argues that the root of the problem is the pervasive tendency of educators who, operating from positions of traditional pedagogy, fail to utilize or even acknowledge the implicit intellectualism their students have already developed as a consequence of their participation in non-academic, or vernacular, culture. In other words the problem is one of pedagogical theory and application since he believes that "inside every steet-smart student (which is to say, every student) there is a latent intellectual trying to break out" (23; emphasis mine). Thus the burden of responsibility rests firmly on the shoulders of educators to develop teaching methods that take advantage of "the extent to which adolescent lives are already often ‘steeped in argument’ and ‘critical theory’" by virtue of discussion and debate about so-called "philistine pursuits" (i.e. music, sports, film, fashion, etc.) (22). By using students’ vernacular knowledge as a vehicle for their acquisition of academic knowledge, Graff suggests that education will better facilitate the development of student voices that are both recognizable and effective within the public domain. Similarly, Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade advocates what Lawrence Grossberg refers to as a "pedagogy of articulation and risk" (334). This is a multi-cultural teaching approach that "values and learns from the cultural literacies students bring to the classroom and assists them as they expand those literacies and develop new ones" (334). In fact, Duncan-Andrade’s is a more comprehensive approach to solving Scott’s complaint about "the recycling of deficit pedagogy in basic writing," if only because it "believes that a rigorous multicultural curriculum should be a marriage of the student’s culture and canonical culture" (Duncan-Andrade 331-2), as opposed to Graff’s, i.e. merely flirting with the student’s culture as a means of seducing him or her into the canonical bed. I would encourage anyone interested in this subject to take a look at either or both of these articles, though both have their flaws.

Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R. "Your Best Friend or Your Worst Enemy: Youth Popular Culture, Pedagogy, and Curriculum in Urban Classrooms." The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 26 (2004): 313-337.

Graff, Gerald. "Hidden Intellectualism." Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 1.2 (2001): 21-36.

Scott, Jerrie Cobb. "Literacies and Deficits Revisited." Landmark Essays on Basic Writing. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 2001.

Mountaineering *(and a picture for TW's delight)

2007-04-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

After reading Mlynarczyk’s "Personal and Academic Writing: Revisiting the Debate," the question I found myself asking was: Poetic, Expressive, Transactional—what difference does it really make to the basic writer? I don’t mean to sound condescending or glib (ala Matt Lauer to Tom Cruise), but ultimately isn’t it engendering a familiarity with the conventions and practice of writing that is the underlying purpose of the basic writing classroom? If it is, then any or all of the above kinds of writing are not only relevant but important, too. As someone who has toiled quite a bit in all three categories of writing throughout my college tenure, I’ve found that though each of them presents certain unique challenges in terms of structure, style, tone, and etc., the writing skills one develops in the process of any one them are not mutually exclusive of the others. That is, becoming more familiar with the composition of, say, more prosaic forms of writing (i.e. fiction, memoir, etc.) will in all likelihood positively inform one’s ability to compose transactional/academic writing—if only in that it enables the writer to recognize when s/he strays from the intended style. I mean, how many of us have read and/or written essays that come across as more prosaic than academic, when the latter is the goal? Probably all of us have at some point or other been a reader/writer of this kind of essay. So then a reasonable question to ask in a case like that is: Is this a consequence of the writer’s inability to construct academic prose, whether due to a lack of experience and/or training? Or could it just as well be the consequence of the writer’s inability to distinguish between what constitutes academic versus prosaic styles of writing? The answer, at least in part, is probably a combination of both. Thus I agree with Sarah (who modestly refers to herself in the blogosphere as "Creation’s Crowning Glory") when she advocates instilling an appreciation of the entire mountain range rather than only one or two of its peaks. After all, it may be that memoir assignment or that poetry exercise that sparks a more passionate interest in mountaineering, generally. As any climber or mountaineer worth his/her salt knows, you must be practiced in many terrains to excel in the one terrain you prefer above all others. (Okay, I carried the metaphor too far, perhaps, but you get what I’m saying.)

*(TW: How'd you know?! -->
You were right, ol' boy.
It was a dragon. And St. George, knowing that time machines are not only implausible but also quite unreliable, simply used
a wormhole conjured by simple 4th Century sorcery
about a year prior to his persecution and subsequent decapitation. I wanted to warn him but I was too busy admiring my new beard, to say nothing of my concern that doing so could initiate a time paradox and the whatnot. I thanked him, though, and encouraged him not to watch the end of Braveheart while he was here.)

How Do I Know What I Think?

2007-03-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

Min-Zhan Lu observes that Shaughnessy’s pedagogy "seldom considers the possibility that the meaning one ‘has in mind’ might undergo substantial change as one tries to ‘coax’ it and ‘communicate’ it in different discourses," thereby suggesting that "‘meaning is crafted’ only to match what is already in the writer’s mind" (107-8). This observation struck me as particularly notable if only because Shaughnessy, in her chapter on syntax, appears to acknowledge and address Lu’s very point. "No sooner has the writer written down what he thinks he means," Shaughnessy writes, "than he is asking himself whether he understands what he said" (79). To this same end, she then immediately quotes W.H. Auden, who wrote: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" (79; emphasis mine). In this way is she not admitting that, while one may begin by writing "what he thinks he means," that meaning might yet "undergo substantial change" during the writing process? Granted, Shaughnessy finishes the passage by noting that a growing syntactic awareness grants the writer with the "power to make choices that bring him closer and closer to his intended meaning" (80). Nevertheless, I don’t think she intends to imply that the writer necessarily had an intended meaning prior to writing, so much as she’s saying that he may begin with a vague notion of what he intends to say about a given subject, then develops that meaning via the writing process. The struggle becomes, then, to faithfully articulate what he means to say as it is generated in the act. Lu’s argument would also seem to suggest—and maybe I’m way off base here—but it would seem to suggest that Shaughnessy does not subscribe to the notion of rhetorical invention. For if Shaughnessy in fact believes that meaning is strictly crafted to reflect what a writer already thinks or knows about a given subject, then techniques like brainstorming, prewriting, and the like would essentially be rendered as without merit. (Or, in the very least, they would be gratuitous as tools used to generate/articulate new ideas, thoughts, or reflections, which is what I generally use the invention process for.) And while I can’t remember right off hand if and/or where Shaughnessy recommends invention techniques (nothing is listed in the index related to this), I find it difficult to believe that she wouldn’t do so. None of this is to suggest that I think Lu is wrong about Shaughnessy’s pedagogy: she’s obviously much more familiar with it than I am now (or probably ever will be in the future). I just thought that particular observation of hers rather curious given what I remembered from Shaughnessy’s syntax chapter. If my logic is completely ass-backwards, though, and you wanna call me out on it by leveling unflattering accusations at me then, by all means, please feel free to do so.

Lu, Min-Zhan. "Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of the Politics of Linguistic Innocence." Representing the "Other". Eds. Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu. Urbana: NCTE, 1999. 105-116.

Shaughnessy, Mina. Errors and Expectations. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.

Teaching the Act of Writing as Negotiation: Is it Possible?

2007-03-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am very curious about Bruce Horner’s concluding contention in "Re-thinking the ‘Sociality’ of Error: Teaching Editing as Negotiation" wherein he posits that educators should be "teaching [students] all aspects of writing, including editing, as negotiations in which they can play a role and in which they have a stake" (165; emphasis mine). I’m curious because, though he directly addresses at some length his views on the negotiability of editing, he doesn’t really put forth any practical considerations about how the same technique might be applied to any other, let alone "all," aspects of writing. My question is, is such an approach to teaching writing practical, or even possible? Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I like what he offers in terms of how to approach the process of editing as a means of negotiation in the classroom, especially insofar as he argues that by doing so students are put in a "position to negotiate and re-negotiate the concept of ‘correctness,’ including, importantly, the concept of its negotiability" (159). The potential merits of this kind of practice for the student writers are, perhaps arguably, obvious if for no other reason than it engenders in them a more developed meta-cognitive awareness of the language, its conventions, and what it is precisely they’re trying to convey in their own writing. Nevertheless, I wonder how one might attempt to teach, say, the very act of writing itself as a process of negotiation, especially since writing tends to be a process conducted in relative solitude. (By the latter I mean that the act of writing, even if conducted among fellow contributors to a single text, still can never be done with another since more than one individual cannot collaborate to write a single text simultaneously.) I don’t think anybody would argue that the act of writing isn’t an aspect of writing itself, so with whom would Horner have the writer negotiate, then, while writing? I don’t have an answer for this, really, other than to throw out the suggestion that one could argue that the writer, while in the act of writing, is implicitly negotiating with the material to be written about—i.e. the literal subject or impetus for writing; the mentally-conceptualized material to be written—i.e. the writer’s own thoughts, notions, concepts, etc., that is being conveyed materially; as well as with an internalized "other" or mentally-conceptualized audience/reader. But this does not explain how one might teach students to approach the act of writing as a process of negotiation so much as it constitutes how one might describe or understand the act of writing in terms of negotiation. Perhaps I’m taking Horner too literally on this point, but I don’t think so since he deliberately chose to say "all aspects of writing." That said, and since I don’t presently have a solid answer or suggestion of my own, I’d be glad to hear what, if any, insights one of you lovely bastards out there has to offer on the subject.

Horner, Bruce. "Re-thinking the ‘Sociality’ of Error: Teaching Editing as Negotiation" Representing the 'Other'. Eds. Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu. 139-165.

Accidental Alienation

2007-03-02T21:43:00.000-08:00

Was it just me or did anyone else find it painful to read, in "Resisting Privilege," Gail Stygall’s grad student’s excerpted letters to the so-called basic writers—especially given the nature of the course and the assignment? Perhaps I wouldn’t have reacted in the manner that I did if I had been unclear about whether or not the grad students had been kept in the dark, if you will, regarding the assignment’s intent. But Stygall clearly states that her "students knew that part of their task was to try to understand what being labeled ‘basic’ meant to Anderson’s students and what their lives were like at a large urban university" (191). Just to be clear, I don’t mean to unduly criticize the grad students or their efforts since I don’t believe that any of them were acting with any sort of malicious intent. On the contrary, I feel confident they were attempting to do only exactly what they’d been instructed to do and that they were operating as such with only the best intentions. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel that at times there was an underlying sense of condescension (albeit unintentional) and/or trepidation on the part of the grad students, as if they were not quite sure how best to engage with this type of student (i.e. "basic" or "Other" or "outsider," etc.). Thus they determined to err, perhaps unconsciously, on the side of being "nice" (for lack of a better term right now). This is not to suggest that they should have been anything but nice; but rather that they were perhaps overcompensating for an internalized perception of a distance between themselves and their addressees. Maybe I’m only sensitive to this element because of my limited volunteer experience working with inner-city youths in St. Louis and eventually realizing that I was unconsciously overcompensating with them in this very way. By doing so I was, in effect, perpetuating the very "distance" that I was trying to bridge because they were acutely, if not always consciously, sensitive to the subtle differences in the way I behaved toward them compared to other peers or acquaintances. Despite my best intentions, then, they were put off by a pretense I wasn’t then aware of even demonstrating. Once I figured this out and dropped the pretense I was dramatically more successful in engaging with them. Anyway, all this just to say that when working with any marginalized group, be it a class of "basic writers" or otherwise, we need to be careful not to further alienate them by accidentally overcompensating for any perceived distances or differences, no matter how good our intentions.

Stygall, Gail. "Resisting Privilege: Basic Writing and Foucalt's Author Function." Landmark Essays 185-203.

Insider vs. Outsider: An Analogue

2007-02-16T17:37:00.000-08:00

In "Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone," Min-zhan Lu asks the following question: "[W]hy do we assume. . . that until one can prove one’s ability to produce ‘error-free’ prose, one has not earned the right to innovative ‘style’?" (170). This line of inquiry, exemplified by the preceding Gertrude Stein and Theodore Dreiser anecdotes (as well as by Bartholomae’s anecdote about Quentin Pierce), particularly interests me because it demands that I consider the notion of an insider writer versus an outsider writer. This is exactly the type of consideration I’ve not thus far "deigned" to do from my lofty perch upon the high horse of honky privilege (as I choose to call it). That is, I never really thought to evaluate the work of an outsider (i.e. "untrained" or "imperfectly educated") writer on any grounds other than what’s wrong with it and how can it be fixed? That such a work may constitute an articulate and unique expression of an identifiable and inherently valid worldview has generally eluded me because of the obsessive concerns about mechanics and convention that I’ve been trained to worry about, first and foremost.

That said, it occurs to me that perhaps an analogue to this relationship exists in the world of visual arts with the Art versus Folk or Outsider art dichotomy. On the one side are those who would be quick to justify certain styles of painting—say cubism, for instance—on the grounds that a given artist has been classically trained and/or educated and thus his compositions are the result of artistic intent rather than a lack of skill or proficiency in the medium. On the other side, then, are those who would argue that an artist’s intent, in relation to his skill or proficiency, is irrelevant; rather, the only matter of relevance is a given composition’s impact on its viewer. Basically, it’s an argument wherein one might contend that a cubist portrait by Picasso has more artistic merit than a cubist portrait rendered by an untrained folk artist, even if the latter composition is equal in every perceivable way. No matter which side you of this argument you inhabit, there persists the elitist and dogmatic distinction between so-called Art and so-called outsider or folk art, where the former is afforded a much greater social and economic currency than the latter à la insider writing versus outsider writing. Even so, and contrary to outsider writing, outsider art can be argued to possess in the very least a limited measure of recognition and prestige within the visual arts—a distinction that may or may not be worthy of further consideration. [Sorry for the lack of clarity and abrupt stop—I’ll be back later to add and edit.]

Lu, Min-zhan. "Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone." Representing the "Other." Urbana: NCTE, 1999.

"Man will not survive, he is a asshole"

2007-02-09T18:16:00.000-08:00

Let me start by stating right from the get-go that I wasn’t so much frightened or intimidated by the form or content of Quentin Pierce’s fuck you essay as I was moved by its explicit indictment of an educational system that has failed, and continues to fail, its author ("Thank you very much//I lose again" [173; emphasis mine]). Consequently, I was both baffled and disappointed by Bartholomae’s assessment that, in addition to expressing an idea about existentialism, the fuck you essay was simply "a dramatic and skillful way of saying ‘Fuck you-I’m not the loser, you are’" (173). It’s as if Bartholomae, still smarting from the personal indictment some eighteen years after the fact, persists in focusing on his self-perceived guilt for having "failed the ‘basic writers’ of [his] Freshman English class," and Quentin in particular (173). While that’s perhaps an admirable sentiment to harbor, Bartholomae nonetheless fails to acknowledge Quentin’s larger indictment and its implication of an individual who is acutely and painfully aware of the long shot odds on his academic success.

That said, I agree with the student in our class (sorry, ol’ boy, your name escapes me) who suggested that Bartholomae should’ve made a positive demonstration of Quentin’s paper in class. He could have praised its merits—because it certainly has some—and perhaps discussed how one might rewrite a less-explicit version of Quentin’s essay without compromising the power of its content. (Personally, I would’ve stuck with the merits, including the power and function of its explicit language and perhaps even reading some Ginsberg as proof of a kind of a literary legitimacy.) Or, to answer concerns of potential copycatting by other class members, he could’ve used this essay as a prompt for an exercise challenging students to use explicit language in a meaningful way. Regardless, he should’ve have done something to validate and encourage Quentin’s efforts. By doing nothing Bartholomae merely lent credence to Quentin’s assertion that he has, once again, lost.

Bartholomae, David. “The Tidy House: Basic Writing in the American Curriculum.” Landmark Essays on Basic Writing. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 2001.

#1: What is Basic Writing?

2007-01-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

What is Basic Writing?

Truth be told, I’ve never given even a single thought to what Basic Writing may or may not be prior to this moment. Now that I have considered the matter, albeit very briefly, I still don’t know if I’ve any real idea of what it is or how to articulate what I do or do not know. That said, I’ll give it a huck just the same:

Basic Writing is perhaps first and foremost one’s initial discovery and recognition that writing is itself a legitimate and powerful means for not only expressing one’s self but also a means (or an alternative means, in the very least) for confronting and identifying one’s self, if only those facets and dimensions of the self that have previously gone unnoticed or been neglected. (Clearly, I’m more or less working off of class discussion and the recorded interview with Mike Rose.) From there Basic Writing gradually becomes the conscious attempt to develop an ability to convey one’s thoughts, feelings, and/or ideas in a logical and lucid manner vis-a-vis the written word, while eventually—or perhaps concurrently—gaining the fundamental grammatical and rhetorical skills necessary to do so at some commonly accepted level (i.e. professional, academic, literary, etc.) of proficiency. Or the goal may be only to successfully achieve a “higher” level of basic literacy, I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a great deal more to it than what I’ve written thus far, but I’m going to let it ride for the time being.