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I was tempted to count the amount of quotes Williams uses in this handbook. Although I'm impressed with the time he must have taken to find the quotes (I'm sure Bartells came in handy), I think he took it a bit too far. I found myself no longer reading them by chapter four, but instead just flipping through the pages to see if he continued this practice through to the end. I was surprised that there was one missing from the last page.

 

As a student, I found it valuable to have a handbook that discussed style. On the FYC Assessment sheet, there is a section devoted to style, but I wonder how many of my students really understand. We discuss writing concisely and the importance of writing clearly, but learning to examine your own writing is not easy. My 11th grade teacher introduced me to Strunk and White, and I still refer to it---usually when I have to explain the difference between affect/effect. I hope this book proves to be as beneficial to my students as S and W was to me.

 

 

 

 

I appreciate Elbow and Belanoff's suggestions for providing feedback, and I realize that providing a safe environment for students to share their writing is important. What I find exhausting is the amount of time required to prepare students for "judgement-based responding" (53).  Elbow and Belanoff assure the reader that all of the methods they offer can be attempted in the first half of the semester, I have my doubts.

If I could skip a process (without Elbow and Belanoff finding out), I would lose the "Metaphorical Descriptions" response. I find the entire process exhausting. It hurts me to imagine my students' faces if I were to use this method. I relate the experience to a choreography class I once had where the teacher asked the class to close our eyes and pretend the floor was a canvas and our bodies paintbrushes. The memory causes me pain. Simply put: It's just not cool.

Although time consuming, I do like the idea of writing a letter to the writer. I have had one teacher use this method, and I found it tremendously useful.

 

Last week my 1101 class began discussing the Power of Language. Anna Beskin told me that she had asked her students to blog about whether or not they thought language had power. The students were to respond to the significance of words such as "fireman" and "salesman" evolving into "firefighter" and "salesperson" and whether or not they felt these changes were important? Anna was surprised by how many students did not think these changes were important and was excited by the discussion these questions created in her classroom. I decided to try.

Susan C Jarratt's "Feminist Pedagogy" could not have been assigned at a more appropriate time. One of my students commented that it was "the crazy feminists" who were responsible for making a "big deal" about inclusive language. The picture painted was of a crazy woman with wild hair and wide, shifty eyes holding a sign in one hand and making a fist with the other. Men, according to another student, could never be feminists. I wish I would have had Jarratt's words as a response. She writes: "Just as many women in the feminist movement are deeply commited to antiracism, and straight people work toward the eradication of homophobia and raising consciousness about discrimination toward gay and *** people, men have in deep stake in the goals of feminism" (116). Instead, a student responded to him and explained.

Like Anna, I too was surprised at how many of my students, especially my female students, did not care about whether a pronoun refernce to the word "doctor" was "he" even if the doctor was a woman. Jarratt explains that Susan Faludi refers to this era as a "backlash" (125). Similar to my own experience, Jarratt writes that a common response to the issue of feminism is that "anyone still talking about feminism is an embittered, power-hungry woman who wants to 'bash' men" (125). She suggests a close examination of language in order to get students to analyze cultural stereotypes and cliches (125). I have asked my students to start examining their own word choices.

 

 

One of the most valuable skills students learn in English composition is the value of rewriting. I can't remember the last time I wrote a paper and turned in the first draft, but it must have been Freshman composition. One of my students, when asked if she revised her papers as part of the writing process, told me that she used spell check. She wasn't trying to make a joke.  Writing portfolios allow students to see how their writing has progressed, and can help them to believe in the value of revision. when I assigned the first project in my 1101 class, I could see the confusion in their faces. Why was I asking them to turn in what they believed to be the same paper so many times? As they have worked through the project, and see their own work transform, I am beginning to see more confidence in their writing. Admittedly, although it is great to see how my students are improving, it is often exhausting to read their papers through several drafts. I don't have a preference as to whether or not we use e-portfolios or paper portfolios. There will be some resistence and frustration with e-portfolios, as there was with blogs, but we will use the process anyways and eventually wonder what we were complaining about.

 

 

The authors of "Radicalism in Compositional Pedagogy,"  as Jamie Kinsley points out in her annotation, "calls on professors to be bold in their classrooms" and "articulate their personal beliefs." This statement raised the issue, once again, of whether or not we, as teachers, should expose our students to what we believe in.  The authors of the article believe that "the way to change the world is to change their students by giving them assignments that will force them to doubt the truth of the world as they know it." Should we stay neutral when asked our position on a particular topic, or should we risk influencing our students with our own ideas?

Jamie believes that "students should be exposed to sometimes uncomfortable tasks that may assist them in self-exploration, but it should be self-exploration and not a professor’s personal values." I agree with her that it can be problematic for a teacher to push his/her values on to students, but I worry about fearing, as teachers, to share who we are with our students. Brian McAllister expressed this beautifully in our class discussion when he stated that by believing that our students will be easily swayed into believing as we believe, we are traeting them as if they are unable to make decisions for themselves. I agree with Brian that our students are able to make their own decisions weighing out two sides (or possibly more) of an issue. That being said, I do not believe that the composition classroom is the appropriate forum to address any issue, but we should not be afraid to speak.

 As Suzanne Desmond explains in her annotation of Mark Evan Edwards's article “Writing before Students: A Model for Teaching Sociological Writing," Edwards attempted to help his students overcome writing anxieties by writing along with them. He wanted to show students that even professional writers struggle at times through the writing process, and therefore not only shared the positive aspects of writing but also his rejection letters. I find this idea incredibly brave. I have tried this before, on a smaller scale such as in-class writings, and I find it to be tremendously useful. How often have we heard that children/students/adults learn by example, yet, so often as teachers we just tell our students what to do? By writing with with students, we are able to show them that we value what is being done in class. In addition, it is the most useful way to determine if what we are assignment works well or needs to be modified.

For a larger assignment, such as the research project Edwards used, I would be concerned with time. If I were to be completely honest about my writing, there are times when I sit at my computer, for what feels like forever, before I get through one paragraph. Would my students enjoy watching the pain that I'm sure is visible in my body when my mind draws a blank? Could I explain that this too is part of the writing process, and therefore they learned a valuable lesson? I'm intrigued. I wonder what it is like to be a student in his class. Would I feel like a peeping Tom? Would I feel his sense of relief on the days when writing comes easy, or his pain during his struggles?

I admit that for one brief moment I wondered if I could use Edwards's tecnique to get my own work completed in class.

                      

Sara Wray's annotated bibliography of Michael A. Winkelman's article, "Myths and Realities for Today's College Professors; or Et in Arcadia Ego," provides an interesting perspective of the university and the role of college teachers. Winkelman's argument that universities are no longer a place of learning, but rather“McDonaldized” diploma mills where the teacher’s job is to keep “the customers happy” seems appropriately suited to American society which, it appears, values fast service (176). When I first read Winkelman's analogy, I thought it humorous, but, when the initial feeling wore off, I found myself hoping he was very, very wrong. I thought about my students---their faces in class and the questions they ask me---is it (as Winkelman believes) just the diploma they want and not the knowledge? I thought about my peers in practicum, and laughed at the thought that any of them were pursuing English degrees for the money. I am not naive enough to think that Winkelman is completely wrong in his observation that there are problems within some college systems, but calling college professors "glorified business lackies" is extreme. I will take heed of Winkelman's cautionary tale and avoid "arriving," as he suggests new teachers will, by becoming an "enabler of such a system, operating within the discourse [teachers] probably once so whole-heartedly disapproved of "(189). Thanks, Sarah and Winkelman, for your help.

After introducing the memoir project to my 1101 class, most of the questions asked by the students were about the research portion of the project. As I expected, several students asked how to incorporate the research into the memoir to which I found myself responding, "Gracefully." It was one of those out-of-body teacher moments; I heard my response and knew that although I could convince them that was all they needed to know, the word was not helpful. I decided to try a more active approach to teaching this skill.

The next class, I brought in a several objects, photos, and 2-page articles for research. The students worked in groups to create a fictional memoir using a photo, an object, and an article selected at random. Each student had an assigned role to ensure that everyone participated. The challenge, of course, was to incorporate the research "gracefully" (although, I didn't use the word again) into the memoir.

The project was effective