I'm not sure if this is the right place for passing along something an ENC1101 student of mine tried on his Project 2 Travel Writing essay. He had been having trouble writing introductions to his papers. He found an internet collection of quotations, copied 5 of them on India. Then he picked out the quote that came closest to saying what he wanted to say in his intro and wrote a paragraph around it. It gave him a place to begin; it took away his blank page fear, and the introduction was quite effective.
This has indeed been an interesting week. My computer crashed so badly that I had to start by loading WindowsXP on it again. The culprit? power levels dropped dramatically at the wrong time; apparently Tampa Electric is infamous for varying power levels. The same day, my hot water heater heater died. I think that is double jeopardy or something. If it is not illegal, it should be. O.K. Rant finished.
I read an interesting article by a couple of researcher in Norway who used peer review and process writing techniques. They reported, among other things, that early peer review sessions were not likely to be too productive. I can relate to that. My students do not seem to like peer review. They do not take it seriously. I doubt that they benefit much from it at this point, although I do keep trying new techniques to try to interest them in the approach. It is nice to know that half a world away, the students are similarly recalcitrant. Also, I wonder if it is all their fault or if part of the problem is my lack of experience in forming peer groups or teaching in general. I can only keep trying. Perhaps through familiarization, more of them will get better at peer review and see its value.
I just finished putting two connected articles in the annotated bibliography. One was by an established educator, Harriet Kramer Linkin, and the other was in response by a doctoral candidate, Frankie Allmon. They detail the problems that they encountered in attempting to include women writers into their curriculums and their classrooms. Fortunately, we live in an era when the question seems to have become not whether to include women, but what women to include. That including previously marginalized writers enriches the canon seems to be a foregone conclusion with everyone but the gods who create the Graduate Recoard Exam who still seem to be under the impression that all important writers are at least male and probably white. This is a problem that we did not address in the classroom. It also brings to the fore another problem: depending on whom you ask, wildly differing lists of writers ought to be included in the canon. This makes it very difficult for those of us who are just starting to study the canon. We risk studying the "wrong" list of authors. Yes, I am studying because I enjoy learning, but I also study to earn a degree. The gods of literature need to get together on what they view as necessary for study in the field. It is not fair to expect the student to spend years and tens of thousands of dollars studying something that may not end up being valued by the gods of academe.
I just put an article by Laura Callanan in the annotated bibliography. She discusses teaching in an interdisciplinary classroom. Callanan feels that a good teacher can learn with her students (388). She further feels that interdisciplinary teaching opens up a new world of opportunities(398). In my response to her article I noted that while we are opening up new worlds, we might consider redefining who should be teaching such a class more completely. If two disciplines are going to be taught, why not have two teachers? The teachers would still be learning with their students, but their relative expertise would help focus the discussions in the separate areas. We have discussed collaborative learning in the last couple of weeks in class. This type of class seems to be crying out for some collaborative teaching. I might continue this thought to include a new and different way of assessing how much different teachers should be paid and what that payment should be based on, but that would just be too idealistic and revolutionary. However, returning from the digression, it does seem that some of the new ideas in teaching do fit neatly into some of the other new ideas.
Who turned up the speed control on the semester? The days are flying by and I am trying hard to get it all done. If only I could remember what "it" is. I did the e-grades thing, which was a snap. Then I bravely forged ahead with having the class create an e-portfolio. I said, "I want it by Wednesday." Sure enough, on Wednesday there are six portfolios posted. I have considerabley more than six students. So, I allowed the class time, had students work with each other on their laptops and we now have eighteen portfolios up. More to come on Friday.
I explained content collection to a girl who was in my office begging for another rewrite. Believe it or not, she did not know how to save her stuff and had been printing hard copies and retyping her papers. She thinks that content collection is a great idea. No doubt. When I started teaching, I was under the impression that all people under the age of 25 knew how to make computers do everything but backloop. I have since learned the error in that assumption. In fact, a significant minority of my students are so computer illiterate that I have taught them how to do basic things on their computers. If my technophobic self is teaching you anything about computers, you have serious issues and need professional help.
I have been working on my annotated bibliography stuff. I put an article on portfolios in the database under Drake. That article concerns the need for teachers to build and maintain professional portfolios. Although it does not specifically mention e-portfolios, that does seem to be the way the profession wants to go right now. People are packaging themselves neatly for employment and other purposes. Whether the quality of the package denotes the quality of the teacher or just indicates the ability of the teacher to create a portfolio only time will tell. However, I definitely think that the portfolio is the way to go for the students. If a student attends more than one college (a distressingly more frequent occurrence), a portfolio can be invaluable. The exact documents recommended for portfoios seem to vary with the situation, so it would seem to be prudent to keep a portfolio with a great deal of depth. Adjusting the number of documents in a portfolio is much easier than creating a new document.
I have just e-submitted my midterm grades. (and she lived, and there was much rejoicing) It was a piece of cake, even for a confirmed technophobe like me. Of course, I have nothing to compare it with, but I really can't imagine anything more convenient. No problems at all.
I had a nice young man from AC come by my class to teach the class about e-portfolios. The students seemed more impressed by the concept of the content collection than anything else, especially when Mike from AC explained that they would no longer have to cope with floppies or devices to store what they were working on. Like me, the students tend to lose and misplace such things. With the content collection, the students can access whatever they want to work on from whatever computer they are using. The one issue that I still have with the portfolio is that as I understood it, there is currently no way to track when the student makes his/her submission. My students are very creative when it comes to evading due dates for papers. The idea of reducing the ernormous amount of paper generated by the ENC 1101 class makes good ecological sense. I could definitely live without having to schlep papers all over the campus. Since the student can theoretically rewrite his/her paper up until the end of the semester, perhaps the idea of due dates for papers needs reconsideration.
I have been doing a bit of research into what Dr. Patricia Bizzell refers to as "contact zones." The term apparently originated with a book of travel writing by Mary Louise Pratt, who describes contact zones as, "social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination—like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today" (4). According to Pratt, "While subjugated peoples cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb into their own, and what they use it for. Transculturation is a phenomenon of the contact zone" (6). Out of the contact between disparate cultures comes, among other things, new and imaginative literature as the ideas of the dominated culture are also changed by the contact. Bizzell's idea is that English studies should be organized around these contact zones, giving the context and a balanced view of the conflict. In voicing this notion, Bizzell also advocates teaching across disciplines, an idea that I greatly favor. I put the Bizzell article into the annotated bibliography.
Bizzell, Patricia. "'Contact Zones' and English Studies." College English, 56:2 (Feb. 1994) 163-9.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: travel writing and transculturation. New York:
Routledge, 1992. 4.
So, having rescued ourselves from the evil hacker, we blog again. I think C.R. is right; we should view it as a status thing.
My students are having their teacher conferences this week. I am taking one last look at their Project 1 drafts before they turn them in. However, we are multitasking; I am also discussing the logic and clarity or lack thereof in their in-class essays on the student with the rifle in the dorm. I am also taking the opportunity to confirm with them which assignments they have turned in and which assignments they have not turned in for whatever reason.
My wiki is behaving again, so I got to post another annotated bibliography. I had never done an annotated bibliography before this class; I think they are cool. I get to read anything that interests me and then write a short summary and analysis, cool. This last one was about an article from Mark Long, who assures his audience that he is a tenure-track professor in a small New England college. Mr. Long apparently feels that the intellectual efforts of the composition teachers are diminished by the lit faculty in most colleges because the writing teachers' research and energy are not expended in the more traditional research fields.
I wonder if the lit faculty diminishes the efforts of the writing teachers or if they simply feel that they have little common ground for discussion. English teachers seem to be enamored of tradition; if the division between the two sides of the English faculty continues much longer, it will undoubtedly gain the status of a tradition. Lit teachers need to realize that unless people learn to write well, there will be no new lit. Writing teachers need to remember that the one single thing that will improve writing more than anything else is a love of reading. We are all on the same team.
I tried something new today in class. I had the students use an abbreviated CLAQWA form on their own papers. Most of them do seem to understand what is wrong with their papers. They just don't think it is as big of a problem as I do. They also grade themselves on the average one whole grade higher than I would. I even got a few evaluations that included the student's plans for fixing some of the problems. Interesting.
I just finished an article from Gail Stygall, who was the head of the writing program at the University of Washington. They have a writing program that sound like it is 1/2 to 2/3 the size of ours. She was the head of the writing department when the graduate student teachers went out on strike in the last two weeks of the semester in 2001. Stygall seems to think that the grad students had good reason to be frustrated. They were dealing with the same situation that besets all graduate student teachers: low pay, no job benefits, etc...While the situation was unfair, the people who seemed most affected by the strike were the students. The grad students did not get fired. They did not win any concessions. The attitude of the administration did not change. But, the students got the insecurity of a different person being their teacher. The students got to wonder if their grades would be reported before the all important academic deadlines at other institutions passed them by. It seems to be that they, not the administration were the victims of the grad students walkout. Stygall advises the tenured faculty to support their grad students in all such future actions. I am all for collective bargaining, but I will have to think about this one for awhile.
On the subject of student's with potty mouth, almost all of my students are human and slip now and then. So do I. Of course, there is one very bright young man in my class who seems obsessed with putting inappropriate words in his essays. In the past, I have simply graded the essay rather severely and overlooked the offensive material (he is trying to shock me, so I do not react). I have spoken to him privately and sent him emails complaining of his lack of attention to audience in his essays. This morning I awoke to find a Blackboard blog that contained a reference to the senator who had been sending inappropriate messages to the Senate pages, O.K. fine, in fact rather well written. As I continued reading this kid had posted what was purported to be the actual sexual solicitation messages from the senator. They were more than explicit examples of pedophilia. I removed his blog from the discussion board and sent him a note regarding his lack of attention to the audience for which he was writing. I left another blog of his up that was clearly meant to annoy; I do not want to be the censorship board. I figure that he wants attention and wants to see himself as the oppressed social hero. I just tell him that he needs to improve his ability to gauge what is appropriate material for his audience. I am continuing the unaffected act, but I wish he would stop that.
I was just reading someone's (I think it may have been Darcy) experiences with Dr. Sipiora's Bibliography class. Misery loves company; I'm glad to hear that I am not the only one alternately tearing their hair out and contemplating violence. Yes, it makes me meshuga. This being the end of the week, I thought that I would come in early and try to get a start on the enormous pile of reading and writing that I need to do this weekend. Ha, ha, fool that I am. The first student walked into the office at 8:45 this morning (Friday), and the excuse line has been intermittent for the rest of the morning. What is it about sunny Friday's...I think the students think that I live in my office. My office hours are Wednesday, but you can't very well turn away a panicked face that is thrusting a paper at you, even if you are coming out of the ladies room at 9:15 on a Friday morning. Grading the papers may actually be a bit easier this time around. A couple of these papers are either surprisingly good or surprisingly bad. It should be an interesting weekend.
I asked a question of my class yesterday that provoked some extensive comment, so I thought I would share. I asked them how many of them loved to write. After looking at me like I had lost my mind, perhaps 4 hands went up. I reminded them that when they are writing you can hear a pin drop in our admittedly noisy classroom. As the discussion progressed it became obvious that really very few of them hate writing. What they hate is, very simply, being told that they are doing it wrong. Unfortunately the students seemed to feel that the function of the teacher is to tell them what is wrong with their papers. No wonder they show an antipathy toward English teachers and writing. I am going to work on developing a classroom atmosphere that envisions the teacher as a coach, helping the students perform the tasks required to pass ENC 1101, rather than accepting the role of the miserable creature who tells everyone what they are doing wrong. Half of the problems that my students have with writing is in their attitudes. I am trying to make them aware that they actually may enjoy writing if they stop to think about it.
Ah, yes! Dr. Moxley, you were almost there! For those of you (the minority) who have not heard the story yet: I OK'd an alternative project with Dr. Moxley some weeks ago. My students were to get into their groups and pick a logical fallacy. One student got to define the fallacy. The other students gave examples. This was to be a 1 week oral and written presentation. I have a Vietnamese student who is still very much enclosed in his own culture. He started his oral presentation on an example of hasty generazlization with: Americans think all Oriental men have small ***. This got the attention of his fellow students. As I was picking my jaw up off the desk, he turned to me and asked politely, "I should say penis?" The class roared; he bowed. I suggested that he go on with his next example. On the other hand, all the other students talk to him now; he is painfully shy. I saw his whole group clustered around him and his computer at the end of class. It is all a cultural relativity thing; maybe they would talk about that in his culture. Maybe he is putting us all on and laughing inside. I will probably never know; this is a good thing. And to think that I was going to invite Dr. Moxley to view the new project. He was almost there......