taylorjoy

So how can I argue for the men in the bright plastic fishermen slickers.  The color contrast to the ice was incredible.  Blinding white with blurred red, green, or yellow.  I am sure they had a good reason to beat the baby seals with clubs.  Whether for food, oil, fat, fur, didn't it have to be for profit?  These men were doing this to survive right?  Or, as a student pointed out, they were beating the cubs to death to keep the population down. 

A girl in the back raised her hand and said, "Well then, why are they beating them only on the head? To keep their fur in tact no?" 

 I was satisfied.  I thought I 'got' it.  But it still makes me sick when I think about it.  The blood on the ice, seeping into the snow, was a less of a jarring contrast then the slickers, yet it was equally disturbing.  Let's start a campaign, Save the baby Seals.

And Save the Men who have to beat them.  They are the ones who probably need the most money. 
 

Oh the relief.... 

 

The site is up.  The site is up and running.  Those of us, well mainly me, who fretted the down fall of blogs need not to worry any more.  I want to thank Dr. Terry Beavers for understanding that all we needed was an Admin button.  Of course though, he went a step above and created a New Blog Post button.   

I hope my students are equally full of gratitude. 

 

Technology can be a great excuse to not get anything done. 

I had a student last year who argued in her final portfolio essay that writing blogs was a waste of her time.  She likened the required task to highschool busy work.  As a supporting, body paragraph, she crafted a solid argument about her disdain for blogs.  Others slightly mentioned a similiar argument but none with the vehemance of this student.  I wanted to argue for blogs and remind her of the advantages of weekly writing.  But it was too late; the semester had come abruptly to a close and there was still so much I wanted to say about blogs, public writing, and developing a online community. 

This morning the same student was sitting in the last row of my new ENC 1102 class.  I rejoiced .  Now is the time to convince her, persuade her, lead her on...but I blanked.  Why are blogs important? Can I argue for something that might just come down to personal perference?  Why do I like blogs? 

All this needs to be settled before next week because I have been graced with the beauty of second chances.  Here is my plan for her, in the back row. I am going to MAKE Blogs: Relevant, interesting, and worthwhile. 

Any ideas?

I went on to writingblogs.org to brush up on the site before the new semester started and lo and behold I have no idea what I am doing. I am lost in a new cyber world of pastel colors and new tabs. I somehow managed to get to my page but I am unsure of how I did. (ha, and I am supposed to be teaching others how to work the site...I love my job.)

Emailing and a little instruction might be necessary to navigate this crazy, haphazard world with no Admin button. I really liked that Admin button. It took me everywhere I needed to go, like a metro card all the subways and path stations were mine to roam.  But... I am not going to fret about the whole thing because I don't have the time nor the energy to do so.  I am also not going to complain--from my experience no one listens.

Oh, tags, what's a tag.  Let's tag it something odd.   

ENC 1101:131
As a class our feeling about blogs have somewhat been altered.  While some of us felt that blogs were busy work, others were looking forward to writing online. 
Blogs helped us in the writing process because we had to look at our topics and we had to know and be conducive to our audience.  The response blogs were difficult mainly because of the due date, "Fridays are often mysterious days."  But all in all we enjoyed the reponse blogs because our class was able to communicate online and we almost bonded. 
Some new categories for your typology, according to ENC1101:131 should include: procedure blog (step by step), journal blog, rant blog, bad experience (not just worst day ever blog), college blues, letter blogs (ie. write about letter "P"), sports blog, and pet peeves blog.
Thanks QContinuum from all of us in 1101:131.

A Mr. QV wrote a blog about the types of blogs.  While humorous, this analysis of blog types was also fascinating.  I want him to be on the look out.  I told my students about his blog typology and we are doing a project on our blogs.  How many of them fit into what categories and what  new categories of blogs we can uncover.  I will post our findings by next week.  {Today one of my students asked to blog about blogging but we voted against that...look for blogs that deal with the letter 'M'.  I feel like big bird on Seasame Street.} 

This blog is a notification blog.  A blog of hoping for good things in the future to develop and come from regular writing.  Whether that regular writing comes from whining about one's day or rejoicing in the petty small cracks in the sidewalk back to the dorm, writing is writing is writing. 

I have to admit that my students are writing better.  I told them that today and they shrugged it off like they do everythign at eight in the morning.  One of the students in my class just looked at me and said "Of we are...you make us write all the time.  I just sit down now and type away. I don't dread it anymore."  After an hour or so to reflect that makes sense.  The more you do something the better you are at; like playing the piano.  Or rather, playing tennis...tennis is much more fun than the piano.  A video game metaphor would easily suffice here.  Play me often and you will get better. My fingers have always flown over the key board.  Often faster or slower than my mind which is the cause of the errors, the typos and such.  But in any event, I have, like those students in my class, often dreaded writing.  I have so much to say and no proper way to say.  I will sooner or later begin to take a lesson from myself about regular writing.  Maybe I will blog more. 

No matter what pedagogy I have adopted/adapted, I am most concerned with the critical thinking of my students.  I am fascinated to hear them exclaim that they had never thought of it that way before or that they are paying more attention to the world around them thanks to class.  I enjoy hearing the connections between ENC 1101 and what is going on in the Sociology classrooms.  Connections are what make it real for the students.  When students begin to grasp something, their minds begin churning and I can almost smell the burning.  That stench makes me so happy. 

At San Diego, we in the Rhetoric field complained that basic writers were farmed out to community college programs without facult or student consent or input.  Yet, both administrators won. Financially, the community college gained the tution of all incoming freshpeople who did not pass the assessment exam. Then they hired adjuncts at a very low, debasing pay to teach these 'basic' writers how to write.  The university won financially as well because the students were not given credit for these community college classes and once, or rather if, they passed freshpeople still had to enroll in freshpeople comp I and II which were taught by adjuncts.  Everyone but the students and the professors got rich. 

Here at USF, we in the Composition field might complain that with every classroom there is a huge spectrum of writers; it ranges from the remedial writer to the excelled writer.  How is one supposed to teach a class like that?  Do we mix them all up according to writing level? Pair them off to teach each other and have the lower level writer learn all while the excellent writer gains nothing?  Where is the middle?  Is it appropriate to teach there...at the middle? The median is a mathematical term (and I personally never fared well with math.)

When and where does the controversy stop?

Deborah Mutnick explains in "On the Academic Margins: Basic Writing Pedagogy" the history of basic writing, its theories, and the politics that shape it.  In order to speak coherently about Basic Writing,  composition faculty need to realize all facets one of the major issues of our daily struggle.  When we sit in our offices and giggle about the monstrosity of a paper before us, what do we do?  We have options; we can farm out the students to community colleges, teach only to the middle, or track them like they were tracked in high school.  (I recall being on the 'high' track in high school and when my grades started to slip a bit because I discovered life outside of high school, I was pulled aside by my guidance counselor.  She told me to be careful, because once I fell off of the 'high' track it was impossible to get back on.) 

                                                                     Walking the Talk
                     Mainstreaming as a process to Inclusion

But whatever our options may be I want to posit a thought...we need to be better trained.  I understand that we get two weeks of training which is more than other schools, but it is not enough.  Most of us still don't know exactly how to teach to the middle while allowing all to improve and learn.  I still don't write well enough to be teaching others how to write.  My grammar is terrible, ask my professors who hand back my papers with the comments like: need to be carefully revised, recast, subject referent, agreement.  Train me how to teach to the middle because here at USF I can not change the invasive politics of mainstreaming. 

 

I have always found it amusing that those of us involved in the study of the English language do not spend more time focusing on the acronyms we create with important societies, movements or theories.  Take writing across the curriculm, otherwise known as WAC, and try to present this to students who would immediately be aware of the pun.  Is it whack?  Dated slang or not, I find this to be strange.  Another example if the WAC one doesn't get your stitches in a bundle...Sigma Tau Delta.  My proud English society is really just a walking STD.   Wouldn't one hope that this these, albeit minor, issues would somehow be discussed at some conference, some gathering, some get to-get-her that the academics involved in English just love to do.  Get together and discuss.  It's what we do; how we thrive as a community.  So what would we do if all got to-get-her and talked about WAC?

We would discuss, in story form because apparently everyone has a little tale they would like to share, the difference between writing to learn and writing to communicate.  While some might assume that these two apsects of WAC were disparate categories, Susan McLeod goes to great lengths to prove that they are not so very different.  In "The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum," McLeod mentions that writing to learn is where the teacher is a guide and writing to communicate is when the teacher, still a guide, but more a "tribal elder to initiate" (154).  [She really does claim this, that is why it is in quotes.] 

Whether or not I am a tribal elder or a guide, I was able to glean some thoughts from McLeod.  Writing for different disciplines is a skill I have never had to master.  I plunked myself down here in the depth of MLA, present tense, and living texts for a reason.  But thanks to McLeod, I know now why my grades in History or Science were not up to par.  I was communicating my thoughts in a different way to a different audience.  Let us get together and with a lot of help, tons of money, and unanimous support gather professors from different disciplines to come and teach how writing to our freshpeople students.  I think it would be very worth everyone's while for this conglamoration of disciplines.  A party per se of professors...Engineers coming in one day to explain their technical styles, Science professors visiting to explain objectivity, Psychologist working on the variations of APA and MLA.  Every week some one new would come in to all of the Freshpeople Comp classes.  They would understand that writing really is pertinent to them as individuals and to their particular work in different fields. 

SO...USF, the home of research grants, get this one started.  Once a week, for 25 minutes a professor from a each discipline visits each Comp Class to discuss what that field consideres good, standard English.  A little power point, a little Q & A.  and bam WAC is whacked. 

I am have always been floored by group dynamics and how they affect a classroom situation.  Teaching two sections of any course really does highlight these issues of dynamics for me.  Because I teach at 8 in the morning and many of my students are surprisingly awake and confrontational, I am often shocked by the lengths they will take with a comment of mine.  So far. really, just out of the ball park.  My biggest issue is reeling them back in and pretending like  the comment was intended to take that turn so that I could point them toward their paper or their project.  Pretending to be seamless is a job I do well.  Discussing issues of whether or not transgendered humans should have their own bathroom at 8 in the morning is apparently something my students do well.  Shocker, yes.  And they concluded that it would be unfair, not because being between two genders is wrong or strange, but because those in between genders are most likely doing the best they can to associate with one norm...and offering another bathroom option would only make it more confusing.  So they are fair, conscentitious and kind, most of the time and I have to click their brains away from bathrooms to university communities. 

Then I go to my next class.  Who at 11 in the morning is less 'on point' but more eager to toss strange things out.  Their little brains click so differently that if the topic of transgendered bathrooms came up we would someone end up on sports or football or some other group activity.  They are equally kind but much more in-tune with themselves and I am curious to see what happens in an hour.  Should they get their own bathroom or not and how will I gently have to guide them back to university communities?

While reading Julier's article on "Service-Community Pedagogy," I was stunned by the hyphen.  The hyphen for me represented the difference between the academic world and the service realm of community projects.  Why can't they co-exist? 

Julier pointed out in the beginning of her article that she became involved in a pilot program for community service writing because she was concerned about not making tenure.  Right away I am happy for her honesty.  She did make tenure, if anyone is curious.  But then what immediately hits me after the high five for the honesty policy...is this: she only got involved to further her career.  Why is that experiments are not done, risks are not taken, unless there is a clear benefit?  The whole idea of getting students to realize that publishing their writing needs to be a bigger aspect of the writing process and one that should not qualify benefits for the instrutors.  Students should be guided to realize that the little publish, often physically outside the writing process circle/diagram, is a goal that can be accomplished. 

How we go about this goal has many different options.  Some can create creative writing pamphlets while others are doing a service to the community through creating a public writing web-space.  But no matter how this goal gets accomplished, instructors need to really practice what they preach.  If publish is on the writing process diagram in the first place, then students need to feel they accomplish that goal.  Maybe, volunteering or doing other community service projects is too far fetched because then the actual writing gets buried in the shadows of the service.  But Service writing as a pedagogy is something writing teachers really should re-visit, and not for a better chance at tenure.

Pete and Pat collaboratively wrote the book Sharing and Responding.  From the title, I felt I should put my comfy pants on, grab a cup of joe and sit outside in the always surprising, oppressively warm tampa morning.  So I did.  By the time I got through the article, it was lunch time.  And I had learned quite a bit on sharing and responding.  My favorite part is when Pete and Pat (I borrowed that from AmeliaPoundcake...she is funny) state that this is the section teachers can skip because it does not follow along with the textbook. 

No. Really. Besides the fact that I will most likely not be able to use any of this information, simply because I don't teach in 40 week semesters. I did find bits and pieces useful.  By reminding students that they are dignify themselves through dignifying the writing, maybe they can take more responsiblity for what they write the night before its due, even though they have known for weeks when it was due.  sorry. 

I also learned good sharing comes from trust and since I was just about to break up my groups because I thought our horizon needed a little color, I will take their points into consideration.  I thought that we, at USF already did the Sayback method with I Heard I Noticed I Wondered, and that made me proud. 

but what I liked most of all was those little gray boxes where Pete and Pat confessed some things to their readers.  They are right, most textbooks are overwhelming because there is no author behind them.  They soothed that fear right away.  I can picture Pete and Pat discussing feedback so vividly.  They are in an office. Bright with a big bay window and one of them is tentative, just like a student I teach.  One of them does not want to share his/her work.  I am guessing it is Pat...because Pete is well known and famous and probably harsh on feedback in that sweet way that Pat might not even pick up on.  But lo and behold.  The tentative Pat feels accomplished as a writer because Pete guided him there...with a good nutruing feminist approach.  And then the story is over and the students I teach are all excited about sharing their work with everyone. 

Susan Jarratt, in "Feminist Pedagogy," brings the ever widening embrace of feminism into composition studies.  She admits that little has been settled in this realm of pedagogy.  But she is quick to point out that there are lots of questions that need to be answered.  In fact, she likens the pedagogy in general to more "a set of questions than a list of practices" (124).  Because I already have a set of questions, lots of sets of questions in fact, I wanted to see if I could turn this article into a list of practices.  I started the experiment with my own students. 

(They are so lucky.  Every week they dragged through a different experimental pedagogy while their professor is desperately trying to sort them all out.  Desperate is a loaded word...strike that from the record please...no one wants to be desperate.)

I have a background in feminist studies; so I feel prepared enough to perform this experiment.  My disclaimer to all who don't; don’t try this in the classroom just yet.  We'll work on it. I can come over and workshop it with you; collaboratively workshop it, that is.    So I strolled on into class, fully aware of my gender which Judith Butler claims I have to perform all the time anyway, so I might as well start.  I put on a skirt, so as to not confuse my students about my performance.  Then I asked them to raise their hands if they were a feminist.  Shocker.  Not a hand in the cold, still air.  But, alas, no worries.  They just don't know what a feminist is.   I reminded them of the classic definition of feminism and opened both doors so the flood, nay the deluge, of responses would not dam us all up.  They did and said just what Jarratt claimed they would. 

Feminism, while I was in the shower or driving to work or eating a hoagie, must have gotten all twisted up with the 'other F word'.  I had no clue where the power hungry, bashing men, whining *** comments stemmed from.  I did know though, that I had to set them straight. All one must be doing to be a feminist is pay attention (126).  The world we live in is gendered and there is a hierarchy present.  Whether or not one would like to the follow the oppression route, the class struggle, the race race, the master/slave dialectic or the disability fight, one should grasp that there is a slight problem with USA society.  And apparently with every problem we can have a pedagogy.  Feminist pedagogy studies gendered language, works with collaboration, recognizing that some men and some women write differently from each other based on growing up in a stereotypical society that molds the way they communicate.  There is a politics to writing and if one were to take a feminist approach to that politics, one might be a guide rather than a master.  And I am ok with that.  Nurturing, supportive, caring: are all terms I am comfortable identifying with.  And now that my students understand what it means to be a feminist, they are comfortable as well. 

 

Sometimes, I feel like an undergrad.  Up too late doing homework, procrastinating during the day light hours with menial things like tennis or pulling weeds out of the not-yet-present garden, are just a few of the things I have managed to accomplish.  Oh, and clean.  I am by far the messiest person I have yet to encounter.  I have no sense of personal space.  The boundary between where my space ends and other people's space begins is something I cross more than the fleeing TJ immigrants strolling their way into San Diego.  Therefore, I tend to leave trails of my belongings, remanents of my being everywhere.  In a way, I just want to remind everyone that I have been here and I conquered with a shoe or a left sock or a tank top.  But not lately. 

I even woke up early this morning to clean...That means mid-term grades are due and my own mid-term for American Literature is due. 

Do I buckle down, like I tell my students to?  Do I remind myself that tomorrow is not option, even though it is?  No. 

I just sweat it out.  All the stress, the worry, drips down my face while I clean without the air on. I need some form of punishment. My room mate used to do the dishes-but only when she had to write a paper.  There were always so many dishes and so many clothes trailing around behind us.  And one would have hoped that by the time I involved in getting my PhD these little habits would have died.  Oh, well. 

Does anyone need help cleaning their house?  I have a Dyson and cleaning products all ready to go.  I'll trade you...mid-term for a toliet you can eat off.