(anyone game for another round of 20 questions?)
Showing posts with label of course. Show all posts
Showing posts with label of course. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
the work done by author image and book design
I find myself drifting from text to text today. Frustrated because I'm unable to really commit to focusing, finally and for an extended period of time, on this or that or even that. I think the drift has to do, in part, with just feeling plain-ole restless and not having any hard-and-fast, in-the-next-day-or-hour deadlines looming. Another thing facilitating the drift, I suspect, is not having begun with (or not having found along the way) a purpose for my interactions with the texts I have selected for today. Good reading/research/idea days, at least for me, are more likely to occur when I bring to (or find within) texts a question, or, better yet, a series of questions about how the texts might be taken up to complicate, extend, clarify or even confirm whatever it is I am thinking about and/or hoping to accomplish at the time. Different things appeal (and appeal in different ways) depending on whether I’m in class prep mode, proposal mode, book mode, article revision mode, new article mode, blog mode, website mode, grocery shopping mode, and so on.
A small good thing: Before I decided to cut my losses and turn my attention to a text that holds a different kind of appeal for me (read: I am apparently in American Idol results show mode), I came across the James Marshall’s reading of the pic of Macrorie on the back of Uptaught. Of the photo that “graces the back cover of [his] 1970 edition of Uptaught” Marshall writes:
“[It] represents to me everything that Macrorie was back then, when I was preparing to teach. He is sitting informally on a bench, back to a brick wall. His posture is friendly and open, his shirt and tie informal and rumpled. But it’s the look on his face that’s important because it’s a look that says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ A look that says, finally, 'No.' it was, I think, what Uptaught was about—'No' to dishonesty, 'No' to 'Engfish.' 'No' to uptightness generally. And that 'no' was somehow captured iconographically in the photograph. . .a refusal to go along with old ways of running the country or of old ways of teaching writing.”
Drift warning: Sometime last year I arrived at my office to find that someone had thumbtacked an index card-sized puffy-ish sticker on the bulletin board outside my office door. On the sticker was an image of a pirate that was made to say (by use of an additional sticker) something like, “I hate pirates!” If memory serves, whoever tacked the sticker to the bulletin board, took care to type out (maybe in a times new roman font) and then affix to the bottom of the sticker a thin strip of paper containing a single question, “What work does this do?” That the pirate sticker was placed there by a former or current student I had little doubt because: a.) I vaguely remember saying something about pirates at some point in time in one of my classes. In my defense I doubt that I said that I "hated" them since I do not personally know any pirates. That is to say, my comment was likely based on my “not getting” the whole pirate craze: “Not getting” why some people seem to like to think about pirates, talk like pirates, dress up like pirates, watch pirate movies, and so on (and) b.) Because the words I use most often throughout the course of the semester are, “What work does (or can) this do?”
So, if Macrorie’s photo, according to Marshall’s read, “works” to capture, to illustrate/embody visually (i.e., through the use of an author-image), the message/movement/climate associated with Uptaught, I’ve often wondered about the work that this particular author-image does:
Had this image been placed on the back of the book (i.e., where it would arguably have functioned much differently than it does here, placed on the front of the book), I would find it a delightfully ironic, or else a downright foolish choice given the work the book, at least to my read, proposes to do, and the kind of pedagogical practice it advocates. Thus, that the photo appears on the front of the book suggests that this photo likely does the work of capturing, illustrating, embodying the pre-lessons-learned Tompkins or the pre-awakening Tompkins. Or maybe it works (not-so-simply) to complicate the point made here, suggesting that no matter how hard we try to change, or how badly we want try some new approach, we just is what we is.
And now for something that may or may not go over all that well but that I’d be game for trying: What if we (meaning folks in the 486/686 course) were to create cover art and/or author photos for our blogs? What I have in mind here is something different from (or in addition) to the customizing features and profiling functions blogger offers. Put otherwise the question is this: If the contents of the blog appeared in book form (or put still otherwise, if blogs had front and back covers) what would appear on the front cover and back cover and why? If an author-image were to be part of the design, what image would be selected (i.e., a photo, a self-portrait/painting, cartoon), and why?
A small good thing: Before I decided to cut my losses and turn my attention to a text that holds a different kind of appeal for me (read: I am apparently in American Idol results show mode), I came across the James Marshall’s reading of the pic of Macrorie on the back of Uptaught. Of the photo that “graces the back cover of [his] 1970 edition of Uptaught” Marshall writes:
“[It] represents to me everything that Macrorie was back then, when I was preparing to teach. He is sitting informally on a bench, back to a brick wall. His posture is friendly and open, his shirt and tie informal and rumpled. But it’s the look on his face that’s important because it’s a look that says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ A look that says, finally, 'No.' it was, I think, what Uptaught was about—'No' to dishonesty, 'No' to 'Engfish.' 'No' to uptightness generally. And that 'no' was somehow captured iconographically in the photograph. . .a refusal to go along with old ways of running the country or of old ways of teaching writing.”
Drift warning: Sometime last year I arrived at my office to find that someone had thumbtacked an index card-sized puffy-ish sticker on the bulletin board outside my office door. On the sticker was an image of a pirate that was made to say (by use of an additional sticker) something like, “I hate pirates!” If memory serves, whoever tacked the sticker to the bulletin board, took care to type out (maybe in a times new roman font) and then affix to the bottom of the sticker a thin strip of paper containing a single question, “What work does this do?” That the pirate sticker was placed there by a former or current student I had little doubt because: a.) I vaguely remember saying something about pirates at some point in time in one of my classes. In my defense I doubt that I said that I "hated" them since I do not personally know any pirates. That is to say, my comment was likely based on my “not getting” the whole pirate craze: “Not getting” why some people seem to like to think about pirates, talk like pirates, dress up like pirates, watch pirate movies, and so on (and) b.) Because the words I use most often throughout the course of the semester are, “What work does (or can) this do?”
So, if Macrorie’s photo, according to Marshall’s read, “works” to capture, to illustrate/embody visually (i.e., through the use of an author-image), the message/movement/climate associated with Uptaught, I’ve often wondered about the work that this particular author-image does:
Had this image been placed on the back of the book (i.e., where it would arguably have functioned much differently than it does here, placed on the front of the book), I would find it a delightfully ironic, or else a downright foolish choice given the work the book, at least to my read, proposes to do, and the kind of pedagogical practice it advocates. Thus, that the photo appears on the front of the book suggests that this photo likely does the work of capturing, illustrating, embodying the pre-lessons-learned Tompkins or the pre-awakening Tompkins. Or maybe it works (not-so-simply) to complicate the point made here, suggesting that no matter how hard we try to change, or how badly we want try some new approach, we just is what we is.And now for something that may or may not go over all that well but that I’d be game for trying: What if we (meaning folks in the 486/686 course) were to create cover art and/or author photos for our blogs? What I have in mind here is something different from (or in addition) to the customizing features and profiling functions blogger offers. Put otherwise the question is this: If the contents of the blog appeared in book form (or put still otherwise, if blogs had front and back covers) what would appear on the front cover and back cover and why? If an author-image were to be part of the design, what image would be selected (i.e., a photo, a self-portrait/painting, cartoon), and why?
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
a curious discomfort
Among the essays that tend to get the most play in the courses I teach are Lex Runciman’s “Fun?” and Richard Larson’s “The ‘Research Paper’ in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing.” This said, Fishman’s study of Amish literacy is another that's showing signs of making its way onto the often-played list.
The decision to include Runciman and Larson (unlike Fishman’s "Because this. . .") hasn’t always been deliberate—that is, it’s not been my plan or intent from the get-go. Rather, they are the kind of things I’ll add, not last minute per se, but at the point at which it seems to me that the course or a component of the course seems to be missing something without them. Truth is, despite using it in my fyc course, my play theory course, my research methods course, and my teaching theory/practice course, I don’t particularly like the experience of reading “Fun?” (the first and final paragraphs make me cringe, in fact), but the points raised here (especially his reference to Harris’ study of one-drafters), tend to resonate with students. For my part, after rereading the piece, I do find myself being more cognizant of the decidedly battle- like or generally un-fun, un-fuzzy-feel-good, life-and-death-super-serious ways writing (practicing it as well as teaching it) is often represented in scholarship. Case in point:
At the conclusion of Composition-Rhetoric Connors writes, “The question of writing assignments is uncomfortable for many teachers because it presents such a clear mirror of one’s individual philosophy of education. It’s is easy to feel that one’s teaching is not striking a good balance between making writing meaningful to the student and making the student meaningful to the community. [on the reification of that binary i'm thinking: ‘oh no he just didn’t. . .!’] Debates over the last two decades between advocates of ‘honest, personal writing’ and those of ‘writing that gets the worlds work done’ [repeating again, ‘oh no he didn’t!’] will probably continue, because the seductions of an emotional knock punch are no less real for teachers than the seductions of a well-planned and carefully done research paper. [here i’ll just offer a big sigh, admiting that, put this way, or given only these two options, the 'carefully done research paper' sounds like the better deal.] The question of personal writing assignments forces us to take an implicit stand about what we think is important, for students and for society—and making important decisions is always uncomfortable. The continuing debate, tacit though it may be, indicates that we as a profession have not yet come to agreement about the larger purposes of writing in this culture. [word.]
The decision to include Runciman and Larson (unlike Fishman’s "Because this. . .") hasn’t always been deliberate—that is, it’s not been my plan or intent from the get-go. Rather, they are the kind of things I’ll add, not last minute per se, but at the point at which it seems to me that the course or a component of the course seems to be missing something without them. Truth is, despite using it in my fyc course, my play theory course, my research methods course, and my teaching theory/practice course, I don’t particularly like the experience of reading “Fun?” (the first and final paragraphs make me cringe, in fact), but the points raised here (especially his reference to Harris’ study of one-drafters), tend to resonate with students. For my part, after rereading the piece, I do find myself being more cognizant of the decidedly battle- like or generally un-fun, un-fuzzy-feel-good, life-and-death-super-serious ways writing (practicing it as well as teaching it) is often represented in scholarship. Case in point:
At the conclusion of Composition-Rhetoric Connors writes, “The question of writing assignments is uncomfortable for many teachers because it presents such a clear mirror of one’s individual philosophy of education. It’s is easy to feel that one’s teaching is not striking a good balance between making writing meaningful to the student and making the student meaningful to the community. [on the reification of that binary i'm thinking: ‘oh no he just didn’t. . .!’] Debates over the last two decades between advocates of ‘honest, personal writing’ and those of ‘writing that gets the worlds work done’ [repeating again, ‘oh no he didn’t!’] will probably continue, because the seductions of an emotional knock punch are no less real for teachers than the seductions of a well-planned and carefully done research paper. [here i’ll just offer a big sigh, admiting that, put this way, or given only these two options, the 'carefully done research paper' sounds like the better deal.] The question of personal writing assignments forces us to take an implicit stand about what we think is important, for students and for society—and making important decisions is always uncomfortable. The continuing debate, tacit though it may be, indicates that we as a profession have not yet come to agreement about the larger purposes of writing in this culture. [word.]
Monday, February 12, 2007
what's more
stepping around my new/temporary throw rug (aka. the opened copy of kaprow’s assemblage), i grab a copy of kitzhaber’s themes, theories, and therapy: the teaching of writing in college. saddened to find that this is one of the few passages in the book that actually makes the study’s findings, published in 1963, sound dated. in recognizing the various reasons students might have for pursuing a college degree, he writes:
“Many girls frankly want only a college-educated husband be cause of his greater earning power, and then plan to remain students just long enough to get one, then quit to go to work or have babies.”
(i wish i could also say that his use of the word “freshman” makes the text sound a little dated. but i can't.)
“Many girls frankly want only a college-educated husband be cause of his greater earning power, and then plan to remain students just long enough to get one, then quit to go to work or have babies.”
(i wish i could also say that his use of the word “freshman” makes the text sound a little dated. but i can't.)
composition worth teaching
as i prepare myself for yet another round of intensive dental work (for which my new insurance plan covers a good portion but in the end not nearly enough), i find myself again wondering if, following geoff’s suggestion, the invention and perfection of new processes, the discovery of new materials, and the desire for radically new products are (really) the only things that “perhaps” make composition worth teaching. as a grad student i was certainly grateful for (and learned a lot about the potentials of composing from) students whose work would “send” me, and/or that would provide me with something i was “not used to.” sure, the stinky chicken in a box debacle pushed me a bit over the edge for a couple months back in 2003 but when that same composer managed to orchestrate and then deliver, along with the assistance of 7 or 8 other improv dancers (none of whom were enrolled in the course) a live, in-class, dance-based re-performance of an earlier class session, even that semester ended up ending on a pretty positive note. then again, even as a grad student, i was dealing with pretty significant dental issues and i felt strongly that i’d be better in class, digging this work and these potentials for composing still more, etc. if dental insurance happened to be thrown in to the mix. oh yeah. and better health insurance. oh yeah. and tenure. all these things would definitely, to my mind, “make composition [even more] worth teaching, perhaps.”
flash forward: the insurance is there. not great, but there. but here’s my question/concern. is it at all the case, again following geoff’s wonderings, that what students want, hope for, etc., from a comp class [or any other class] is the potential or opportunity to “make the world see the world their way”? if so—who and/or who many do? as it is constructed here, the choices are set up in terms of working toward that potential or else to continue insisting that “they [students] be made to show the world the way we [instructors, professors, people with bad teeth or good teeth, tenured or not], think it’s supposed to be seen.” don’t get me wrong—i’m still a fan of pedagogy as dare, still committed in my own no-more-composing-with-chicken way to a show-me-what’s-possible approach to learning and making, but i’m hard pressed to account for how, when, why or even if this works (well or even at all) when it comes up against an in-a-rush-so-just-tell-me-how-to-get-an-a approach to communicative practice. i mean, is it then just another instance of teaching, composing, learning, whatever, at cross-purposes in the academy?
flash forward: the insurance is there. not great, but there. but here’s my question/concern. is it at all the case, again following geoff’s wonderings, that what students want, hope for, etc., from a comp class [or any other class] is the potential or opportunity to “make the world see the world their way”? if so—who and/or who many do? as it is constructed here, the choices are set up in terms of working toward that potential or else to continue insisting that “they [students] be made to show the world the way we [instructors, professors, people with bad teeth or good teeth, tenured or not], think it’s supposed to be seen.” don’t get me wrong—i’m still a fan of pedagogy as dare, still committed in my own no-more-composing-with-chicken way to a show-me-what’s-possible approach to learning and making, but i’m hard pressed to account for how, when, why or even if this works (well or even at all) when it comes up against an in-a-rush-so-just-tell-me-how-to-get-an-a approach to communicative practice. i mean, is it then just another instance of teaching, composing, learning, whatever, at cross-purposes in the academy?
process this
my all time favorite donald murray quote (illustrated by yet another reason why i really hate the digital camera i bought last year with my research funds):
"The writing teacher, because he is an English teacher, is usually considered to have a subject matter as do teachers of history and physics and mathematics and literature. He does not. He must learn from those who teach music and art and shop, for he does not have a vast amount of knowledge or information to communicate to the students. He does not have many concepts to develop. He has a few basic skills which he must communicate to the students repetitively, over and over and over and over again. The great danger is that the repetition of the same rule—be specific, be specific, be specific, be specific—may become boring both for the student and for the teacher. The writing teacher must develop many ways of saying the same thing."
"The writing teacher, because he is an English teacher, is usually considered to have a subject matter as do teachers of history and physics and mathematics and literature. He does not. He must learn from those who teach music and art and shop, for he does not have a vast amount of knowledge or information to communicate to the students. He does not have many concepts to develop. He has a few basic skills which he must communicate to the students repetitively, over and over and over and over again. The great danger is that the repetition of the same rule—be specific, be specific, be specific, be specific—may become boring both for the student and for the teacher. The writing teacher must develop many ways of saying the same thing."
reading kaprow’s too-big book
i am currently in process of trying to engage with a difficult text—one that is making me rethink my claim of preferring not (when alternatives exist to do otherwise) to engage with texts online. so. after settling back on my couch and reading a few of the essays in essays on the blurring of art and life, i thought i’d run up to campus and get a copy of kaprow’s assemblage, environments and happenings. that the text was housed in the folio section was, i suppose, my first clue that assemblage might afford as comfortable or familiar of a read as blurring or any of the other texts i had decided to work with over the weekend.
“imagine,” wysocki writes referring to her own text, “that this book now before you were bound in leather or in large fish-like scales. imagine that you were reading this online. . .imagine that this book were 2’ on each side and printed with letters 1” high, facing you on a lectern in a dark wood-paneled room. imagine that this chapter were appearing paragraph by paragraph in an instant messager window. each of those changes in the material instantiation of my words would change your attitude toward this text, certainly, but would also (i think) do more than that.”
word. cause the (physical) problem i’m having with assemblage is that it’s big (approximately 11’’ high and 22-23’’ across when opened) and it’s heavy (approximately 6 pounds). too big and too heavy for me to interact with it in the way i typically engage with smaller, lighter texts. (i.e., sitting on my couch, holding the book up in front of me as i read. or, if my feet happen to be up on the coffee table, resting the text against my thighs as i read. or if i happen to be feeling especially lazy, holding the book up in front of me as i recline on the couch.) not for nothing: if assemblage were bigger and/or heavier, i might be able to stand it up on the floor, design a contraption for turning pages at a distance and still be able to read it comfortably while sitting on the couch. as it is, the text on the page is not big enough to read from across the room. bracketing off for the moment that library books that appear to have been around kinda skeeze me out (read: i don’t often like touching them, bringing them into my house, preferring instead to xerox the chapters, parts and passages i find most useful and bringing them into my house), the book is just way too heavy to experience in the ways i am used to interacting with printed-on-paper-and-bound texts. as an alternative: i considered placing the text on the coffee table, sitting in front of the table and reading the text from that position. this might have been the wisest choice. unfortunately the thought of doing so made me weary as i would have to make enough room on the coffee table for the text to open and this was something i wasn’t especially willing to do. as an alternative: i considered placing the book on the floor and reading it there but carpeting in not-so-new rental units tends to skeeze me out as much as (if not more than) library books do. additionally, i figured that reading the book in this way would end up doing more harm then good given the way the arms, neck, back needs be positioned to afford this kind of a read. as an alternative: i considered (although not really, not seriously or not for long) xeroxing the parts i was most interested in reading. unfortunately, the size of the pages and the weight of the book makes xeroxing (given that there were 50-some pages in particular i wanted to xerox and read) a difficult task. yet another not-for-long considered alternative: taking photos of all the pages i would have xeroxed had size and weight not been an issue.
this all said, i’m determined to get through the book. it’s just going to be really slow going. a page or ten of this text at a time, switching things up and dealing with something smaller, lighter and preferably my own then back again to a page or ten more of assemblage.
“imagine,” wysocki writes referring to her own text, “that this book now before you were bound in leather or in large fish-like scales. imagine that you were reading this online. . .imagine that this book were 2’ on each side and printed with letters 1” high, facing you on a lectern in a dark wood-paneled room. imagine that this chapter were appearing paragraph by paragraph in an instant messager window. each of those changes in the material instantiation of my words would change your attitude toward this text, certainly, but would also (i think) do more than that.”
word. cause the (physical) problem i’m having with assemblage is that it’s big (approximately 11’’ high and 22-23’’ across when opened) and it’s heavy (approximately 6 pounds). too big and too heavy for me to interact with it in the way i typically engage with smaller, lighter texts. (i.e., sitting on my couch, holding the book up in front of me as i read. or, if my feet happen to be up on the coffee table, resting the text against my thighs as i read. or if i happen to be feeling especially lazy, holding the book up in front of me as i recline on the couch.) not for nothing: if assemblage were bigger and/or heavier, i might be able to stand it up on the floor, design a contraption for turning pages at a distance and still be able to read it comfortably while sitting on the couch. as it is, the text on the page is not big enough to read from across the room. bracketing off for the moment that library books that appear to have been around kinda skeeze me out (read: i don’t often like touching them, bringing them into my house, preferring instead to xerox the chapters, parts and passages i find most useful and bringing them into my house), the book is just way too heavy to experience in the ways i am used to interacting with printed-on-paper-and-bound texts. as an alternative: i considered placing the text on the coffee table, sitting in front of the table and reading the text from that position. this might have been the wisest choice. unfortunately the thought of doing so made me weary as i would have to make enough room on the coffee table for the text to open and this was something i wasn’t especially willing to do. as an alternative: i considered placing the book on the floor and reading it there but carpeting in not-so-new rental units tends to skeeze me out as much as (if not more than) library books do. additionally, i figured that reading the book in this way would end up doing more harm then good given the way the arms, neck, back needs be positioned to afford this kind of a read. as an alternative: i considered (although not really, not seriously or not for long) xeroxing the parts i was most interested in reading. unfortunately, the size of the pages and the weight of the book makes xeroxing (given that there were 50-some pages in particular i wanted to xerox and read) a difficult task. yet another not-for-long considered alternative: taking photos of all the pages i would have xeroxed had size and weight not been an issue.
this all said, i’m determined to get through the book. it’s just going to be really slow going. a page or ten of this text at a time, switching things up and dealing with something smaller, lighter and preferably my own then back again to a page or ten more of assemblage.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
on wanting the "paragraph moment"
in what was likely the most convoluted, ill-formed prompt i’ve presented to students to date (and there have been many of these) i asked participants in my 486 class, the majority of whom are currently teaching or who plan someday to teach, what they hoped, expected, wanted students to get out of the time they (meaning the students) would spend working in their (meaning the 486 participants) classrooms. i asked the members of the course to consider the kind/range of attitudes, experiences, skill sets, etc. students might enter their classrooms with and where course participants (meaning the 486ers) might like to see their students end up at at the end of the year or semester. . .see what i mean about an in-class writing prompt gone horribly wrong? . . .as i recall, what actually came out of my mouth was much more unclear. even while recognizing this, i just kept talking and talking and making things worse.
in retrospect, i’m thinking it might have been more helpful to have instead placed the following quote from berlin’s “rhetoric and ideology” on the board:
“. . .a way of teaching is never innocent. Every pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, in a set of tacit assumptions about what is real, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed” (492).
following this, i might have asked people to begin articulating what they take to be real, good and possible in the writing classroom (and why) and to speak to the issue of how they see power playing out or being distributed in that context.
no one asked me what i thought/wanted/hoped/expected from students. . .not that anyone should have, not that i was expecting anyone to. a few of the course participants have taken other classes with me so they probably have a sense of what I generally want/hope/expect to happen over the course of a semester. those who haven’t had courses with me have my course docs, and these certainly suggest something about my wants/hopes/expectations.
yet had someone asked me to respond to the prompt as well, this is likely what i would have offered:
for me, hands down, having an ideal semester would mean that everyone enrolled in the course would experience, at one time or another, and for however briefly, the “paragraph moment” i experienced at the start of the fall 1997 semester as a student in paul’s pro-sem. i begin (and could likely just as well end) with this because it’s been my experience that everything and/or anything else i could think of listing here stems from, or is otherwise connected to, that moment. for instance, i’d like students to consider if there’s really anything to it when i insist (as i often do) that inquiry ends with judgment and that putting off judgment and entertaining instead other options, readings, uses or potentials for a person, place, attitude or thing can lead us to some pretty interesting places. i’d like to see students become more cognizant of, and more able to speak to the impact of the choices they make (as well as those made for them) while engaging in a wide variety of communicative practices. i’d like students to leave my course with more questions than they had when they entered the course. i’d like students to leave the course with a perhaps different (i.e., a more complex, enriched or expansive) understanding of what revision and collaboration can and often do involve. to consider that revision need not always or only signal the act of perfecting a text but re-seeing and with this re-assessing a text’s potential to do different kinds of work with different people, materials, conventions, and spaces. to consider that collaboration is not always or only something we do when we are placed into groups with other people. that even when it appears we are mostly working alone, it is always still a joint effort, that we are collaborating with tools, conventions, genres, spaces, histories, memories of other people and experiences, and so on.
i want to students to be less concerned with coming up with the perfect title, transition, intro, or paragraph and to consider instead what titles, transitions, intros, or paragraphs/chunks might be comprised of and to consider how they might potentially (and/or currently do) function more generally, say for instance, across different media. in the case of transitions, how, for instance, does one indicate, read and respond to cues having to do with the process of moving on (moving back, forward, changing the subject, whatever) in paintings, in books, in lifetime movies, in songs, in diaries, in resumes, in credit card applications, in essays published in a specific journal, in a subdivision, or on a city street?
in retrospect, i’m thinking it might have been more helpful to have instead placed the following quote from berlin’s “rhetoric and ideology” on the board:
“. . .a way of teaching is never innocent. Every pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, in a set of tacit assumptions about what is real, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed” (492).
following this, i might have asked people to begin articulating what they take to be real, good and possible in the writing classroom (and why) and to speak to the issue of how they see power playing out or being distributed in that context.
no one asked me what i thought/wanted/hoped/expected from students. . .not that anyone should have, not that i was expecting anyone to. a few of the course participants have taken other classes with me so they probably have a sense of what I generally want/hope/expect to happen over the course of a semester. those who haven’t had courses with me have my course docs, and these certainly suggest something about my wants/hopes/expectations.
yet had someone asked me to respond to the prompt as well, this is likely what i would have offered:
for me, hands down, having an ideal semester would mean that everyone enrolled in the course would experience, at one time or another, and for however briefly, the “paragraph moment” i experienced at the start of the fall 1997 semester as a student in paul’s pro-sem. i begin (and could likely just as well end) with this because it’s been my experience that everything and/or anything else i could think of listing here stems from, or is otherwise connected to, that moment. for instance, i’d like students to consider if there’s really anything to it when i insist (as i often do) that inquiry ends with judgment and that putting off judgment and entertaining instead other options, readings, uses or potentials for a person, place, attitude or thing can lead us to some pretty interesting places. i’d like to see students become more cognizant of, and more able to speak to the impact of the choices they make (as well as those made for them) while engaging in a wide variety of communicative practices. i’d like students to leave my course with more questions than they had when they entered the course. i’d like students to leave the course with a perhaps different (i.e., a more complex, enriched or expansive) understanding of what revision and collaboration can and often do involve. to consider that revision need not always or only signal the act of perfecting a text but re-seeing and with this re-assessing a text’s potential to do different kinds of work with different people, materials, conventions, and spaces. to consider that collaboration is not always or only something we do when we are placed into groups with other people. that even when it appears we are mostly working alone, it is always still a joint effort, that we are collaborating with tools, conventions, genres, spaces, histories, memories of other people and experiences, and so on.
i want to students to be less concerned with coming up with the perfect title, transition, intro, or paragraph and to consider instead what titles, transitions, intros, or paragraphs/chunks might be comprised of and to consider how they might potentially (and/or currently do) function more generally, say for instance, across different media. in the case of transitions, how, for instance, does one indicate, read and respond to cues having to do with the process of moving on (moving back, forward, changing the subject, whatever) in paintings, in books, in lifetime movies, in songs, in diaries, in resumes, in credit card applications, in essays published in a specific journal, in a subdivision, or on a city street?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
in memoriam
if (repeat) subject lines are any indication of things, i’m thinking i made a grave error not naming this blog “in memoriam” as my entries always seem to be about missing/memorializing/paying tribute to one thing or another.
still. . .i gotta say that it seems decidedly odd to be here (i.e., in this place, at the start of a new semester) and to be without a class with elizabeth, keith, laura, magpie, or brittany being present and a part of things. ah, stay at any job more than four years, and you are likely always to be the one feeling left behind. [note: i’ve only been here a year and a half and am already feeling left behind. drats.] still. . .
i remember firsts: keith and elizabeth sitting on the wooden bench near sondheim after the first meeting of 324 during my very first semester here. they were smoking, chillin,’ waiting for traffic to die down. i passed them and she calls out, “hey shipka? we don’t wanna be your friend either.”
i remember firsts: thinking the anonymous in-class writing actually produced by sarah was magpie’s. telling magpie that i always thought so—that i had confused her with another. and later: telling her that i increasingly admired her work but never telling her that i deeply admired her calm as well.
i remember firsts: brittany reminding me that it’s not too late—never too late. providing me with a “learn how to play guitar book.” following this up with an in-class live performance of an original song that made me cry (but in a good way) for days and days.
i [don’t always] remember first firsts: but i am capable of remembering all the “at the times” and all the “afterwards.” laura fast becoming the someone i wanted to be when i grew up. class act all the way.
still. . .i gotta say that it seems decidedly odd to be here (i.e., in this place, at the start of a new semester) and to be without a class with elizabeth, keith, laura, magpie, or brittany being present and a part of things. ah, stay at any job more than four years, and you are likely always to be the one feeling left behind. [note: i’ve only been here a year and a half and am already feeling left behind. drats.] still. . .
i remember firsts: keith and elizabeth sitting on the wooden bench near sondheim after the first meeting of 324 during my very first semester here. they were smoking, chillin,’ waiting for traffic to die down. i passed them and she calls out, “hey shipka? we don’t wanna be your friend either.”
i remember firsts: thinking the anonymous in-class writing actually produced by sarah was magpie’s. telling magpie that i always thought so—that i had confused her with another. and later: telling her that i increasingly admired her work but never telling her that i deeply admired her calm as well.
i remember firsts: brittany reminding me that it’s not too late—never too late. providing me with a “learn how to play guitar book.” following this up with an in-class live performance of an original song that made me cry (but in a good way) for days and days.
i [don’t always] remember first firsts: but i am capable of remembering all the “at the times” and all the “afterwards.” laura fast becoming the someone i wanted to be when i grew up. class act all the way.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
still no word from betty. . .
but i’m guessing that the folks at general mills might not check their email over the weekend. i, on the other hand, have been checking frequently, mainly cause the dessert bars are involved.
since i knew i’d be at the computer for most of the day hoping for something from betty, i spent yesterday designing and then uploading the new course, theories and practices of teaching writing. like the play theory course, this one was particularly tough to design, mainly because there was/is so much i wanted to do and read and so little time to do it all in.
i decided to start with fishman’s “because this is who we are: writing in the amish community” mainly because it fostered a really interesting (not to mention pretty heated) debate about what counts as writing—good, bad, artsy, practical, or otherwise—what functions it might serve, etc. last time i used it in my qualitative research methods seminar.
following this, we’ll read a selection of workshop reports (mainly having to do with the function, objectives, outcomes, etc. of comp courses) from the 1950 volume of ccc and juxtapose these with the 2000 wpa outcomes statement. from there, we’ll spend two sessions looking at contemporary concerns/complaints about the way writing is taken up and/or currently taught and then it’s the happenings unit, by far, my favorite cluster of readings of the semester.
another hoot of a read is robert lambert’s “freshman masks” from ccc, december, 1962. in response to the problem of students producing lifeless, say-nothing, artificial and/or pretentious-sounding themes (hence the “mask” title), lambert writes: “Through whatever means possible. . .by flattery, by cajolery, by threat—the composition instructor should encourage students to remove their masks and to reveal their faces—however pimply, however sallow, however frightened, however bored. These faces,” lambert concludes “at least, are their own.”
i gotta say, the “however pimply” line gets me each time. that said, i always expect students (especially students in my fyc courses) to be more upset or outraged than they have been about the way lambert represents “freshman” writing/writers. but many have been like, “yeah, his classification of types of student writers still sounds pretty accurate, i’ve worn one or more of those masks before.” and i'm always like, "but what about the pimply line? doesn't that seem kinda rough?"
since i knew i’d be at the computer for most of the day hoping for something from betty, i spent yesterday designing and then uploading the new course, theories and practices of teaching writing. like the play theory course, this one was particularly tough to design, mainly because there was/is so much i wanted to do and read and so little time to do it all in.
i decided to start with fishman’s “because this is who we are: writing in the amish community” mainly because it fostered a really interesting (not to mention pretty heated) debate about what counts as writing—good, bad, artsy, practical, or otherwise—what functions it might serve, etc. last time i used it in my qualitative research methods seminar.
following this, we’ll read a selection of workshop reports (mainly having to do with the function, objectives, outcomes, etc. of comp courses) from the 1950 volume of ccc and juxtapose these with the 2000 wpa outcomes statement. from there, we’ll spend two sessions looking at contemporary concerns/complaints about the way writing is taken up and/or currently taught and then it’s the happenings unit, by far, my favorite cluster of readings of the semester.
another hoot of a read is robert lambert’s “freshman masks” from ccc, december, 1962. in response to the problem of students producing lifeless, say-nothing, artificial and/or pretentious-sounding themes (hence the “mask” title), lambert writes: “Through whatever means possible. . .by flattery, by cajolery, by threat—the composition instructor should encourage students to remove their masks and to reveal their faces—however pimply, however sallow, however frightened, however bored. These faces,” lambert concludes “at least, are their own.”
i gotta say, the “however pimply” line gets me each time. that said, i always expect students (especially students in my fyc courses) to be more upset or outraged than they have been about the way lambert represents “freshman” writing/writers. but many have been like, “yeah, his classification of types of student writers still sounds pretty accurate, i’ve worn one or more of those masks before.” and i'm always like, "but what about the pimply line? doesn't that seem kinda rough?"
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