Grading/Ugh!

 Classroom Praxis, Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 
dilemma

I was under the idealistic impression that grading would be an opportunity for great reflection and development in student thought. I was wrong. I found that students weren’t reading my comments, just looking for final grades to either solidify their writing process or make small adjustments to get the grade they’d like. I also found that some students, usually those with the most potential were dealing with external challenges. Over the course of the semester I heard about the death of a grandparent, an overbearing mom, juggling of two jobs, and a car getting broken into! So when Bloom asks if grades should reflect factors external to the papers, like outside responsibilities my first thought is I have no idea. I would love to have a rigid standard by which I could easily grade my students. Despite my dislike of the grading for credit process, because I have to do it, it’d be great if that could happen easily.

It would be great to view each paper fairly, and objectively but with so much going on in my students lives, it feels impossible. She says “as graders we can be fair, but as human beings, we can never be objective.” i don’t really know that we can be fair. I mean, can I grade a student dealing with the loss of a loved one in the same way as a student who is not. Should I? Is it my place to assume that their work will suffer under the circumstances? I have more questions than answers obviously but that’s because I wasn’t prepared to deal with these types of dilemmas. I don’t know if you ever truly can be. I decided to offer additional time to students dealing with issues, if they asked it of me. Any suggestions, or similar dilemmas?

 Posted by at 9:50 am

Becoming Edna

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 
grading Simpsons

My first round of grading student papers was exciting and scary. I felt so incredibly blessed to be participating in the development of student growth by reading and commenting on their well thought out work. The next round of papers, well not so much. The negative attitudes of bored (and sometimes angry) students started to show in their work. I realized that most were’t listening to me at all, and still couldn’t tell me what MLA stood for. Their papers were long and filled with confusing tangents. Between the poor writing (which I was sure was purposeful) and equally poor attitude I was being turned into Edna Krabappel.

Edna_Krabappel

There are some obvious differences between myself and Ms. Krabappel like our hair color. Also, the chain smoking, love affair with an overly dependent principal, and of course the chain smoking. But we both were frustrated with our students, annoyed with the work we were receiving and assigning, and in dire need of an outlet. While I noticed this transformation taking place, I decided to make some in class changes. I kept up with the random questions at the beginning of class. It interested my students and me too. I gave free writing, journal assignments (and participated in them), and asked students for suggestions and opinions. Every day wasn’t perfect of course since I still had my very own Bart Simpson, but I felt better and never started chain smoking. So yeah, improvement.

 Posted by at 9:13 am

THE FINAL POST

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

So, I admit I’ve been terrible at posting on this. I mean, look at the date on this. I’m a horrible student.

…But this class has helped me think about my teaching a lot.

Going in, I was really more focused on what was being said in the readings. I got hyped for Richard Restak! I was going to…

…okay, I couldn’t get hyped for Richard Restak, I hate the guy with a passion after this.

But I was deterermined to teach people about these IMPORTANT IDEAS, and WRITING, at the SAME TIME.

And I do realize that I have an ethical duty to share those ideas, but I also know now that my job isn’t so much to be some sort of defmented social studies teacher, but a rhetoric teacher. That’s what these essays are for.

Hell, that’s why Richard Restak’s essay is full of more logical fallacies than a dinner conversation with my dad after a few drinks.

No one gives a DAMN about what any of these people actually have to say; it’s all about how it’s being said. And in the future, I want to make sure my syllabus reflects that.

I want to restructure my sequences so that they start with rhetoric, and move on to more engaging topics over time. I might even spend more time allowing my students to do their own research.  Though… I’m a little afraid as to what will happen.

…In any case, I want to thank you all for putting up with me during this semester. It’s been great.

 

 Posted by at 8:38 am

It’s All Been Said Before

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

As Bartholemae argues, it’s impossible to discuss something without evoking what has been said (or rather, written) in the past. That’s come to light a few times in my grading.

During Essay 1, with one reading, I had a lot of students who basically just restated the reading’s main point. I gave out a lot of Cs, at that point. Over time, their arguements got more nuanced.

But when Essay 4 came around, with one topic? Everyone fell back into the pattern of restating things. It was FRUSTRATING. I was thinking, “is something wrong? How could my whole class be doing this?”

…Then I had a realization; it’s really hard to come up with an original thought when all you have is a single view point to work from. It’s not impossible, but there’s that whole inescapable pit of language thing. You either agree with it, or you disagree. That’s it.

So perhaps those early essays should be structured differently. Rather than having them focus on WHAT the author is saying, we should have them focus primarily on how it’s being said. How is this person making their arguement? Why are they doing it this way? I don’t care if you agree ot not, I want to know what the rhetoric at play is. Identify rhetorical devices and logical fallacies. Talk about what they might have left out, or have done differently.

Then, once they have a grasp of that, they can start constructing their own rhetorical arguements and persuasive essays.

 Posted by at 8:30 am

Learning to Write: Quantity or Quality?

 News Item  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/04/writing-study-finds-quality-assignment-and-instruction-not-quantity-matters

Author: Colleen Flaherty

Date: December 4, 2015

This article summarizes a study titled “The Contributions of Writing to Learning Development: Results from a Large-Scale Multi-Institutional Study,” which set out to find whether less, but highly focused, essay writing is more effective in terms of  writer-ly growth than constant writing and multiplicity of assignments.

Statistics were gathered through 70,000 freshman and senior surveys across 80 institutions. The survey “examin[ed] the relationship between the responses to the 27 writing practice-based questions and questions on the standard questionnaire regarding two sets of established survey constructs: participation in ‘deep approaches to learning,’ or more-than-surface-level understanding of content, and ‘perceived gains in learning and development.’ The latter means students’ self-reported intellectual growth and personal satisfaction over time.” Results were somewhat marginal–but the lean was decidely towards quality:

How many pages students were asked to write appeared to have minimal impact. The bivariate correlations between writing quantity and deep approaches — meaning the relationship gets stronger as the value approaches 1, from 0 — was 0.15 to 0.27 for first-year students, and 0.11 to 0.22 for seniors.

The correlations between effective interventions and deep approaches, meanwhile, were 0.20 to 0.42 for first years and 0.19 to 0.41 for seniors. Meaning-making assignments seemed to have the biggest positive impact. The authors call the correlations “moderate,” but meaningful.

What does this mean when you have Gordon breathing down your neck? Not a lot. But certainly something to consider when he’s not around.

Students and Thought

 Classroom Praxis, Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

So, I wanted to explain one of my philosophies in the light of the whole Cognitive “our students can’t think” angle that showed up in class.

Namely, the idea of encouraging students to think.

When I was in high school, I had thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Dumb thoughts, at times, but thoughts. It was a nerve wracking time for me. I was growing up in a Post 9/11 world, coming of age during the biggest financial crisis in decades, and reaching the point in life where I was expected to make some sort of final decision about my life. There was a lot going on in my head.

But my issue was… well… I wasn’t sure what to do with it. My biggest moment of enlightenment came when I was assigned a simple pre-class response, where I had to explain why I liked a certain song. I knew why I liked the song. I had feelings associated with the song. But I had never been asked to put them into words before.

And… that’s really what our job is, right? Teaching people to put thoughts into words. Doing so will give people a more nuanced understanding of those thoughts, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t there to begin with.

 Posted by at 8:22 am

Super Teacher: Notes on Bizell

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 
super teacher

In Bizell’s article, “Composition Saves The World” she discusses Fish’s book Save The World On Your Own Time. Fish’s thesis is that academics have one job, which is to teach the material of their discipline methods and objects of study. That in academia we should seek out academic truths. This method strikes me as mechanical and cold. I know that the work of an academic should be something, at lease according to administration, that is grade-able  and objective. But I don’t believe writing has to be objective, which I read as a desire for it to be comfortable. I want the work that  do as an academic (teacher and student) to be useful and practical. But I think the usefulness of writing, particularly in the age of digital social justice, may be aided by some uncomfortable discussion and writing.

I think that by limiting the role of teacher as en Enforcer of Truth (an obvious oversimplification of Fish’s thesis), the potential to push students thinking is limited. If conversation and writing opportunities in-class are limited, students won’t have the guidance to develop greater thinking and writing skills. Allowing diverse and “heroic” roles and topics in class validates the writer. Writers learn through writing that what they want to share matters to people who live outside their heads, their audience.

 

 Posted by at 8:12 am

Stanford Videos

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

I cannot say that after playing videos from a Stanford series on writing that I saw wholesale improvements in my students’ writing. However, I can say that I saw an up-ratchet in enthusiasm.

One of my sections of 1101 was heavily populated with engineering and computer science majors. Though these particular students evidenced high levels of intelligence, many of them could not articulate arguments or support arguments at anything resembling college level proficiency. When I happened on this Stamford series, which features mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists expounding on the value of writing in their fields, I knew it would be worth showing in class. The series appeals not just to tech-weighted minds, but to any student of writing (willing or not as the case may be in 1101). For example, one video featured a mathematician who described how brilliant work from others in his field did not see the light of day for far too long because, quite simply, the creator(s) of the work could not adequately articulate the value of what had been created. They just couldn’t write well.

The videos, as I mentioned, did not rocket up grades but they did energize class discussion. I was left with the feeling that many of these students did indeed see more value in writing than they previously had seen.

When Being “Lazy” Begot Better Results

 News Item  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 
6700 teacher

Nicole Matos, Associate Professor of English, at the College of DuPage wrote “Why I Allow Writing on Abortion, Marijuana, and The Big Game.” In the article she writes that the,”…purpose of teaching is for the growth of the student, not for the entertainment of the teacher.” Her article explores the the idea by allowing students to write about controversial or “easy” topics, you can encourage critical thinking/stronger writing. An example of the kind  of topics she’s referring to are:

The Best Friend/Boyfriend/Girlfriend and/or The Bad Breakup: What could be more important to any of us than writing about our loves and our losses — all the more so because many traditional college-aged students are living these narratives for the very first time? Many of our favorite novels, plays, and poems are some version of love/breakup stories.

In this example, Matos notes to the familiarity of this theme to traditional literary themes. Allowing this type of writing in the classroom along with an assignment designed to elicit a connection to another story would make for a great writing exercise.

In our writing program, the topics are already prepared, but a journal activity like this may be really useful to students. Matos says that, They are doing what David Bartholomae and other writing theorists call “joining the conversation.” It is my task to alert students to that and urge them to acknowledge that conversation in their writing.” I agree with her stance, that its the role of the educator to help the students join in and yet create a new conversation. My first is encouraging priority is always critical thinking, and what better way to encourage that than by allowing students to use their own ideas?

Seriously, is there a better way? Let me know in the comments if you think so.

 Posted by at 11:41 pm

My Most Effective Classroom Experience

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

Creating an atmosphere of conversation and written reflection in the most balanced way possible allowed me to have my most effective classroom experience this semester. By first allowing the students to reflect on the readings and their personal reactions, not their in-depth discoveries and analyses, we were able to have conversations about the topics of sexuality and bullying. The students brought in their personal lives; one student mentioned her brother, who fell under the heteronormative definitions of masculinity, but who was also gay.

This personal experience created an atmosphere of open discussion and one where we were able to cite that real-life example, along with other students’ personal examples, to move towards a deeper discussion of gender identity, sexuality, and the reasons that bullying occurs and certain people are targeted.

After that class period, I felt rejuvenated, and I felt like the students were inspired to go and begin writing. Their papers were far more analytical, thoughtful, and personal. By creating a space where the personal could collide with the theoretical, we were able to focus more on the organization of their writing. The students were not so much worried about the content anymore; now they could move into their papers with a confidence that gave them room for a better understanding and a closer look at the composition itself.

Striking that balance of personal, analytical, and stylistic writing and conversation can be challenging, but I think it is the best way for students to grow as writers and thinkers.

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