Peer Review!

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

On more than one occasion student absences and student lack of preparedness sewed minor chaos in my classrooms. The real problem of the two was lack of preparedness–an insufficient number of drafts for peer review—exacerbated by absences. If six students show up with two hard copies of an essay, five students show up with one hard copy of an essay, three students show up with only a digital copy of an essay, and only three students show up the proper three copies of an essay while five students don’t show up at all, how much peer review time is lost trying to manage the disparities and allocate papers?

What you might expect from this was born out over the course of the semester.

Students absent on peer review day fared most poorly grade-wise because they had zero peer review. From there, students who distributed fewer papers among their peers for review garnered weaker grades than those who distributed more or all.

It’s not rocket science but a rocket scientist might be required to conceive of a method to get students to consistently show up prepared for peer review days.

Trying to Be Encouraging When You Are Fed Up

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

If students respond positively to positive reinforcement and support, we have to work hard to encourage them all as much as we can, right? The answer is a no-brainer; of course! The problem is, however, that sometimes students are downright frustrating, and the only way they will change and grow is if we put our egos aside and try to help them learn.

I have students who are just too far above my class to give it a first thought. I mean that they come to class, sit in the back, and study for another class. I let it slide; I told myself that this is college, and if they want to learn, they have to take the initiative. But I’m now realizing that that is just not fair. If the language we use, down to the tone itself, can carry enough influence to motivate a student, am I not de-motivating them by ignoring them or talking with an edge to my voice? Shouldn’t I be the one to rise above and try to help them even when it feels like defeat?

I was thinking about the study on rats, and how the people’s tones alone created winners and losers out of the rats. If my tone is apathetic, am I not reinforcing apathy towards college and writing in the student? This is something I really wanted to work on in my teaching, but it is probably the one thing I really struggled with the most.

Writing with the Community

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

Post-process theory can be enacted through community-based outreach classes. I work at the University Center for Excellence in Writing where I see this community outreach occurring on a tutoring-level. Non-FAU students or professionals work with the CCEW, an extension of the center, where they can get writing help and knowledge. I think this is vital to the community and to the act of composition because so much gets lost in grade schools, where the formula is so ridged and individual attention is rarely provided for the students, so when they go out into the professional world, they have minimal writing and communication skills.

Bringing this to the classroom would be a wonderful way to provide college students, most of whom are eighteen years old and still trapped in the ridged test-taking mentality. If they can see and understand how and why people who are not college students are using writing and communication in their personal and professional lives, then they can take those experiences and learn from them, broaden their perspectives, and try to make their writing reflect the world outside of standardized testing.

So often I see my students trying to fit all of their ideas into five paragraphs; when I would encourage them to build ideas and separate them into individual sections of the paper that can be made up by more than one paragraph, they either gave me blank stares or grew concerned and afraid to continue writing. Their writing was not reflecting their language, and their language was far more reflective of the outside world. If they can go out into the community and see how they can take the time to write about their experiences in an essay, they may be able to alter their perspectives on writing and communicating.

Asserting Post-Process Theory

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

Heard wrote that, “stated succinctly, what is truly postprocess is the idea that communication is paralogic—unpredictable and uncodifiable—and that composition must find ways to reflect this idea in theory and practice.”

Postprocess theory seems intentionally convoluted at times; the problem is that writing has been theorized and practiced and challenged and judged. These patterns cycle, creating a problem where we cannot know how to judge or understand composition as an act which can be graded. What Heard is theorizing is that there is no real or right definition of communication, yet composition must somehow be able to reflect its patterns.

How do we then take this into the classroom, where we are trying to teach codes and logic for writing that we will then judge when the student turns in their assignment?

I think the answer to this, as far as I can surmise, is we must take time in the classroom to understand where our students are coming from. I have learned so much about the ways my students communicate both through in-class conversation as well as their writing assignments.

Davidson also discusses postprocess theory, claiming that writing must be public, interpretive, and situated. So, if our students can take that public classroom conversation, interpret it into an idea on paper, and situate their idea into their perspective as well as the perspectives of the authors they are analyzing, then they might become more successful writers, and we might in turn become more successful teachers, judgers, and graders.

Locating Oneself

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

After class on November sixth, I was considering how eco-composition is more than just writing about nature. It is writing about how we have evolved as a result of our nature both physically, psychologically, and intellectually. Geographic locations have created different races and cultures, and that has led to different ideals, mentalities, beliefs, and religions.

It is a thoughtful way to begin considering how we can provide our students with perspective. If we can impart on them ideas of how history has led to our current thought processes, ideals, and moralistic views, maybe they can then be thoughtful about their in-class interactions and arguments that they are beginning to formulate in their writing.

Sometimes, I think, it can be hard to provide our students with new perspectives. They get defensive when their ideas are challenged, and it is so easy for a teacher or a classroom full of students to further push one student into their narrow perspective. If we can show them how each perspective is reflective of location and differing intellectual ideals, maybe we can allow them to open up to understanding. This would be helpful for all the students because while one may seem particularly disagreeable to us as teachers, all of the students must learn that their perspective is created through certain cultural values, and we’re really all “drinking the kool-aid” to one degree or another.

Tumblr Fail

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 
tumblr img

Many moons ago (my freshmen year of college)  discovered Tumblr. It was filled with cool people that I could discover easily by clicking through tags, with a user-friendly and attractive interface. It was not as “professional network-y” as I thought Facebook was, or as “trying way to hard” as Myspace had become. It was, and still is my favorite social networking site. Anyway,  after my success with integrating Twitter into our classroom discussion I decided to do the same with Tumblr. This is the link to the blog [click]. I thought we’d design a site and discuss their work here. I failed, hence the title. But I think I understand why now:

  1. I assumed the technology/digital media I found interesting was the same as my students. 
  2. I didn’t ask my students what technology/digital media they found interesting. 
  3. I didn’t sell the benefits of using a shared blog space in our ENC 1101 class very well (in retrospect I should’ve shown them this blog). 
  4. Many other things that still culminate into total failure.

Those were my shortcomings. I’d hoped that they would discover interesting blogs while perusing the tags, and maybe we could’ve created an interesting shared space. I thought it would be a great opportunity to have a anonymous digital format to offer critiques of everyone’s work. But, I was wrong. So here are the things I’m going to do try next semester:

  1. Find out which social media applications my students like the best and figure out a way to merge them into our in-class discussion(s). 
  2. I won’t assume that they’ll like it just because I do. By it, I mean anything. 
  3. I won’t get discouraged just because an activity isn’t as engaging as I had hoped it would be. 

Did ya’ll try anything with social media? How’d it go?

 Posted by at 10:13 pm

Pre-class RR: Bartholomae & Picasso

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

I find value in Bartholomae’s stance on the training of academic writers. That is to say that there is value in the argument that nascent academic writers develop best through teacher guidance, that mimicking nurtures them, or most simply put, that the rules must be learned before they can be broken.

Consider this line from Bartholomae’s Writing With Teachers: A Conversation With Peter Elbow:

“Picasso couldn’t have been a cubist if he hadn’t learned to draw figures.”

Please forgive the fact that I have drawn from Wikipedia for the sake of expediency. However, I think these lines sum up what Bartholomae was getting at quite nicely.

“From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz [father] was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models.”

Can writing change the world?

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

During the first week of class, I cynically read Bizzell’s “Composition Studies Saves the World!” in response to Fish’s “What Should Colleges Teach?” I remember thinking, “Writing. We should teach writing. Leave the rest alone.” I was surprised that this was even a debated topic. I didn’t encounter ideological debates in the classrooms of my undergraduate career – not in philosophy, journalism or composition courses – and didn’t expect to. Now that the semester is ending, I wish these debates had occurred. Bizzell wasn’t suggesting indoctrinating students, but simply encouraging them to question the rational behind rhetoric that surrounds us, so they can eventually interpret the world on their own well-reasoned terms.

In the beginning of the semester, I saw class discussions as a way for students to understand the text and prepare for their essay. I remember covering our first reading, Restak. from a comprehensive perspective instead of rhetorical. During class, I assigned groups to dissect different pieces of the text and create an outline. While this may have been useful for developing a close reading, we didn’t move to a critical analysis. By the end of class, discussions were our main activity. In one of my classes, students readily engaged with one another and challenged them on their beliefs. Students began to see that this rational, argumentative discussion was an extension of what they should be attempting in their writing.

I also began to see that beliefs form in the act of writing. Until an idea is articulated, it only exists as a thin, vague possibility. Students agreed, saying they often didn’t realize they believed something until the pen began to move. Through these individual perspective evaluations, hopefully people begin to critically evaluate their own beliefs and the arguments surrounding them. So yes – writing changes the world, and this can start in composition classrooms.

Things I’ve learned, haven’t learned, and probably never will learn.

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

Coming to the end of my first finals week, I’m learning that it is really important to set boundaries with students.

While I have a habit of working late into the night (it’s the only time I have to really work on my own stuff, and the ideas seem to come together better), I need to keep to the 9-5 email schedule I set at the beginning of the semester. Early on, I was in the habit of answering all emails as soon as possible, even those that arrived at ridiculous hours of the night/morning. Well, Saturday night that bit me in the ass.

I had just finished up the final paper that I had to do for the semester, and was heading off to get some sleep when my phone indicated (loudly) that I had a message. As it was 12am (and I was in no state to be discussing anything with a student), I decided to ignore it. About 15 minutes later, the phone went off again. I’m not certain if this is just me, but when something disturbs me when I’m trying to fall asleep, it resets the entire process. This happened two more times before I decided to just shut my phone completely off.The next morning I had 7 emails from 4 different students asking me either look at their thesis or explain where it is that they can find the Error Tracking log (because I guess it moved since midterms? Nope, still on Blackboard). Yeah, that was a fun Sunday morning.

Edit: I guess I should also mention that the majority of the emails were for things that were due to Blackboard Sunday morning. This isn’t so much about late night emails as it is about people expecting quick responses at late hours.

This brings me to my second revelation: printouts are probably going to be my best friend. Any time I post something on Blackboard, state that it can be found on Blackboard during class, and email out a reminder that IT IS ON BLACKBOARD, I still receive a few emails asking if I can send the student a copy (or asking where it is that they can find it). Cleaning out my messages after the semester ends is going to be fun. I’m almost positive I received around 100 during reading week. Sadly, this is not hyperbole.

But hey, I no longer have to work retail during Black Friday or Christmas Eve. So, there’s that… I guess?

Cellphone English Course

 News Item  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

This article is about a new English course that is being taught in New York. Spanish-speaking students learn English through text messaging and phone calls with instructors. No phone application is needed and the course is free to all who would like to learn English, as it is funded by the New York state government. About 300 students are currently enrolled in the course. The program, called Cell-Ed progresses through several levels; the ultimate goal is to be able to pass the English proficiency exam for American citizenship.

This is a low-stakes, yet effective English course that I think is great and could be potentially incorporated into composition courses. The course matches what is needed in a modern world. Traditional English classes, in my opinion, are on their way out, and classes such as this will take their place. Though I would never encourage “text talk” like “lol” and “omg” in formal writing, I think modern tools like cell phones have value and can be used in an academic setting.

 

 Posted by at 7:57 pm
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