Chalk and Lines

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Nov 062015
 

“Situatedness… refers to the ability to respond to specific situations rather than rely on foundational principals or rules” (Breuch 130).

Reading through Post-Process theory reminded me a lot of listening to astrophysicists talk about the speed of light and what it would be like to actually travel that fast. I’ve heard it described as “following the line of chalk.”

If we start to think about where writing happens on a very physical level, it has always already happened; we don’t have writing until it is physically written. The Post-Process idea seems to be focused on the impermanence of time and space, suggesting that the context and conditions of writing are always shifting therefore the writing itself will never be “complete”.

Seeing writing as public, interpretive, and situated places all writing on the other side of the chalk – on the edge of the speed of light. Nearly all of the conditions laid out in Post-Process are constantly changing based on audience and the writer’s relationship to the audience in both time and space. And it seems that the teacher’s role is to hold the chalk. We adjust our teaching styles to the situation and context of our experience.

Professor Schwartz shared an anecdote with me a few months back about the way he used to teach Composition. He would come into the class with nothing prepared and build a lesson based on whatever was around in the classroom (e.g. if someone left a worksheet from a previous class). This might be an example of Post-Process teaching, although I’m not sure how effective it actually was.

I guess what I’m getting at (and what Breuch would probably agree with) is that this concept is better off as philosophy, the same way travelling at the speed of light at this point is better off as theory, or that following the line of chalk is better off as a metaphor. In a very practical sense, these ideas don’t do much in the classroom. Early writers need to believe there is a permanence/determinate value to their writing so they can build themselves up to understand why, in reality, there really isn’t anything permanent/determinate about it.

Enter the Dragon

 Teaching Tool  1 Response »
Nov 062015
 

Somewhere between the final semesters of undergrad and grad school, I fell in love with the notion that writing with ink and paper was somehow more real than all the typing I’ve been doing up until that point. It was romantic in my head, harking back to my admired writers set of tools. I wanted to limit my options in what I could achieve, I didn’t want to have the ability to go back and forth and play with my thoughts and water them down with afterthought and doubt. What I thought and as I thought: that’s what I was hoping to record on the page.

Somewhere between the graduating of undergrad and grad school I amassed nearly 90 pages of handwritten hieroglyphics–scribble, if you will–neatly packaged in a lovely moleskine. This was my attempt at being a prepared grad student. I wanted to have a nice chunk of my thesis before even getting to FAU–and from what I understand, I am ahead of the curve by far. Yay! However…………I didn’t anticipate how hard it would be to transfer extraordinarily large handwritten sheets of paper to text.

Enter the Dragon. Thank the lord above and below for dictation software. With Dragon, a user builds a profile and then takes their voice through a series of tests to build a level of recognition that is ever expanding and adaptable. The more you speak to it, the more it picks up on your patterns of speech and nuances of enunciation. So far, I have been able to quadruple (this is not a real statistic) my output. Instead of having to look from my deft scratchings to the screen of my computer over and over to translate, I can just read and it picks it up fairly well, for the most part. I plan on doing a presentation in class on how Dragon works.

Cursing Ignorance

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Nov 032015
 

I have a few memories of my mom as a child, not because she is dead or ran away when I was young, but because I have a terrible memory. One, she used to read to me every night until I was able to do so myself, and two, she used to tell me time and time again when a “dirty word” would slip out of my mouth that “people curse out of ignorance.” Although I have seen a lot of cursing amongst the educated grad students and teachers alike, it has become something that I think holds some weight.
Do we engage in a richer experience through complex vocabulary? Or is that we just have a more clear and expressive way to describe our experience? It seems that now as an adult (to be debated), I use curses when I want to be emphatic or humorous or highlight an emotion. My mind does not bring me first to a curse because I am unable to think or find another word that would better describe what thoughts I am trying to solidify with words. As an avid reader and writer, I live a life that is quite dramatic in my own head, turning average events and mundane memories into fantastical story arcs. I don’t know that a richer vocabulary enhances our experience, but I would say that it enhances the way we are able to express ourselves.

Classroom Praxis 1: Attempting to “Teach”

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Nov 022015
 

I want to put my first blog post into conversation with my own experiences balancing discussion and “teaching.” In that post, I felt that there could be a place for narrative in my classroom, and I described a sort of hybrid classroom pedagogy where both Freire’s description of a teacher who “cognizes” and then “expounds” (5) and active student response and engagement had a place. I’m not sure I have really figured out how to make that work in practice, though. Freire’s dialogue-based approach appealed to me in the beginning, and in theory still appeals to me now. I still appreciate the idea that true knowledge “emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (Freire 1). Yet, in my own classroom, I have not really found dialogue to be useful except when analyzing the course readings. The dialogue-based approach presumes a willingness of the student to step beyond course materials and to engage with the world beyond. In my own classroom, I have found that the students are most willing to talk when they are trying to understand something more concrete: for instance, the contents of Helen Epstein’s article “AIDS, Inc.” There is something tangible there for them, something they can hold on to and harken back to when they begin to reach out. However, when the topic is “writing,” a vague and painful process for many of them, they are much less willing to chat.

When I hear the stories of some of my peers giving “lessons” on MLA or thesis development, I recoil. It is not that I think the students do not need a better understanding of the expectations for their writing. Instead, it’s that I have no experience being “taught” to write, and so can’t really envision what that experience looks like. Instead, I do for my students what my teachers did for me: show examples and offer tools. I’ve organized all of these “tools” in a file called Writing Resources on Blackboard (name ganked from Trina, thanks Trina!).  Sometimes, my classes take on a sort of give-and-take atmosphere, where I showcase the tools, walk the students through them, and then they ask questions and try to make sense of my expectations. Other times, they are silent and seemingly mystified. At these times, trying to engage the students in dialogue rarely does anything: they do not see the process of writing as something they can or should have a say in.

I’ve been contemplating attempting to “teach,” though. I’ve tried to imagine how a class lesson might look where, for instance, I just told them all about thesis statements. Mainly, this is because I still see some of my students struggling with understanding how and why their own writing is not matching the course expectations. For instance, I spent a good part of one class a few weeks back trying to explain to my students why one example thesis we were looking at was not yet “original.” (This was in response to reviewing the Grading Criteria for their Midterm Responses). It was difficult. Responding to sources–that comes easily to most of them. Using those sources in an argument–easy to some of them. Moving beyond those sources to envision an original and compelling claim–easy for very, very few of them. And it wasn’t just the “doing,” but the imagining of it.

What I have found most useful, then, is to do all I can to help them imagine what such an essay might look like. Looking at examples helps, revisiting our sources does too. I’m still not satisfied that they are seeing how fluid the whole process can be, and how the way they write and what they focus on for one assignment might not necessarily work for the next. I’m still trying to figure out the most universal approach for this.

 Posted by at 7:34 pm

Conceiving Writing

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Nov 022015
 

John Bean conceives the purpose of writing as a process of discovery. When sitting down to write, thoughts are jumbled and sloppy, like trying to keep in between two
palms a handful of water; everything we wanted to say, or thought we had to say, slips between the cracks, and when we do actually hammer out some of the original ideas we were
able to maintain they only seem like a pale shadow to what was originally in our heads.

A student often fails to see their ideas as holding any weight of importance, they see themselves as responding to an assignment, an assignment that is little more than a
pain in the ass. This is what often causes for a carelessness in recording, editing, and most importantly discovering. The structure of the program that the GTA’s are forced to
follow is asking us to train our students how to write lengthy drivel bombs. Somehow, someway, it is our job in between the mountain of grading to create assignments, stimulate
discussion that will help our students to think. Over the course of the semester my students have went from “my students” to “my kids.” I care more for them now, and I want
them to succeed, not in my class but beyond. So it becomes important for me to plant the right seeds, and relate to them in the right ways, so when they leave my class they will
be somewhat equipped for the professors out there who are old and out of touch, and they will be ready to bullshit their way through, just as I have. Hopefully.

Writing the Uncanny Valley

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 302015
 

In Response to Prompt 2 – How is seeing writing/communication as Artificial or Natural useful? 

Writing is, as Emig points out on page 124, a “primary technology”. A device through which an individual transforms their thoughts into a form that can be stored and reproduced by someone else. The whole concept is mind blowing when you really think about it. “I CAN PUT MY BRAIN ON PAPER!” It’s the earliest form of recording device.

But there’s still this distinct artificiality to it, at least when it’s done poorly. That’s kind of this underlying issue that a lot of these readings are trying to deal with. Bartholomae, when he talks about writing being caught up in culture, and of a need to be critical, speaks to a thought that I’ve had about writing ever since I started incorporating Engfish into my curriculum: some writing just feels… fake.

There’s a concept called the Uncanny Valley, which is a term coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori. The idea is that humans are hardwired to recognize certain traits as being “human”. When these traits are replicated, we tend to accept them (and even find them cute) when they’re highly stylized. After a certain point, however, things become too realistic. You end up with something that looks extremely human, but is off somehow. On a bell curve, this creates a sharp dip in the response. Once things look 100% human, then acceptance levels spike back up. This creates a “valley” effect.

I’d argue that writing, particularly the writing that Bartholemae and Elbow are talking about, functions in a similar way. You have papers that are obviously just… bad writing. The person doing them is very young, or is new to English, or is just really bad at grammar. Or maybe they have this informal honesty to their writing, but they’re not quite college ready, yet. Up to that point, this may not be acceptable, but we accept the fact that the person in question is still learning.

But at the first year comp stage, the students typically have a functional grasp of language and grammar, and they’ve been exposed to “academic” discourse for the first time. They have an idea of what things are supposed to look like. They also have thoughts and opinions in their head, but may not know how to articulate them properly. So the end result is this kind of double translation. There’s the translation of natural thought and speech into text… but there’s also the translation of natural thought at speech into discourse, which is an entirely new language for most of these students. The result, often, is a text that looks correct to the student, but contains numerous flaws that inspire revulsion in the instructor.

This is where the problem comes in. These students should be able to think. They look like they can think, but that thought isn’t being articulated properly. The result is this idea that there’s some sort of mental deficiency in our students. That they’re incapable of thought, or caught up in social dynamics, or that there’s some sort of flaw in their logic. It ends up creating a situation where writing is like CGI in movies. When it’s done well, you don’t notice it. When it’s done poorly, it becomes the target of revulsion and mockery.

It would be more helpful to approach writing classes as a course on teaching students how to use an intellectual toolkit. We’re not some sort of department of Promethei that bring down the fire of Thought to the unwashed masses. Students can think. They just don’t know how to operate the machinery of the university yet.

 Posted by at 3:35 pm

Imaginary Problems

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 302015
 

I’m not sold on the idea that there needs to be a distinction between viewing thought/communication as either natural or artificial—at least not if the central concern at play is whether or not writing is an effective route toward learning. Honestly, what practical takeaway does such a juxtaposition offer when it comes to the process of learning? Learning, regardless of its origins, will either take place or not. The methods by which teaching is implemented is what should be of concern. The problem is not rooted in how “to ask students to see the natural as artificial,” (Bartholomae) but how, as teachers, we might best exploit all of the tools we have at our disposal—writing, reading, talking, and listening—in concert. Rather than wondering whether or not “Writing is a learned behavior” or “talking is [a] natural, even irrepressible, behavior,” (Emig) we should engage in conversations regarding how to best employ every possible language process in order to yield the most learning.

That being said, it is important to note: I had no prior idea of where I stood on this question before I sat down and wrote it all out. I have actively learned here—at my own rhythm and before my own eyes. Furthermore, when I get to class in about 45 minutes, someone else might offer up a highly persuasive thought counter to my argument, using (my god!) his or her voice; this could alter (enrich?) my stance. After class, maybe I’ll read some other blog posts and fall in line with another way to view the question. Reading, writing, talking, listening. Learning, at this point in human history, is a byproduct of thinking; and it is impossible to imagine life without thought. Is that natural or artificial? You tell me.

 Posted by at 3:28 pm

Elbow – Closing our Eyes and Ears while Writing

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 302015
 

In “Writing as a Mode of Learning” Emig claims that “with writing, the audience is usually absent; with talking, the audience is usually present” (124) therefore writing allows for careful production of thought without inhibition. In comparison, Elbow would have a slightly modified viewpoint of whether writing can be receptive or function as a listening act. In “Closing My Eyes as I Speak” he works through the conflicting idea of considering the audience in writing and the need to write in isolation without consideration of the audience in order to make new meaning. Based on what he discusses in this article, I would argue that Elbow believes writing can function as a listening act, however this is not the best way for writing to exist as a way to make meaning. Instead, Elbow would say that we should write with our eyes (and ears) closed first, especially for more competent writers. The audience is present in the writing process, but by forcing the audience out of the picture, more enhanced learning will take place, because the voice in writing is free from inhibition. The important difference between Emig and Elbow, though, is that Elbow argues that there is a time and a place to allow the audience back into consideration. More specifically, the writer should [listen] to the needs of the audience after there has been copious amounts of exploratory writing, thus the learning process has already taken place and the most important experience of writing occurred within a private dimension.

 

 

Battle it out!

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 302015
 

As many have pointed out before me, using ideology in the classroom does not come easy.

While I was most excited to begin teaching this sequence of readings, my experience has been turbulent at best. I have had no issues with students not contributing to the discussion but rather the content of the contributions has left me disturbed and frankly, afraid. One of my classes, on reading the Epstein essay, came up with a solution to the HIV/AIDS crisis: tattoo people who have HIV so when someone has sex with them, they can see that they have the disease and not have sex with the infected person. The idea came from one person and was readily accepted by the class as a whole and quite enthusiastically, I might add. They are convinced that people with the disease will ALWAYS lie about it and NOT use protection. I found myself in an extremely tricky position; I wanted to scream and shout and yell at my students but I wanted them to listen to the problems that surround this ‘solution’. Four students emailed me later that week that they don’t agree with that solution but that is is still 18/22 students who think that tattooing is a viable option to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The same set of students, on reading Savage and Vaid, said that bullying is grossly exaggerated and they have never seen anything like the sort so it probably doesn’t exist anymore.

I can identify this as a lack of empathy in my students perhaps, but this battle of different ideologies is something I have not been able to fight. I have, to the best of my abilities, tried to get my students to see the gaping holes in their perspective; videos, and discussions about certain tattooing events of the past have not scratched the surface at all. Just earlier today, I had a student who said he/she supports LGBTQA people but if their child identified as LGBTQA, he/she would try their best to get them therapy as it is not ‘right’.

With this set of readings I am finding it extremely difficult to be detached from the reading material and the discussions that follow. The students don’t raise their voices or get angry; they just say things simply and that freaks me out.

I cannot figure out how to manage this set of opposing ideologies in the class; me versus them.

 Posted by at 3:02 pm

Listening, reading, and writing (Response to prompt 3)

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 302015
 

In Peter Elbow’s “Being a Writer vs. Being an Academic,” Elbow talks about the need for readers to “listen caringly” (75). As Elbow also goes on to claim that writers only get to “decide . . . [intention],” as the reader gets to “decide what [was] heard” (76), I believe Elbow would view the act of revision, with audience in mind, as an act of “writing as listening.” The reason behind this is because Elbow, quite often, refers to the writing process as a speech-related act, as “dialogue” (79), in which the writer presents and the audience interprets. Additionally, those writings not intended for an audience outside of the author, those writings that Elbow refers to as “monologue” (79), could be interpreted as being “writing as listening.” However, both of these acts, audience-focused revision and private writing, can be said to merge the act of writing/speaking with that of reading/listening, as the writer is forced to become a member of the audience, either because he or she is the sole intended audience or because he or she needs to understand how the writing will be interpreted by a wider audience. By transforming into a reader/writer, a writer would be forced to both speak and listen to what is being said/written.

Additionally, Elbow may view the writing that grants us an “[awareness] of the positions from which [we]  write” (79) as an act of “writing as listening,” as we write down our thoughts and then gain insights into ourselves from reading/interpreting these thoughts. These insights can lead to further writing, which can eventually lead to more insights.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries
scroll to top