Conferences and Thinking Back to Freire

 Weekly Recap  No Responses »
Oct 142015
 

We did conferences last week. I feel they went well overall. There were many students who showed up and acted like they didn’t care which was to be expected. I have found that many of my students have little interest in the class and in their performance in the class as a whole. One student in particular, who I have had some behavioral issues with, questioned a grade I gave him during our conference. I told him why he received the grade he did but he ended up walking out on the conference 40 seconds in.

I was thinking back to Freire and banking education. I wrote in a previous blog post that I had never thought of education as an oppressive thing. But now that I have had more time to think about it, I realized that I have had teachers and professors who were oppressors, similar to what Freire talked about in “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” I remember my sophomore algebra teacher in high school. She was a ruthless dictator in the classroom. You could tell she thought of her students as just little children who knew nothing and that she held all the valuable knowledge in the world. Her class was a terrible experience.

 Posted by at 12:22 pm

Audience Behind the Screen

 Pre-class Reading Response  1 Response »
Oct 142015
 

Elbow opens his essay with an anecdote: when he can’t find words or thoughts in a social setting, he closes his eyes to ignore his audience. Often, when I am speaking or listening to people––whether it be professionally or casually––I find my eyes constantly wandering with the occasional glue of eye contact taking place just to reassure that I am in fact still listening. A lack of eye contact is often interpreted as a sign of insecurity, and while this might be true in some of my own cases, I find that I am also able to listen and piece a narrative together more clearly when I am not directly staring into a person’s soul. By shutting off or tuning out one sense another grows more strongly. My ears get bigger.

When a student is writing, his/her eyes are virtually closed to their audience––it is them, their computer screen, a deadline, and a grade. Elbow writes that “…we are liable to neglect audience because we write in solitude…young people often need more practice in taking into account points of view different from their own; and that students often have an improverished sense of writing as communication…” (50-51). Constantly, I stress to my class that what they write is part of a larger conversation. A lot of student often make pop culture references, or name check social applications, that would fall deaf upon any other generation. I try to help them understand that those they are conversing with sometimes need some explanatory detail.

An Opportunity for Metathinking

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Oct 112015
 

According to EAT, the midterm reflection assignment is an opportunity for students to practice metathinking. By engaging in this activity “they develop awareness of what they’ve learned in the class.”

As I sat and read their reflections this afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised. My students (for the most part) put forth effort in their reflective writing. In their conferences, several students reported how helpful it was to go back and read their work and my comments. They appreciated seeing how their writing has changed and progressed. They even identified areas where they still have trouble, offering up strategies to counteract those difficulties.

Though sitting through all those conferences was tiring (my voice felt like it was disappearing after I was done), I ultimately found them hugely rewarding. I not only got to hear from my students that they were actually learning from the class (thank goodness!), but I also got to sit with each student one-on-one and hear their questions and concerns.

I believe most of my students found the conferences helpful as well. After discussing their grades and their drafts, many students asked me if they could make an appointment or visit during my office hours to further work on their papers. After seeing how helpful one-on-one time could be, students requested more. Maybe it seems uncomfortable or daunting to an incoming freshman to set up an appointment with the teacher. Maybe it seems like doing so is an admittance of “I suck. I need help,” rather than seen as an opportunity to learn and grow. I think that having the opportunity to sit down with me allowed them to see that asking the teacher for guidance doesn’t mean that they are stupid or lacking. That is a huge step in the right direction. I expect more visitors during my office hours and emails in my inbox as the semester progresses.

Mid Term Reflections

 Post-class Discussion Reflection, Weekly Recap  No Responses »
Oct 092015
 

Mid-Term reflections went well. It was great to review the three essays all at once and see how each student has progressed. I guess the best part was really seeing that they had in fact progressed. Aside from improvements in format, pretty much everyone seems to be putting in some effort and coming up with more original theses, spending time thinking about the subject and even trying to put a new spin on their papers. I’m really happy overall.

In my colloquium section with Dr. Bradford, we’ve talked a lot about how what you discuss will be reflected in the papers, whereas the things you forget to mention will not magically appear. That certainly seems to be the case here. In the first essays I was really only looking for a thesis and some form of organization. That was the only thing I really got. After that I ramped it up a bit – asking for citation and quotation. They, for the most part, did it. I think that the third essays will be even better. I hope that everyone else is having a similarly positive experience.

 Posted by at 12:08 pm

Taking risks and moving beyond ‘fixed’ mindsets

 News Item  No Responses »
Oct 062015
 

In conferences this week, I found myself repeating to students, “Don’t be afraid to speak up.”

I find this tendency to stay quiet in the classroom comes from a student feeling inadequate, or nervous that they don’t know the “right” answer. I explained that in class discussions, there is no “right” answer, and that we need everyone’s voice to be present in order to take part in our conversation. But upon reading their reflections, I found many had labeled themselves as poor writers when the course started. Thankfully, the students recognized their growth throughout the semester, but this initial self-classification can be dangerous. It can hold up a student’s confidence early in the writing process, before they even put pencil to page.

I recently read an NPR article, “Never Too Late: Creating a Climate for Adults to Learn New Skills,” which discusses creating a growth mindset in the classroom. This moves students beyond self-labelling based on perceived skill level towards considering initiative and effort as the materials for growth. It’s a simple concept, but worth repeating.

The article also discusses taking risks as a teacher. It’s easy to get caught in routines, and to (one day) claim we know what works and what doesn’t in the classroom. Even after half a semester, I can feel myself adopting a specific teaching style and persona, and enacting similar drills and discussion activities. But like my students, I need to continue trying new approaches and taking risks.

Ghosts of Teachers Past

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Oct 062015
 

One of the biggest concerns I had with teaching was the strong sense of inadequacy informed by inexperience. Sure, last time I checked I had about seven siblings. And sure, being the oldest I’ve helped them all with their homework throughout the years. But I don’t know whether to consider that tutoring or teaching, or are those one in the same? There must be a difference between helping along one student into the comfort of understanding than helping twenty students.

In my last year of high school, a classmate and I helmed a Catholic school class of several eight year olds once a week. I guess we taught them––but, there is a huge gap in consequence between teaching mythology and teaching writing; one is required to survive (you pick which).

(Aside: If a student was being talkative, I would tell him/her to hold up their hand straight in the air for as long as they could. This was a big joke between me and the students, and the kids knew that. However, once a parent found out: I got kicked out of the program and was almost expelled from my high school for inflicting corporal punishment upon the children. This coming from the Catholic church. Ha.)

Two months in to teaching undergraduates and I’m beginning to wonder: perhaps stepping directly out from twenty years of learning shoes into fresh teaching shoes might be just enough of substantial experience to begin with. This brief segue from learning to teaching also affords me the understanding to relate to those I’m teaching.

When you meet a new friend, you begin to pick up an each other’s habits. Every teacher I’ve come into contact with has informed me somehow, someway; what I liked and what I disliked was imprinted and (hopefully) flows out unconsciously into a new hybrid form.

(I began to lose steam towards the end. Hope these ideas make sense……..)

Ghosts of Authority

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Oct 052015
 

Until recently, roughly the last two weeks, I have not been teaching my students.  This is not to say that my students have been without instruction, but that their instructor has not been the person I think of when I think of myself.  Largely this feels like a matter of what Skorczewski refers to as “the conflict between what a teacher should be and what we might call a ‘teaching self.’”  But, if I can wax poetic in a blog post about authenticity, this also feels like possession—like the ghosts of authority would move in at the beginning of every class and the me that I know, the me that people outside of my classroom might recognize, would move out.

Admittedly this was my own doing.  I invited “unconscious and terribly messy” conversation with the voices of instructors past, and my own voice, somehow, became lost in the reverberation.  This was, I believe, partly because I wanted my students to view me as a professional, as someone they could respect, someone they could learn from, someone they would want to learn for.  A totally reasonable expectation, I felt, not beyond the abilities of the supernatural.  So I let the ghosts speak.  I forewent, even, the first day ice breaker for fear of humanizing myself, and I became the faded essence of my ghosts of authority, no better than an echo.

Well, to carry on with this motif, I have emerged from the fog and exercised the demons.  My students and I, that is to say my newly found teaching self, had a frank discussion about the university structure and our positions within it.  Ironically, the act of materializing above the din of my instructional ghosts to present my authentic self to my students was also the act of becoming more transparent.  Perhaps now my students see me as somewhat of a transliminal being—one who straddles the line between instructor and student, who hears the voices of ghosts and contributes to the discussion—but who is ultimately human.

Elbow’s Defensive Student

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 022015
 

Elbow discusses the issues we face when we have to decide whether to come down hard on a student or nurture and encourage them. He notes how our loyalty to students is to “be their allies and hosts as we instruct and share–to invite students to enter in and join us as members of a learning community…” My struggle with this point is that, while this works for so many, I still have students who do not want to become part of the learning community. As I try to encourage a sharing environment, some remain silent and unimpressed with the ideas presented to them. I had one student email me, telling me that we should focus on social issues affecting our world. This is a student who makes little to no attempt to engage in class, and who is doing everything in his power to avoid writing a complete paper.

What do we do then? How do we handle students who don’t accept our invitation to be working on the same team?

To be an ally

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 022015
 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I really dislike grading. While I understand the point of grading (because they pay us to do it, right?), I have this awful feeling that a “C-” will cause a student to shut down, as opposed to desiring to improve. While there were vast improvements between the two essays, most of those improvements happened to students who had a grade that was originally within the high-C to mid-B range. I had one student who went from a “C-” to a “B+” (out of the more than 15 “C-” grades given), because she actually brought her second essay to me during office hours and worked on it with me. However, 1 out of 15 doesn’t seem all that promising.

To combat this fear, I’ve decided to allow students the ability to “revise” their essays during the conference. While the prompt allows for a student to argue that they deserve a better grade, to be their own “defense lawyer”  against my status of “judge”(Elbow 332), I felt that they would be better served by being allowed to use my comments as a means of training. While the possibility of arguing for a higher grade is still available to all of my students, I’ve offered them the ability to move up 1/3rd of a letter grade (say, from a “C-” to a “C”) by briefly explaining how they would change one problem area in their essay.

My hope is that by allowing them to raise their grades slightly, the students will come to see me as less of an enemy. Additionally, I hope that this will get my students into the habit of revising their writing (which they swear they do, but… yeah, right). Depending on how well this works out, I may get in the habit of allowing minimal revisions after a grade is posted.

Murray’s Advertising Anecdote and assorted thoughts

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 022015
 

The advertising anecdote that Murray used in his essay reminded me of something similar that I faced. For the first TV commercial I wrote, my boss kept asking me to ‘clean up the script’. After the sixth revision, I got really annoyed and I handed him a blank sheet of paper, “Is this clean enough?” He looked at it and then told me what he thought should be changed.

It makes for a funny story but I feel that those revisions where I didn’t know what needed to be changed/removed/added just frustrated me and made me doubt my creative process. And that brings me back to what we discussed last week; about writing being one’s baby. Criticism directed towards the piece of writing seems to be then targeted at the person who wrote it, not the piece itself.  I mean sure, I did revise it to what I thought was wrong but I never really knew what was wrong till my boss sat down with me.

But Murray lets the students arrive at their own conclusions!

Murray’s style of teaching sounds highly appealing and somehow like a utopian concept. One-on-one writing advice? Hell yeah, I’d take some of that please and add fries to that. But, his students display the desire to learn, the desire to correct themselves. Sure, I had it the first time I was revising and maybe the second time but after that, I was just pulling my hair out and dreaming of the weekend.

I don’t see that desire to revise in my ENC 1101 students. They don’t want to do this. They don’t care about conferences or pre-draft workshops. Maybe Murray’s students do exist, but certainly not in freshmen composition classes. It sounds like an urban college myth, the perfect class where each student is curious enough to explore on their own and only use the teacher as a sounding board.

Thus endeth the rambling session.

 Posted by at 3:25 pm
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