Murray’s Conferences

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 022015
 

I found the concept of “teaching” (of course he claims to not be teaching very often) entirely through conferences to be a very compelling concept. Would it be feasible in a large, public university such as FAU to teach ENC 1101 entirely through conferences? Simply for the sake of time – 22 students with 3 hours a week of classes – it doesn’t seem possible. In an ideal world, these time structures wouldn’t matter, but due to the concerns surrounding metrics that seem to run this university, I can’t imagine that this type of structure would ever be universally adopted at FAU.

That being said, I think that a sort of hybrid form of this process could be extremely useful. As a UCEW consultant, I find that most interactions are too fleeting to do a great deal of change in student writing, and it is only the students who return on a regular basis to the same consultant that improve as writers. When students develop a relationship with a consultant, it seems that they are able to make realizations about their own writing, because the “teaching” is directly applicable to the content of their own individual paper. On the other hand, as a GTA, I think there can be value to the traditional classroom structure. At a minimum, MLA, grammar, the “basics” of writing, and classroom discussions are things all students need to experience; therefore, why can’t they all experiences this at the same time in the same room?

Like I mentioned above, perhaps a hybrid of this conference system would be most beneficial for student writing. If we met as a class for one week, and then the next week met in conferences to discuss drafts, they could have the best of both worlds.  Murray paints a very pretty picture of his abilities, claiming that his students continue to do more and more of the teaching themselves. I wish I could talk to him, because I can’t fully understand what this means or how it can be possible. If his students teach themselves, and have only conference experiences, how do they learn the norms of the discipline? An easy example being MLA. Of course students have a handbook, but I don’t believe that they can simply pick something like this up and then magically understand everything about it. It takes time, much longer than a 25 minute conference that should focus on larger concerns. Finally, how does he make sure that students maintain an intrinistic motivation to learn and improve, when Murray provides such little guidance?

Stress is for Super-Teachers

 News Item  No Responses »
Oct 022015
 

Based on this news item and Q&A from Goop.com:

“Why Stress is Actually Good for Us and How to Get Good at it”

Posted September 10, 2015

http://goop.com/why-stress-is-actually-good-for-us-and-how-to-get-good-at-it/?utm_source=goop+issue&utm_campaign=ae65f13ebd-2015_09_10_stress&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ad74d5855-ae65f13ebd- 5866757&mc_cid=ae65f13ebd&mc_eid=75749fa98e

This article really lined up nicely with a lot of what I’ve observed in our first months as young GTA-grasshoppers. I also have had this total recurring issue where my body seems to freak out by sweating when I get ready to teach EVERY DANG DAY instead of being calm about it. It’s really cramping my wardrobe. And I kept thinking that as long as I stayed stressed and sweating it was preventing me from being the best teacher I could be… like if I could only focus on the task at hand without stressing (and sweating) about it, then I would be a clearer thinker/better teacher/communicator/genuine representation of myself. I thought that stressing about teaching was an ironic detriment to our teaching.

Yet Dr. McGonigal’s research shows that stress was/is potentially making me a better teacher if I harness it appropriately, not to mention a smarter, better human. That’s not a totally new idea, I guess, but of particular interest to me in her research/Q&A were her 3 types of stress handlers (for more info, see the last Q&A exchange in the article):

  1. Iron Man – stress is your thing; you love competition, exceed under pressure, etc.
  2. Connecting – good at asking for help, reaching out to others, etc.
  3. Growth Mindset – making meaning/purpose out of your stressful situation.

Whatever type you tend to be or approach you might take in teaching, it’s empowering to realize that all of us can improve with this stressful stuff–that we’re actually better of with it. And, that in the end it’s an indicator that we actually CARE about the students, which is great.

So even though I still “perspire” every time I get up in front of the class to teach (even though we’re months in, even though I cognitively don’t feel stressed), it doesn’t mean that my teaching’s suffering for it, or that subconsciously my stressed-out brain is shaving years off my young grasshopper life. Instead, my very ladylike perspiration might be an indicator that I’m “performing better, making better decisions, and impressing others more” (see A to Q #6) than if I was dry as a cactus. So next time I greet them all with sweat circles, my students can count themselves lucky.

 

Re: “Inventing the University”

 Pre-class Reading Response  1 Response »
Oct 012015
 

Bartholomae talks about “a necessary and enabling fiction at work” in student writing.  Brilliant.  That phrase puts words to an observation I’ve been making over and over again during this last month.  I just haven’t been able to sit with it, to think on why all of the papers I’ve been reading sound disingenuous, overdramatic, or, more to the point, fictitious.  What mindset are these students adopting that limits their use of genuine examples and authoritative tone?

Could it be that my students are writing to me, to a fictionalized version of me—some amalgam of all the voices they hear when they think of the sound of an instructor, an authority figure?

“When students are writing for a teacher… students, in effect, have to assume privilege without having any.”

I can’t remember asking for this kind of simulation, this parody of authority.  But this is what I get.  I can hear this assumption, this gesture toward the vague sound of academic discourse, in too many of my students’ essays.  Who demands this of my students?  How has this fantasy taken hold of their minds—that they cannot, as Bartholomae might suggest, “extend themselves” into their respective subject matters to explore and discover, that they must, instead, struggle outside of their means to take command, to instruct?

Are We Trying Too Hard?

 Pre-class Reading Response  1 Response »
Oct 012015
 

I am desperately trying to determine a way to spend less time grading essays. I average 10-40 minutes per paper (really bad ones take even longer). I can’t help but ask myself if I’m trying too hard.

frustrated-teacher

Donald Murray says, “I gave my students their papers, unmarked, and said, make them better.” Seriously? I can imagine that, for some students, this is a strategy that would work great. But I have far more students who (I feel) need more guidance.
One grading expert says “don’t comment so much; let them take responsibility for finding the solution to the (fill in the problem here),” while another says “leave more concrete comments; tell them exactly how to fix (fill in the problem here).
So which is it? Comment more, comment less, or don’t comment at all? If students are saying, “I wish he would listen better to what we need to know,” then how do I go about doing that? It just seems unrealistic to me when I am dealing with 22-44 students at a time.
So, I come back to the question, “Are we trying too hard?” Composition theorists have great intentions. They want to find that perfect way to teach composition. But the student population is so diverse and shouldn’t we be finding a way to reach all of those different levels of students as possible? It seems to me that locking into one mode of teaching composition will ultimately lock out many students from the joys of writing.

 Posted by at 12:36 pm

Mulling it Over: Murray and Student Conferences

 Pre-class Reading Response, Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Oct 012015
 

Anyone else envious of Murray?

In his article “The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference,” Murray reflects that each year he teaches less and less, yet, his student seem to learn more and more.

His teaching strategies within (and outside) the classroom remind me of the practices we adopt at the UCEW. He notes: “I am critical and I certainly can be directive but I listen before I speak.” Like Murray, writing center consultants are taught to be attentive listeners, allowing the client to find their own voice, rather than offering up our own words. This way, they become writers that are more self-sufficient. Murray also lists the questions he asks his students when they come in to see him, labeling them as the “right” questions. They are thoughtful, probing questions that allow the student to draw forth what they really want to say (instead of what they think the teacher wants to hear). For students who come in to the UCEW quiet and reserved, consultants ask these kinds of questions to get at the heart of what the student thinks and wants to write about.

Murray puts it nicely when he notes “They follow language where it will lead them, and I follow them following language.” In an ideal world, I would follow my students’ language, taking the position of peer rather than apprentice. But as Murray notes, his style of teaching requires a certain climate, and that climate is not possible with our FYC course.

I can only parallel Murray’s teaching strategies as a consultant at the UCEW. This is probably (most likely) the reason I enjoy working there more than my time in the classroom.

I am envious of Murray.

But, then again, he does average seventy-five conferences a week.

So maybe my shade of green is not so dark.

Toeing the Pool

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Sep 302015
 

Nearing the end of high-school senior year, the before-departing English assignment was to select three experiences, assignments, or persons who contributed the most to my budding understanding of the subject. This required a detail their contribution, specific moments of breakthrough, and time frame if applicable. The paper accounted a field trip to Hemingway’s Key West home–invigorating a practical application of writing (a living can be made), a short-story I had written in elementary school about a dog lost on a raft out at sea, and Mrs. Feldborg, whose praise, criticism, and very-used donation of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye  showcased the sensitive, nurturing, and revealing nature of literature. Most of this was bullshit. I’ve never been to Hemingway’s house and the story written in elementary school was terrible and done out of obligation. I got an A, but didn’t feel any closer to understanding my understanding. This was because I approached the assignment with the same obsessive adherence to the prompt I always did–give one experience, assignment, and person that stands out under associations with Literature–and that was that. “One of the common assumptions of…composition…is that at some ‘stage’ in the process of composing an essay a writer’s ideas or his motives must be tailored to the needs and expectations of his audience” (Bartholomae 9). The “Why” had been buried in anecdotes and there was no reason to dig.

I’d figured out exposition. I knew how to write to keep my teachers from  frustration and that was enough. Students new to college-level writing, whose literary efforts haven’t expanded beyond personal accounts and obvious narrative, have learned the same thing. The concept of argument, of proving something, is foreign. Argument, in this way, is the discourse awaiting appropriation, and it’s a monster in importance and introduction. College writing require a pushing of the self–the main staple of high-school argument–to the edge of consciousness in favor of assertion, evidence, and discussion. It’s an uncomfortable place for a centerpiece.

Stop teaching, Start Mediating

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Sep 302015
 

There have been word(s) circling around the GTA office regarding the disappointment in the students on their second essays. Complaints containing questions, such as: why haven’t they gotten better? don’t they listen to my lectures? am I not teaching them correctly?

Now, I don’t know whether I am grading easier/lazier, or it has been my luck of the student draw pool, or I am the composition teaching messiah, or some other type of Florida magic spilling over onto me from the Magikal Kingdom––but, almost all of my student’s papers have gotten better by half a letter grade, if not a whole.

A part of me expected this to happen, and the other part is confused, because here is the thing: I don’t feel like I actually teach, and definitely don’t lecture. So what do I do? My classes fall into two usual categories: we’re either discussing, or we are doing some form of writing/reading. In both instances I try my best not to tell, but instead to ask. Me and my students end up having a conversation. No hand raising. Just shout it out when you know it!

So I wonder if we were to stop teach and were to start mediating: would we see better results? To be further determined.

Don’t hurt my baby!

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Sep 292015
 

As I brought it up in class, my advertising boss told me to give up my baby (any piece I wrote) the second I gave it to him for review. Even though I was supposed to churn out misogynistic adverts on motorcycles, each rejection hurt me on some level because for me, it was a rejection of my creativity.

And we discussed in class that perhaps the students are not that invested in the essays they turn in but they do have some form of attachment as it does bring them a grade. I have had so many students come to office hours and complain at how they were AP students and this grade ‘offends’ them. A lot of my students who received bad grades have had similar reactions. This gives me the impression that writing, in any form does come attached with a little bit of the self that wrote it.

“How can we grade writing in which the writers have laid their lives on the line?”

Then, thinking about this and the process of grading, I feel that the minute you show your writing to anyone, you are opening yourself up to judgement and criticism. You are willingly turning over your baby over for review. Even a Facebook post is open to judgement, comment, and criticism. Our students have no choice in this matter, BUT they are writing something specific that they know is going to be judged and criticized.

Maybe I’m talking in circles but mulling over all this has made me realize that the process of grading somehow does not feel as intrusive as it did earlier.

 

 Posted by at 12:16 pm

Spread the “Like”

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Sep 272015
 

Elbow’s article explores the importance of liking. He suggests that teachers make an effort to get to know and like their students. Doing so will make it easier to evaluate and offer meaningful, constructive comments. When we like our students, we approach their essays as a willing, friendly, reader who will offer genuine advice. He notes: “If I like a piece, I don’t have to pussyfoot around my criticism. It’s when I don’t like their writing that I find myself tiptoeing: trying to find something nice to say—and usually sounding fake, often unclear.” I’ve had this experience while grading papers. For papers that I struggle to get through, I always try to start off my end comment with something positive (“You have some really great ideas here…”). This is often difficult, and I’m sure I sound insincere to my students. In this sense, I am not the receptive reader that the student needs to like his or her own writing.

While it is important that teachers like student writing (and therefore are able to criticize it better) it is equally (perhaps, more?) important for students to like their own writing. They are more motivated to revise and rework a paper if they actually care about it and what they have to say. This makes sense. However, as we have all noted in class, in the office, and in colloquium, students are completely burned out on the topic of technology. They never showed much interest in the topic in the first place, so three essays in and their passion for the topic is nonexistent. In this case, I’m not sure how to get them to “like” their work when they care so little about the topic. While I can work on “liking” my students/student writings, I can only hope that they’ll be more invested in the next theme, thus allowing them to grow as writers and critical thinkers.

Elbow Room

 Pre-class Reading Response, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 252015
 

So I’ve read a little bit from Peter Elbow before and I’m often torn about his ideas. The big issue I have with this particular article is the assumption that having each reader/teacher interpret grades differently is a fault of the reader/teacher as opposed to the inability of the student to write for a particular audience.

When we teach aloud (in my opinion) we should give our students an understanding of who we are: our attitudes toward certain subjects/topics; our personality type; our history with writing; etc. I would argue that an extremely important take-away for young writers is how to write to a specific audience. IF they are writing to me, they should be aware of who I am.

This is why I believe in an extremely important bridge between in-class discussions and commenting on papers. If we depersonalize the audience, we depersonalize the writer. By keeping those two things very specific, we can help mold the writer’s ability to write toward specific audiences.

Elbow (as well as some of the other authors we’ve read for today) think that a variety of grading philosophies is somehow a detriment to the student. I think that it CAN be a detriment, but we have the power to utilize that as an opportunity for teaching how to write toward a specific audience.

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