Jason W

People have been calling me Jason for as long as I can remember. Born and raised in South Florida like the mighty orange. Left position as veterinary technician to dispense wisdom--wisdom forthcoming.

Social Epistemicism’s Greatest Hinderance: the Social Component.

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

In my head, peer review was going to be the turning point for all essays. I’d read through the rough drafts, find common errors through them, and formulate guidelines for the peer review to follow. This worked well the first and second time. Most students had their papers in hand to exchange with their chosen classmates, took them home, and brought back critiqued copies. I’d glance through them to make sure my guidelines were met and either give a check, 1/2, or zero depending on level of completion.

As the semester progressed, students began realizing that if they weren’t present on the day of the exchange they wouldn’t receive any papers to critique and thus did not have to do the critique! In attempt to close this rather gaping loophole I’d send group emails to clusters of three (or whatever numbers allowed) absentee students asking them to use the email to exchange their rough drafts, print, and critique for return next class. The most common thing to happen was one of the three would send the draft and I’d get an email from them later asking what they should do, as the other two maintained radio silence. In fact, there wasn’t a single successful e-mail exchange. The likely cause of  the silence was not-completed drafts–but I’ll never know.

When the critiques became due it was commonplace to hear “I wasn’t here for the exchange. Will I get points off my essay?” as I made my way around the room. “Not directly,” I’d reply  “but without a second pair of eyes, you’re doing yourself a disservice and that might lower the grade.” The smile and “Oh, okay!” was one of the more viscous things I had to swallow throughout the semester.

In conclusion, working with people still sucks.

Academically, Nurture > Nature

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

One of the more difficult things I’ll be doing this semester is not passing a student who, in my opinion, has no reason to be taking the class or ENC1102 for that matter. The essays he handed in were exemplary in both form and content and engaging in thought and language. His understanding of the material (despite a tendency for absenteeism) is impressive and, based on the few times I’ve spoken to him, he’s able to string together legitimate arguments/separate trains of thought in impromptu fashion. If what he’s told me about his personal life is true, there’s a lot on his plate outside of school: a business he’s running, family he’s looking after. So there are supposed reasons for his truancy–not that any of it matters without documentation.

To my fault, I’ve been particularly lenient with him on due dates because the quality of his work is of such high order–and also the fact he was added to my class almost two weeks after starting. But with neither essay 4, 5, and so far 6 handed in, he’s not giving me any other options.

It’s a lesson he’ll learn. An important one at an non-detrimental stage of his academic career: You can be brilliant as fuck but if there’s no effort there, it ain’t going to help.

Absence of the Physical and Mental

 Classroom Praxis  No Responses »
Dec 092015
 

The attendance policy on the given syllabus for ENC1101 was notoriously soft. Students could whimsically skip with no repercussion for their truancy in sight. The syllabus allowed for recoil at semester’s end via class participation, but that 8% don’t scare nobody.

Without needed to say so, this leniency was taken advantage of. Chronically in some cases. And this bothered me heavily until mid-November when a pattern of quality of work and resulting grade started developing correlations with these absences. The flighty birds were coming home to a nest in ruin. Surprisingly, not a lot of absentee feathers were ruffled by the revelation (possibly expectation?), which was okay–although I was fully prepared to engage a debate over what’s fair in a domain where I decide the fairness. Only one student (the most consistent skipper, who at the semester’s beginning said to me “I just won’t be here sometimes.” disregarding any implicit “whys”) raised heavy concerns about the state of her grade. It was almost a letdown how easily diffused her strife was after telling her the last two essays (that she’s yet to pick up) were scored lower than her first two because my expectations had risen–and that this is something she’d know if she were present for the lessons or picked up her critiqued work.

The lesson, I suppose, is that attendance regulates itself in most cases.

 

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.

Post-Presentations

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

It wasn’t just the nutritional components of presentation night that made it memorable (although  it did rose-color an already engaging and entertaining experience). What really stuck were the plethora tools and services available to aid educators and researchers in their endeavors. In terms of educators, this was especially true of unique assignment-crafting. With the ease and accessibility of ReelDirector, the video-editing app Ashley presented, I can feasibly assign a weekend project on a reading and utilize the results for my own pedagogical applications! If I’m in a social-epistemical mood, I might require my students to signup and build a profile via Kathleen’s Wattpad. And I’m digging graphic design at the moment, I’m not hesitating to assign a project around Trina’s Piktochart.

More than anything, the presentations made evident that pre-essay assignments don’t have to be the dry brainstormings and bubble-outlines of yesteryear. Utilizing these technologies won’t only make for more material engagement–their use acknowledges and appeals to the largely digital interests and inclinations of our students.

 

 

 

 

Post-Processes

 Post-class Discussion Reflection  No Responses »
Dec 082015
 

Insofar as post-process classroom application is concerned, Breuch concludes that its main use rests in “remind[ing] us to think carefully about our teaching practices, and to become more aware of our interactions with students in the classroom,” (122) that, despite pan-subject application, its power rests in understanding that “teaching does not equal mastery of content but rather how teachers and students can interact with one another.” (122) In class we discussed if student-driven essay writing was an effective vehicle to achieve college-level papers, and, if memory serves, consensus was largely skeptical for the same reasons post-process dwindled not long after conception. An issue summed by Matthew Heard: “[A] wholesale adoption of postprocess theory is not realistically possible in most universities since the idealism of the theory clashes at times with the exigencies of student’s needs. (283)” And this is an issue particularly relevant for intro composition courses–can we trust the blank slate to achieve all it needs to arrive at the ‘college-level?’ In terms of potential effectiveness, it’s an encapsulation of the theoretical: “Postprocess…[claims] that the very nature of written communication has been misunderstood until now as a ‘closed’ system that might eventually be captured with enough training, practice, and rules. (Heard 284)” If the system is stagnating and the rules becoming too rigid, the move is understandable as”writing ‘cannot be taught,’ since writing, like speaking cannot be mastered like a skill but must be exercised by ‘entering into specific dialogue. (Heard 284)” If this is granted, then a class based on ‘exercise to greatness’ should be the right move. But in the same way a weight-lifting coach wouldn’t ask a newbie to bench their body weight on the first visit, a teacher shouldn’t toss the first essay to fortune and whim.

 

Response Prompt 2: Plastic Brains

 Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 282015
 

Conceptualizing thought and communication as either artificial or natural attributes or removes intention from its effect. The term “natural” finds its definition in separateness from human events—in that it is not produced, altered, or derived from our machinations. Thought, in this way, could be either artificial or natural—the lynchpin in that difference being the intent to think. My intent to answer this prompt categorizes the thoughts going into it as artificial, but their drifting to the cheeseburger stowed in the fridge, arguably natural as my mind drifts to it without approval.

Communication, within these guidelines, will almost always be artificial, as there is almost always an intent to communicate. Although one could feasibly argue citing hypnosis, sleep-talking, or moments of heightened emotional state as non-voluntary forms of communication. These loopholes, however, are sewn shut when words hit the paper.

The utility of thinking communication, particularly writing, as pure artifice, removes the possibility of supposedly inherent truths that stifle or stagnate arguments or positions. And this is a good thing for, once an idea crescendos to truth, it starts to decay—as all creations do when the building stops.

Power in Symbols

 Classroom Praxis, Pre-class Reading Response  No Responses »
Oct 282015
 

Radiolab: “His eyes grew wider and wider, and he [slapped] his hands on the table [and realized] ‘Oh! Everything has a name!'”

That moment of Ildefonso’s insight is almost an enviable one if not for the prolonged vacancy that nested it. Aside from enabling a more succinct communication, that realization opened the complex and ubiquitous world of symbolism. Emig’s “Writing as a Mode of Learning,” establishes symbolic nature of language: “What is striking about writing as a process is that….the symbolic transformation of experience through the specific symbol system of verbal language is shaped into an icon (the graphic product) by the enactive hand. If the most efficacious learning occurs when learning is re-inforce, then writing through its inherent re-inforcing cycle involving hand, eye, and brain marks a uniquely powerful multi-representational mode for learning.” (124) What Ildefonso gained in that moment was not only a system of categorization, but the most useful (and usually granted)  learning tool at out disposal: communicative ability. Because that’s all learning really is–the transference of knowledge from an object or other to your own understanding and concept. Without knowing of the symbolic nature of our understanding of the world, that understanding cannot be shared. “The medium then of written verbal language requires the establishment of systematic connections and relationships. Clear writing by definition is that writing which signals without ambiguity the nature of conceptual relationships.” (Emig 126)

This basic truth speaks to a smaller one my students have started to tussle with. Most of them are now at a level of writing were subject conceptualization and argumentative prowess are their major hindrances. The base issue, I’m starting to hypothesize, is that their concentrations lie too much with appeasing some amorphous standard they’ve been set them to (Avoid article-speak and extemporaneous writing, proper source utilization), and less on constructing a cohesive, inter-connected argument. Instead, the focus should be, as Emig postulates, on the relationships between whatever concepts are subject to their molding.

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.

Twist for the Pop: Unpacking Bloom’s Jam Metaphor

 Pre-class Reading Response, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 232015
 

Bloom’s jam issues are, as he indicates, rooted in the multitude of ingredients available—the many focuses for grading criteria. Ultimately, the grader wants to send home something reflective of the work’s objective completeness, or as close to objective as Bloom’s “disparate components” can manage. By following those critical focuses, applying them in equal portions,   an objective grade can be arguable reached, but what use is objectivity in an art form that, at times, relies on subjective interpretation (if not directly on the paper, at least in opinion formation). Blooms concern about broccoli and baloney finding the jam encapsulate this dilemma: how much is too much? The red pen needs sleep too.

The solution is to send each student home with their own kind of jam. Every paper has its strengths and weaknesses, and those majorly affected ingredients should be the focus of grading criteria: praise for plump blueberries but reprimand for buying the brown sugar instead of refined white. Addressing the whole list of malfeasant ingredients isn’t practical or constructive, as the line between constructive criticism and “you’re terrible at this” to a student can be as slight as relentless semi-colon correction.

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