I would first like to respond and agree with Daae's post from last week in offering the students a chance to choose the writing class that they are in. I understand the practicality of the idea of offering differing classes and I know that this is far reaching but why not let our themes of our courses become available for students to learn about and choose from? Even if it is just a chance to have a more engage d and interested classroom that is a chance worth taking. The extra paperwork is worth having a student come in feeling more interested in the classroom. The example or classroom theme that I keep coming back to, is the underlying themes of music. This idea is great if people are into music. I am not. Music does not define me, give me nostalgic flashbacks, or represent me in almost any way. Music plays a very small role in my life. If I were to get into the music themed course I would be either playing school as I went through the motions of the assignments or I would drop the course and potentially screw up my time line of courses. If the themes were available for student options . I think we would have a more interested and better motivated class. We would at least all enter on the first day having one thing in common, in that, we all chose to be there knowing what was going to going on.
Brooke
“In the classroom students write to comply with our demands they don't write because they see themselves as writers. The need for writers to develop their own voices is the central place where pedagogy in writing comes in conflict with itself .” This is quite a catch-22 we as instructors want to help develop the students own personal voice but in that same time we are limiting it to the assignments given. But with out assignments how will any voice develop authentic or not. This is a heck of a problem. I agree with students having an underlife in the class room as well as their writings. Often assignments force the student to take a stand on an issue not valued or often not thought about this leads to false opinions and false voice. I do think these false opinions are better than no opinions. If assigning a persuasive stop smoking essay to a group of smokers requires them to think critically and analyze and in the future helps with real world writing in a persuasive manner then I guess their false voice was a success. This thought of developing voice in one semester seems far stretched. 15 weeks is not very much time to grow into a voice even if it was the only class the students were taking, we met everyday, and wrote reams of discourse. I would like to see students develop a voice but the practically of it is limiting. I don't see where there voice comes into a formal essay. The job of conforming to the requirements of academic discourse can be daunting enough without trying to wedge the writer's voice in too. Writers that are writing for more than just the grade is a a very noble goal but I feel it may be out of reach. Maybe we should strive for teaching the building blocks skills that lead to this and hope and encourage them to continue with writing that gives them a chance to express their own ideas in a their natural voice . Not just playing school. I also thought the Brooke article gave an important insight into the classroom environment and all the things that go on aside or concurrently with the “educating” The underlife currents all rang true to my own experiences even now at the graduate level . I have seen examples of all of the 4 major classroom underlife activities. I think this information will be valuable as I get into the classroom and can identify actions not as disrupting, but as necessary. I would love to have writers in my classrooms but I am also prepared to have students and that is ok too.
Nystrand
What I took away most from the Nystrand piece directs back to the epistemological in that: “Knowledge is something generated, constructed, indeed co-constructed in collaboration with others. Students figure out not just remember.” I would like to become the type of instructor that can foster this kind of learning. I want to as Nystrand puts it, “moderate, direct discussion, probe, foresee, and analyze.” I would like my students to do more than just play the school game I would like for the time that we are in the classroom together to be engaged and plugged in to the lesson. This seems easier said than done. This idea of playing school goes back to Brooke's development of voice. How as instructors do we ask students for essays that in assigning them, we are only playing instructor? Nystrand “ The inevitable dead end of assignments requiring students to explain things we already know- things our dialogically astute students know we know. Good students play along, of course, so that we can tell that they know we know they they know what we know! This forced discourse seems silly and at the same time as a soon to be instructor almost nearly impossible to avoid. How do we balance these things? I want to be a Ms.Lindsay. But am having a hard time seeing how.
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