Blog Response 11/2-11/4

Ruth Mirtz’ article irks me not because I necessarily disagree with her assessment, but because group discussions are a tricky business. Our class is the only one in which I feel group discussion works as it should, especially in the smaller groups of two or three. First, we’re grad students. Our concerns with what classmates will think of our opinions shouldn’t be our primary concern. Second, the assessment of our group discussions is not limited to our classroom evaluation at the end of this semester. In fact, I’d say we don’t care much about how Pam interprets our conversations or conclusions, let alone how her evaluations of our work will affect our final grade. For us, there is a greater pressure on the horizon.

We’re working towards a frightening few semesters, dipping our toes into instructional waters that could be icy or boiling. We have goals beyond the classroom, life goals, and occupational goals: getting a job, keeping it, spreading what we perceive as our wealth of knowledge to students, others, whomever, becoming good teachers, good human beings. Undergraduates, in this case college freshmen, are insecure, intellectually shy individuals who have yet to find a place in their world or within themselves. What Mirtz diagrams, the sociological aspects of groups’ idle chatter, is a form of coping, of finding out what the rest of the group is about, and filling a role they feel comfortable with and feel others will feel comfortable with, too.

I don’t know if you can diagram or control group discussions at that stage of education and you certainly cannot avoid idle chatter. I prefer classroom discussions instead of small groups unless, as Brian suggested last week, we know students as well as they know each other. That’s a great goal to have in class, to get everyone conversing in a friendly manner whether about classroom topics or ‘how much beer they drank that weekend’. Mirtz glosses over an important factor, teacher presentation and interaction, to focus on students. Yes, the classroom is a fifty-fifty divide between teachers and students, but I consider the classroom like a family. When children do wrong, their parents are questioned. Similarly, when students do nothing, if they are uninvolved, staring at one another like bumps on a log, I would first question the instructor.

I’ll share a personal story. Last fall in one of my classes we had to do group presentations on certain short stories. The class so far had lacked any structure, with constant changes in due dates, assignments, syllabi, and professor opinions. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the professor was the root, the stable foundation of the classroom. The first day of class the professor was fifteen minutes late, left for a cigarette break, cursed, hadn’t made a syllabus, and farted, rumbling the table under her while giving a little laugh (I kid you not). This was an almost every day occurrence (well, everything but the flatulence). For writing conferences, the professor made appointments with students, like me, and never showed up or asked if we could wait an extra hour for her to get back. The professor took our contact information and would occasionally call some of us to talk about our work, but the conversations would stray off topic after a few minutes, as if a professor calling your cell phone to chat wasn’t uncomfortable enough. There were no real grades in the course. The expectations were whatever ‘you felt’ or ‘it doesn’t matter to me’. The worst part were our assigned readings, not because they were arduous, but because the professor filled class time with stories about her sex life, dangerous children, serial killing, high school talent shows, and questions about African American hair, not discussion of our text.

So, when our group presentations came up, we just sat and talked or sometimes did other homework. The professor never checked to see what we were doing, instead running errands around campus during class or chatting it up with students in the hallway. This went on for about a week. I did nothing in my group, learned nothing, wishing I hadn’t driven in the snow to get to a class where the professor didn’t take attendance anyway. The professor, who liked to belch aloud and comment upon the sound of it, didn’t know our presentation schedule, didn’t know who was covering what stories, didn’t have set groups, and didn’t really have any sort of grading method in mind. My group didn’t even present. We sat and watched a few others. I got an A in the course.

If the professor had a semblance of a pedagogical, methodological, hell, logical clue or care, our group discussions would’ve been productive as we read great stories and were all English majors. But since our professor ran our class so poorly, beyond the accepted definition of ‘free-spirited’, and we knew what the expectations were (none), grading scale (made up), we didn’t do a thing and didn’t feel bad doing it. If a student is not feeling like he/she is getting her money/time/effort worth from the professor, what’s to stop them from blowing off the class? I tell you, when I showed up for my conference about final grades with that professor and was told, after waiting for a half hour, that she had went home to pick up her kids and run some errands and oh, could I wait for her to get back, she doesn’t know when, I felt betrayed. When a professor betrays that sense of commitment and trust, everything, group discussions, classroom atmosphere, student participation, will be lost.

Response to Nelson and Brookfield

"What really counts”

In a discussion of “what really counts” in terms of students’ academic writing, Nelson shrewdly highlights the fact that students tend to focus on the finished product of their writing processes, instead of the actual processes of writing, as a response to what students judge is the evaluative goal of their teachers. Idealistic fool that I am, I would like to fight for the right of teachers to reward student participation in the process itself, as opposed to the giving of rewards for the production of final products, but this ideal actually raises two very contentious problems.

The first problem is that teachers, be they high school literature teachers or freshman composition instructors, work under the auspices of their departments and their institutions, and as such, are ultimately are responsible for enacting the prevailing orders of their employers. Much like the employees of multinational corporations or national governments, teachers must, in addition to their duties as educators, also serve as vendors of their institution’s party line. Part of that institutionalized party line normally involves the production of a certain quantity of finished products during the course of the semester. This entire line of finished product-centric thinking, as well as the “evaluative climate” that Nelson discusses, truly serves to place the focus on the production of work, rather than protracted consideration of the writing process (365).

It is in this climate that teachers must work, their hands effectively bound by the output requirements of their institutions. So, as much as progressively-minded instructors may want to place the foci of their classes on the actual process of writing, they must instead limit the scope of their teaching to the production of quantifiable pages.

This focus on production, instead of process, actually bears within it the seeds of a second potential problem. Even if an instructor was to attempt to buck the system and make the writing process the focus of their class, the question of evaluation remains an outstanding issue. How does one evaluate a process? One possible avenue would be to award points for student participation in various stages of the writing process, but even this course of action is problematic. If students come to perceive that instructors are awarding points for the completion of discrete steps of the writing process, do not those steps then become final products in themselves? Will not students then simply devise new ways to “get around task demands in accomplishing” this new type of “academic work” (367)?

And so the question of “what really counts” becomes a circular issue of evaluation versus process versus evaluation.


The “conspiracy of the normal”

The Brookfield article was interesting to me on a number of levels, the first of which is that seeks to debunk many of the myths by which many instructors conduct their classes, including the theory that group discussion is the “only” way to conduct a class. As is discussed on page 5, “democratic” group discussion is highly counterintuitive, as it is “a habit that is rarely learned or practiced in daily life.” And while it is true that group discussions are conducted with the (instructor’s) intent to involve all class members in equitable and moderated dialogue, what often ensues is a cross between the active participation of a few confident students and what Brookfield calls “egomaniacal grandstanding” (5).

Similar to Brookfield’s debunking of the “good” necessarily accomplished by group discussion is his treatment of the myth of “the circle” (9). This part of the article raised an issue that I have never had occasion to consider, which is the relationship between group discussion, the circle, and power in the classroom. In addition to the issues raised in the article, concerning the feeling of being forced to speak that is encouraged by the circle, the dynamics of what occurs in the circle can also be seen to support external social and cultural structures of power, as well as “inequities of race, class, and gender” (6). Much in the way that group discussions can provoke displays of class and micro-illustrations of the larger power struggles of society, the formation and enforcement of the classroom circle can, and often does, lead to student feelings of disquiet and discomfort. From this view, organizing desks in a circle can actually lead to many more complex problems than it solves.

Also raised in this article is the idea that teachers, though they seek to make themselves more accessible and less intimidating to their students, really must act like teachers much of the time, and that to act otherwise often amounts to an implicit insult of both their students’ intelligence and their own hard-earned expertise. Expanding from this idea, it is my contention that students, like young teenagers, do seek and benefit from some amount of boundary-creation as instituted by their teachers. As is discussed in the article, students are always aware, not only of their teacher’s presence, but also of the “power relationship” that exists between themselves and their teachers (11). Though the article does not delve into a detailed discussion of it, I think it is safe to conclude that students often attribute the “learner/learned” dynamic that exists between themselves and their teachers to the achievement of their teachers of a certain measure of expertise in their particular fields. In the way that the greater society did before them, students perceive this expertise as an indication of the permissibility of classroom deferral to an “expert.” Teachers should not seek to demean both their own expertness and the readiness of their students to learn by acting as though their expertise is an “accident,” soon to be rectified (10).

Reflection 10/28/09

The Nelson piece highlights the idea of intent of the instructor. In my experience on the other side of the desk I have mostly overlooked the intent or objectives of the instructor.  I feel though that my age as a young instructor will benefit me in being aware of the students' attempts to circumvent the lesson objectives. The idea that so much weight in the mind of the student is based on task competition rather than the lesson of the task is scary. In the dual role as student and instructor I am having a hard time balancing the strategies of the student to navigate the course with the goal of attaining a grade versus the role of the instructor who worries less about the final grade and more about the knowledge behind the course. The two things seem hard to reconcile.

The thing I keep going back to among the many different topics we discussed in class is the idea that school is a specialized setting. School is a very unique way of thinking and communicating. The Nelson article makes clear that  "Too often teachers expect students who are newcomers to a field to be able to determine  the implicit ways of thinking and presenting evidence required to write successfully in  their particular disciplines." This knowledge is acquired over time, knowledge of writing correctly in a very unique and singular way that can be different than any other kind of writing done in the students' lives. The school setting of the nature of our work puts the profession in a bind. We are teaching for the academic setting but the academic careers of our students might have any variety of lengths. Teaching only to the academic setting over looks the life of the student. Teaching only to the life of the student then too, takes time away from the academic writing of the student. I hope in my class room to navigate this treacherous crossing in focusing on audience awareness. I would also like to stress the importance of recognizing the rhetorical situation and strategies to navigate these situations successfully.  I cannot and will not decide which is a more important part of a student's life of writing. I can only hope to give options and to provide lessons that the student can put in their tool box and use as they grow. Writing is a challenge to teach in any form, let alone in multiple forms. 

The Nelson piece, in writing about the resources available to the students, enlightened my thinking that I will not be the only meaning maker in the classroom setting. The meaning and even the course are up for negation. Negotiators being me as the instructor, as well as my students. The students play an important role as the pace setters. The students also have each other to inform or confuse each other on the topics of teaching. I am hoping to encourage process thought and multiple evaluations. These multiple evaluations, I hope, will give my students the tools to navigate the course with more input from me rather than using each other to define the course expectations. In reading Nelson, I have decided to keep this in mind as I design my assignments. The students that come into my class room will not be tabula rasa. They may be blank slates when it comes to college. But most will have roughly a dozen years experience in navigating or playing school. With that experience they will bring with them strategies that I need to respect as being part of their process. Not necessarily as a more correct or effective process but a part of it just the same. I will also in my teaching try to keep in mind that what is obvious to me will certainly not be obvious to my students, especially my intent of the assignment.  This sharing of intent I feel would have helped the sociology professor from the Nelson article in sharing the value of the assignment with the students. I found it very surprising  that I was not surprised that most of the students did not even do a field study but just faked it knowing that it did not matter.

Students who are perceptive decision makers frighten me going into my first semester teaching. If the student can circumvent the lesson and feed me what I want to hear in their work then what have I taught them? Teaching those who do no want to be taught is just a hazard of the job though. I will also need to keep in mind that just because a student my play school and play me, that does not mean they are a bad person. This game of school for grade reward was built over time not necessarily a malicious decision. In this case the lesson would be solely my own in that I am the one who will be subjected to the learning curve of teaching. The students come prepared to adapt to the college setting, because being a student is a highly adaptive field of work. This balancing act of placing my needs and the students needs together in mind seems like it is going to be one of the interesting things about teaching. I look forward to never having the same class dynamic twice. I am hoping to keep this attitude as the actual work of teaching takes off.  

Student Conceptions and Critical Teaching

As a graduate student, I straddle, among other things, both sides of the student/teacher conceptual divide Jennie Nelson describes; I teach, I grade, I study. I have worn, these two months into my career, the hats of instructor, evaluator, and learner interchangeably. As such, Nelson is describing ME. I am interested in what she has to say about me.

As an instructor:

In the Major Modern Writers class that I TA, my cooperating professor occasionally (and let me emphasize the occasional element at play here) lets me teach. This previous Monday was one of those occasions. Hence the vest I wore to class. My modus operandi for teaching my wee young blossoming minds was, after having introduced the poem to be discussed, breaking them into four small groups and giving each group a theme to investigate in the poem. I thought "It's like a game! Hee hee! They're going to hoist me on their shoulders for this."

Obviously, no hoisting occurred. Where I saw an opportunity for active and engaged participation with a text, the students, damn them, saw through to the meat of the matter: They were being expected to act out their knowledge of the poem, and did not appreciate that the stress this entailed had no immediate pay-off. When I walked around the room to listen in on the small groups discussion, the students were not shy about acting (and, again, emphasize the act there) out active involvement. Brookfield's proffered assumption on visiting small groups, eat your heart out.

In any case, the students clearly generated from the instructions I gave them for class involvement their own definition of successful participation. They were aware of the nuts and bolts elements of the classroom setting, and, realizing that their participation could not be reflected in their grade for the course, limited their effort accordingly.

As an evaluator:

In the same class, I am responsible for all the grading, which so far has only entailed one essay test. Here, I would like to quote Nelson in deference to her delineation of my own experience:

"Too often teachers expect students who are newcomers to a field to be able to determine the implicit ways of thinking and presenting evidence required to write successfully in their particular disciplines."

Very, very few students in Major Modern Writers are English majors, or are even well versed in the requirements of critical college writing. However, the class is run in such a way that English competence is assumed, not constructed. As such, the VAST majority of the grading I've had to do has revealed that students need to understand HOW to write an English essay before they can know WHAT to write in an English essay.

Additionally, and actually more directly applicable to Nelson's point, I encountered significant difficulties in reconciling MY interpretations of student success with what I was forced to imagine would be the professor's. The evolution of expectations has certainly never been clearer to me than in the moments when I have to juggle my definition of success with what I know of the professor's. This is especially difficult when our opinions on these matters differ.

As a student:

In these past few months, I have discovered that, in graduate school, it is en vogue to never really have any idea how you're doing until the absolute end of the course, when you turn in one assignment that constitutes three quarters of your final grade. As such, I have slowly started to panic as I realize that, not only do I have to produce a substantial amount of original work to fulfill these assignments, but I also have had no sort of outside experience that will guide my understanding of teacher expectations. This feeling of unease at having this experiential safety net certainly underscores what Nelson is describing in the case study, as it urges me to explore other avenues of work completion.

Now, I realize that this examination of the relevance of Nelson's, and to a lesser extent Brookfield's, articles on my recent life has been little more than a largely self-serving digression. However, I would like to underscore what I hope comes through as my central belief regarding these two readings: that the material presented here is far from abstract, and that it is simultaneously accurate and significant.

Brookfield's article on critical reflection positions itself to have considerable importance as my career in academic instruction continues, if for no other reason than that I can easily imagine myself taking personal responsibility for aspects of teaching beyond my control. While I understand that this introductory point is far from the crux of the matter at hand here, the ability of critical reflection to identify not only the areas of responsibility that I have as a teacher but also the responsibilities contingent upon my students is largely comforting. I view this as an affirmation of my commitment to adaptive teaching, certainly, and also as a method whereby I can distinguish areas of improvement from elements beyond my control.

this is not the future; this is now

In my email this morning, from the Edutopia article linked below:

Increasingly, institutes of higher education are collaborating with K-12 teachers to help them use digital tools to get at-risk students excited about learning. ...

"We want our undergraduates to create projects, not just write papers," says Holly Willis, director of academic programs at USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML). "This is key to our mission of conducting research on the changing nature of literacy in the 21st century. It's crucial to our own goal that our undergraduates make teaching and learning happen at the same time; that they become peer mentors within the broader community."


http://www.edutopia.org/digital-literacy-video-games-gamedesk

--Pam

Look a dog dressed as a hot dog! Now I am multimodal!

I bring up the wiener dog to show there is more to multimodal composition than just slapping any random image with any random text. There is a craft to using more that one mode correctly.  

This may be in relation to my overall agreeable nature but I do not hate Wysocki and that makes me feel dirty. There are things I found less than readily applicable to the first year composition course, but I also found the reading interesting. I found the Wysocki readings interesting but difficult to relate to my ideas of the classroom. The activities were creative but I feel to silence more critics  the authors should have been more writing focused.  It felt in some of the activities writing was tacked on as an afterthought in the end. There were cool things done, discussions had, then ..... oh yeah maybe write about it. The text was just hard to relate to but I did not hate it. I think I skimmed the cream and will retain that and let the other stuff go. As I am now safely in my home and far enough away from any one who would care, I like multi-modality. I think that it is new, exciting, and challenging. 

Challenging, in that I am not visually creative on my own. I usually need the kind of prompt I will be giving my students to think visually. The few multimodal projects I have been assigned I have enjoyed. I enjoyed them more when they were finished and I was back in my word comfort zone. While working on multi-modal projects my brain juices were forced to flow against the current. This thinking creatively in a new format is a good learning experience for students. It is not often we go into any classroom and find challenges awaiting us. There are assignments, readings, that are more difficult than others but  a challenge, hardly ever. There are also few surprises in the work of classrooms. If multi-modality can challenge and surprise me as and instructor as well as my students, I choose to value the idea.

I also think this multimodal work has a place in our classroom. I do not expect it to replace essays. But they can support each other and the student. I do not want to be a hippy new wave teacher and say that “everything is writing” because it is not. But there is a lot of writing out in the world that is not as valued in the first year composition course.  I would like to encourage my students to explore this. I don't find multimodal composition to be a form of busy work. I also think that it is hard to separate “busy work”' away from the classroom. Unless I am prepared to sit and watch 24 students write or they to watch me write for the class period there will need to be work done in the classroom, busy or otherwise. The lessons learned in the classroom maybe short but they are at least I hope lessons that will serve the writers in their writing. Not every assignment can be an expository essay that is well thought out, prepared, crafted, and edited. Not that it would not be nice to get a few of those. I would equally like my students to value other shorter less formal types of writing. Take this blog for example. It is not graded by the same rubric as an academic essay and yet I value the writing I am doing. I have had to gauge and hedge against my audience. In fact I value this writing enough that I had three outside class discussions with peers. I briefly outlined my thoughts, and will if time allowing edit it. Even though this is being written for an academic setting this writing is not academic in nature and I value it still. This is a lesson important to impart on our students. Not all writing is academic but all writing should be valued. 

One problem I keep coming to in the course is the curriculum questions for the first year writing class. I cannot reconcile in my heart to teach only for the college years. “College is very short, the rest of life is very long” I cannot remember who said this but it was certainly not me.  I have a hard time looking forward to teaching my students to write solely academically. Four years, a handful of papers, and some essay tests are there goals. There is a value to them. It is important to write academically, but there is also a whole life past graduation, if we are lucky. If teaching in a multimodal form will encourage my students to write in at least some form that is what I am going to do. If they take away lessons that they can use in writing and presenting information in their careers than I see the class in part a success. The extreme concentration on academic writing I feel is daunting in narrow. That is not to say I don't value academic forms of writing. But I do not believe it is the end all, be all of human communication through writing. I am not suggesting I will teach how to twitter, but I am also not against using it as a tool. I know many people who could not even remember what they had learned from their first year writing course on graduation. Many people do not value the skill set we are trying to impart, because they don't see it as applicable to their own lives. First year writing should not be a throw away course to get though in the first year and never think about again. I  do not know how to change these things but I know I am going to try. 

Technocentrism, and other assorted ills

I would like to preface this response with the following disclaimer: I, like Garth, did not overly appreciate the New Media readings for this week.

That having been said, let me say that I did agree with many of the points that Wysocki in the early parts of her first chapter, including her citation of Horner. I think it is true that “the materiality of writing may be understood to include social relations,” but more than that, I think we need to go beyond considerations of materiality and talk about the fact that writing itself is social in nature, that it is always in response to something, and that whatever kind of response it is, its form is, to an extent, socially determined (3). Wysocki goes on to discuss the fact that it is part of our jobs as teachers to show students that they do not write in an intellectual vacuum, and that there is exigency for their work. I agree that there is a question of the definition of the rhetorical situation of new media texts, and that the consideration of that situation would be helpful to composition students in order to further their understanding of the link between rhetoric and successful writing.

It is basically after this point in the reading that I begin to diverge from Wysocki’s understandings of text, power, and teaching. Wysocki seems to indicate, on page 8, that not only is there not necessarily such a thing as “new” technology, neither is there such a thing as neutral technology. Her contention here seems to be that because any kind of technology always comes out of existing structures (economic, political, or habitual), technology is incapable of neutrality because it is always made by something that is biased in some way.

I also have an issue with the block quote on page 12 that deals with the seriousness with which we consider texts of varying appearances, when it suggests that a reader would think less of a text that drew “such visual attention to itself.” I disagree with the entire notion that instruction in new media texts is necessary to the composition class because composition courses do not involve the serious consideration and production of a variety of literary forms. I will grant this argument that there are, unfortunately, some professors who conduct their First Year Composition courses as if they were essay-writing seminars. But there will always be professors who will take a hard and literal line about the instruction of their subject. It seems to me, based on both my experience and the related experiences of friends, that there is in fact a great deal of variety in what is seriously considered and produced in Freshman Composition. I think it is very easy to write about extremes of behaviors and situations, all the while implying that these extremes are normal, when in fact they are unfortunate rarities.

Following our informal group discussion on Monday, I would like to raise the issue of the problematic nature of Wysocki’s formal definition of “new media texts” on page 15. Wysocki’s definition is predicated on both the composer’s awareness of the various materialities of texts, and the subsequent awareness of the viewer of the interconnectedness of the text that they are reading (15). The problem with this definition is much like the one that exists with current debates concerning hate crime laws (i.e., the question of how an institution can legislate thought and intent), in that it is nearly impossible, during the five minutes that a person devotes to checking their e-mail, to determine the connection that the Hotmail designer intended to encourage between the size of the icons and the color of the font. It is impossible for anyone besides the Hotmail designer to assess the level of awareness and exact intentions that preceded the creation of the Hotmail website. If anyone has determined a means by which intent can be assessed with complete accuracy, then that person needs to stop talking about composition instruction and needs to start talking to the people who operate the security checkpoints at airports.

My point here is that intent is nearly impossible to establish beyond any kind of doubt, and as such, such devoted consideration of intent probably does not belong in the composition classroom.

It is at this point that I would like to raise the issue of reverse discrimination. It is my contention that Wysocki is privileging new media texts disproportionately, while also clearly denigrating the value of texts that are not written with complete authorial awareness of what the reader will think about the choice of black ink instead of blue. I disagree with the idea that reader awareness of the social relativity of texts can only occur through the production and consumption of new media texts. I believe that all media (including the texts discussed in current composition classrooms) can be considered “interactive media,” if “interactive” is taken to mean “psychologically interactive and engaging” (17). Is it not impossible to read a book or poem or peer essay without being minimally engaged with that text on a psychological level? Even when I read a very boring text for an equally boring class, I am psychologically engaged with the text on at least a minimal level. I think it is incredibly technocentric to assume otherwise.

As a sort of post-script, I would like to add that “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” was unforeseeably difficult to relate to the teaching of college writing. I can agree that the images and formal aspects of a visual composition should not be divorced from one another during analysis, and I agree that there are apparently quite serious limitations with the formalization of rules for visual composing (or any other form of composing, for that matter). Now, I consider myself a lightweight Marxist-feminist critic, but when an author starts mixing what is apparently quite angry feminist rhetoric and Kantian philosophical explanations of aesthetics and beauty, I confess to becoming much less able to understand the connection between the majority of this chapter and the teaching of college writing.