blog idea

I just thought of something that might make this blog a little more organized. How about we limit posts about a specific article to just one post (obviously made by the first person to hit the blog after reading), with the rest of class' writing about the article made as comments this post? This way, each article will have a single post containing our entire discussion about said article.

Blogfully yours,
- Bob

On Carl Gerriets

After reading Carl Gerriet's "Building Relationships through Written Dialogue," I thought to myself, that really made sense. In getting ready to teach next semester, the thing that I've been thinking about most is how to reach a diverse group of students, and especially how to reach students outside of our discipline who may not be as engaged as we would like all of our students to be. Gerriets said, "I need to establish a conversation with each student and build on it throughout our time together," which of course is something I have given much thought to before, but the fact that he does this primarily through responses to student cover letters on papers is brilliant. Not only is he not handing out a grade until the end of the semester with the final portfolio, but he is providing detailed comments for each paper. What I found to be most interesting about this is that Gerriets isn't just commenting on the students' work--he is responding to the needs the students express in their cover letter, and he saves all of this to his computer so that he can look at it the next time he responds to them, and see their progress throughout the semester. All of this shows that he is truly dedicated to the progress of each individual student, not simply ensuring that they know how to write an A paper, but that they understand more about the writing process itself. This idea has been coming up in nearly all of our readings and discussions, and, though I think we can all agree that it's important, what we really need to be asking ourselves, like Gerriets, is how can I do this in my teaching? How can we improve our ways of building relationships with students so that what we are teaching them becomes more valuable to them? I think this has a lot to do with some of the things we talked about from Mem Fox's "Notes from the Battlefield" article. She writes about helping her students to develop as a writer by writing what matters to them, and Gerriets is teaching by showing he really cares about their writing, and encourages his students to become invested in their writing progress through these cover letters and responses, and so I think the values of both Fox and Gerriets go hand-in-hand. With each article we read for this class, I have noticed that they are all generally going in the same pedagogical direction, but I think that we can really use these ideas in our own pedagogies, if we take what we like from each person we learn from. Personally, I really like Gerriet's way of responding to papers, and I think I would like to try something like that for my own classes. I also definitely want my students to "ache with caring" when they write their papers, and so there are aspects of Fox's pedagogy that I could see myself adapting. What I really think is important here is that we see that there is no one way to teach, and that we can learn from everybody, even (or especially) the students.

Hull Article

Hull Article

Well, I have experienced a true first in reading the Glynda Hull article; it was the first time that an essay I had to read for class made me angry. haha.. I wasn't angry with the essayist themselves, but rather with the teacher in the study, June. Her comments about Maria struck me as extremely ignorant, rude, and uncalled for. Because Maria did not follow the "proper" rules of classroom conversation, June thought her mentally deficient, incapable of making proper connections between ideas and thoughts. This kind of ignorant thinking leads to a perpetuation of students' falling behind. "Remedial" students, who do not know the discourse of the classroom, fall farther and farther behind because teachers continuously label them. That label, then affects the teacher's interaction with the student and their grading of the student. Teacher's begin not to expect anything of the student, and therefore, don't invest as much time in them. If the student does do well in assignments, many teachers like June attribute the success to the student getting help from an outside source. (What crap!) haha...

Back in the early days of schooling, students who feel behind were labeled social deviants basically. On paper, this has changed. Educators now claim to understand the hardships of students coming for different social and economic backgrounds. However, many teachers, including June, cling to ideas that poor coursework, or poor classroom behavior, is related to some kind of mental default in the student. It is just a destructive mindset. Students pick up on more than we think. They notice when the teacher thinks they are annoying, or when the teacher thinks that they are simply not "trying" hard enough. A poor teacher attitude is very damaging and can cause these students that are in danger in the first place to dislike school and give up hope.

Teachers need to really analyzing their own preconceptions about students. Most teachers, think that they are always fair, but are they? Awareness is the key to changing behavior. I think all perspective teachers should read the Hull article. Unfortunately, however, few people would read it and say, you know, that's me! We tend to think the best about ourselves, and I’m not sure if reading an article is enough to give people a true “aha” moment.

As a pet peeve, I really didn’t like the articles use of the word “remedial.” At my high school, the word was used to describe the lowest level English class, and I always thought that was terrible. Labeling really affects people. Actually, in sociology there is a theory known as the labeling theory, that talks about that phenomenon. Once labeled, people sometimes begin to take on the behavior associated with the label, even if they didn’t exhibit it before, or at least not to an extreme. (IE. You label a kid a problem child, they begin to act out to fit the label.) In a sense, students give up. They here themselves called remedial, and they think of themselves as remedial, with not hope to get “better.” It is bad terminology. It ALSO makes me angry.

I am quite a feisty blogger tonight, I guess.

Building Relationships

Well I read Mel's comments and ideas about building relationships, and I agree that time is a big factor in writing responses to students cover letters. It is also lots of time for students to write these cover letters, but I think the idea is invaluable. Even at our stage it is a good idea to reflect on our writing in that way. I mean the more successful we get as writers (if we are lucky enough) the more we are going to be questioned, asked about what we do on the page. And trust me, I spent two years doing a radio show listening to writers be interviewed about their work, and a lot of well know accomplished writers can only bull shit when it comes to talking about their craft, saying things like "I was moved to write this. It was inspired." Yeah right. It is a process and everyone knows it. Most people just don't think about or document it along the way.

I think it is good to have students write a cover letter, and even better if we can find the time to respond. I think it would be even better if the letter from us was handwritten, but that is just a personal prefrence. It is important for students not only to be able to craft a paper, but to be able to articulate the choices they made. It might even be a good idea for them to read each others or write responses in this way to each others work.

I agree, Mel, that time is a giant factor. But I think the professor in this article had a different vantage point, in that he was dealing with marginal students that had a good chance of taking him again in another class, so it was benefical to him to track their progress and give them more time. I am not sure how we would find the time. Maybe a few written responses on critical papers, the first, the last ect would be more reasonable. It would be something that we have to figure out, just like everything esle we will be figuring out next term.

I think that the major themes in these two articles that we had to read for Monday are once agiain the idea of creating response. The first article traced and labeled responses in the classroom, and it became evident by the end of the article that the best thing to do is let students talk and guide the conversation from there. We have talked about this I know. But I think, at least for me it is becoming something I am thinking about more deeply, something that I can say is a goal I am going to have for next term. Right now everything about teaching is new and confusing, and admitedly the more theory we read, I am not sure if it gives me more confidence or scares me shitless. On that note, one thing is becoming clear as I ponder the classroom dynamic I want. I don't want to sit in silence. I want engaged, responsive students, and hopefully that will translate to their writing. If cover letters help make them more attune, I am willing to try it. And as far as classroom discusion, I hope I lead then follow the students the direction. Right now that seems like the best plan.

some extra thoughts on Perl & Tobin

After Monday, I started to think more about the Sondra Perl article and the method used in her research. I think it is valuable to actually track and identify the process of writing—although the coding has me completely confused! It might not be an exact science, but understanding what we do—or what some “unskilled” writers do—can help us address and work through difficulties. Just realizing some of the habits noted in the Perl research has made me reevaluate some of my thoughts on composition.

In the section on prewriting, Perl mentions that the actual prewriting phase for most students was very minimal—only an average of four minutes. However, for students without a clear, concise plan, “writing led to planning which led to clarifying which led to more writing.” Also, “developing and clarifying of ideas is facilitated once students translate some of those ideas into written form” (432). So, articulating thoughts in writing sparked new ideas and directions. Perl later discusses the “recursive movements” of the students, and how they were constantly writing, editing, and planning (432). I think some recursive practice is natural in writing. Writing, after all, is not a linear process. Perl notes that “composing does not occur in a straightforward, linear fashion” (433). As writers, we seem to naturally rework our thoughts, whether it is coming up with a better sounding word, adding extra phrases to that first paragraph, moving up a sentence, noticing a misspelling, or suddenly thinking of an example to use later. That’s why it’s so much easier to draft on a computer rather than with pencil and paper. I think I embrace the non-linear aspects of writing! From Perl’s research, however, there does seem to be some recursive behavior that is deterring and distracting, such as the students’ preoccupation with proofreading.

Although Perl does not address ways to counteract or overcome these habits, I think the article was a fitting companion to Lad Tobin’s discussion. He does mention that Perl’s recursive take on writing, along with the more daring aspects of process pedagogy, were lost as the practice became a “regimented sequence that divided the writing process into neat stages of prewriting, writing, and revising” (11). I still think those are crucial stages—but we need to keep the recursive nature of writing in mind. I started to wonder if free-writing would be a good way initiate a type of prewriting phase, while also freeing students from the hyper-editing problem long enough for them to generate ideas. As Perl pointed out, writing led to more planning and writing. Actually, I have never been a fan of free-writing. I always hated doing it, and don’t know quite why. But as I read the Perl and Tobin articles, the theory behind practices like these started to make sense. To avoid the process pedagogy rigidity Tobin mentions, exercises like this shouldn’t be required, exactly (maybe that’s why I always hated it!), but I think it is something to promote.

On Fox

I agree with Bob that extensive comments are good for student's writing, especially if they read and take seriously the comments, if they think about their work. I really think that all these things we have been talking about on this blog, student centered learning, introducing satire and humor into the classroom, and getting students engaged and excited about their work is what Fox is fundamentally talking about in her article. She says the most important thing to her about being published is the responses she recieves after the fact. What we are after, fundamentally, is creating a response. We want responsive students. We want them to respond in class, respond to each other, and utimaltely to respond in writing. What we are after is not the response, however but the human connection.

Bob touched on this when he sayed that he wanted people to respond to his blogs; it is important to him to have that human connection-to know someone else is out there listening. Ultimately this is what we all want. Fox touched on it a little further when she talked about the different situations in which writing a letter was a very profound experience, that people can ache with a caring about their writing that have never encountered before. Like Ashely, I am sure we all have deep memories of a time when we wrote a letter that we felt was life-changing and nothing was more important at the time, I know I have.

The challenge then is to bring this to the classroom, somhow convey to the students that writing is about reaching out to others in a more profound way. When we are writing to reach out, to realy tell our story, or get people's attention, we do it with the ache of caring. Perhaps the trick is to get the students to think of their witing as responses to the world around them, to other humans, to what they read or see on the street. If we can make them feel like this is their opportunity to respond in their voice with their words, it will feel less didatic and more necessary.

Readings for Monday, September 24

Fox:
Finally, Mem Fox reveals the writer’s dirtiest secret: we need praise for the work that we do in order to feed our massive, terrible egos. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating, but she does speak the truth: feedback is a rewarding and useful tool. I was able to relate to this article personally because, due to the realities of freelance writing, I don’t make very much money in comparison to the amount of work that I do. But since this writing is posted on the Internet, I receive more feedback than I ever would with print – and when I don’t get a single comment, it’s devastating (thankfully, this is rare). I write because I think I have ideas that are valuable, and when I receive feedback, I know that these ideas have been spread and will perhaps have a positive effect. Hence, satisfaction on my part.

This applies to school, as well. I tend to work harder on papers and assignments when teachers give an acceptable amount of feedback; I’m talking about comments left in the margins as opposed to solitary question marks and smiley faces. As teachers, the primary audience for student writing, we need to show our students that writing can be rewarding. How can we do this? By giving them an amount of feedback that shows we have thought about their work instead of merely glancing at it. I also think the idea of student blogs (which I will never stop bringing up) will give students an audience for their writing besides the teacher. If students discover that they can entertain and enlighten their peers, writing will have more of a point beyond the goal of a good grade.

Perl:

The strongest message in Perl’s article was the dangers of students editing during the writing process; and this problem has only grown worse since word processers start pointing out your mistakes as you type (when I was a tutor, I always made sure that I turned this feature off if a student was going to be using a computer). It seems that most of these students with writing problems are aware of their problems, or have general low self-esteem and befuddlement in regard to writing. And once again we are drawn back to the tip of the iceberg – like the Titanic – to watch these students worry about the surface level of their work. After all, it’s the part of writing that’s been emphasized the most through their lives up to that point.

Even good writers can become stymied when they second-guess themselves constantly throughout the writing process. We need to teach our students that the best method is to write first, and edit later. But, for the love of god, make sure you edit.

Belkin:

Not much to say about this, other than the fact that it was an interesting look at a period in the history of writing instruction, and that I agreed with Belkin’s conclusion. We need to keep writing fun and interesting, but the course still needs to have some sort of old-school structure. Without this structure, I think most students are going to be confused about the goals of the course or, even worse, not take it seriously. If your students were to walk into your class and the teaching you gave them amounted to “Just write,” they’d probably take as much away from their experience if they spent the whole day finger-painting. Writing can be fun, interesting, and rewarding, but I think students need to know it should have the point. And with a lot of the process pedagogy, writing didn’t seem to have much of a point.