Context

A couple of weeks ago, I was loading up my links for the class and stopped by The New York Times for one last news update before class, and I saw this nifty little thing about words that were used at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Anyways, I thought, "Cool! I'll show this to my students because it deals with words and something like rhetoric!" When I started introducing it, I asked, "How many people watched the Democratic National Convention," which elicited no response since it was 8am. "How many of you follow politics?" (no response) "How many of you are over 18?" (all of them raise their hands) Imagine my shock. It might look something like this:

So after finishing the Noticing and Observing Essay, I decided to wage a war to make my students more aware of the world around them beyond the university setting, and maybe eventually I can push this into a way of engaging a conversation about politics. I know I only care about this because I'm appalled that the students area more engaged in the presidential election, but I can't just let it go. For homework, I asked them to pick a newspaper article from a reputable online newspaper, summarize it, identify the intended audience, and try to figure out the larger conversation it engages.

For a while, I was concerned about how I would make this connect to the course as a whole, but after a while, I'm starting to figure out that it's working somewhat. The newspaper articles led to a discussion of what primary sources go into a news article--interviews, statistics, first hand observations by the reporters--and how the articles fit into a larger conversation. Going over the homework assignments, I wasn't really sure all of the students got it, but some of them definitely did while discussing articles on issues that were important to them whether it was the Chicago teacher's strike,  studies on smoking, or island disputes between China and Japan. I'll admit that some students picked articles that might to appeal to a teacher, but some of them really brought their own interests.

Reading the Down and Wardle "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning "First-Year Composition" as "Introduction to Writing Studies", made me feel a little bit better about my self-serving project to get my students to become engaged with the world and spending precious time talking about Libya, the Arab Spring, and the implications of the attacks on the U.S. embassy with regard to the presidential election and future involvement in the Middle East. The student reflections quoted in "Teaching about Writing" that made me feel all warm and fuzzy included, "...I never before realized that every written text is part of an ongoing conversation..." (569) and "...I have learned that research is joining an ongoing conversation" (573).

I'm not at the point where I can tackle everything and I certainly don't feel I'm the best person to stand at the front of the room to talk about writing studies. Some of the ideas posed by in the Down and Wardle article might not work so well for a class of freshmen. For example, I'm not convinced that giving students readings on writing studies is going to help them analyze their own writing when they've never done a research project and they might never do a research project described in the reading (561). I'm also not convinced that reading an article about rhetorical reading strategies is going to be helpful because they might never have to use those skills (561). Although discussing reading strategies could be helpful, I'm not sure it's the best way to teach it. What some scholars consider efficient and effective might not work for every student, and even though I have brought up close readings with my students, it might be better if they just figured it out what is most efficient for themselves.

I don't entirely buy that engaging specifically in writing studies is going to help students see a context for their work or what they're interested. Does the conversation they engage in always have to be scholarly? By including hashtags on their tweets, they're already engaging in a larger conversation whether its about an episode of Project Runway or Muslim rage.

source: Huffington Post. I know my blog posts make me look like I know things about Twitter but I don't.

At a minimum, I see the value in context because it can be applied to any field. What is the context for this experiment? What conversation does this article engage? This one study relates to what other studies and what other questions in the field? I'm not sure news articles are the best way to go about it, but I'm seeing some promising stuff. It might not be related directly to Writing Studies, but I think it's more important to place ideas and writings in context to student's lives and in what they're interested. Maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll even start thinking about the election.