I'm glad I had to take four English courses...

This is partly in response to the Downs/Wardle article and partly personal reflection so bear with me. At my tiny liberal arts college, Oklahoma Baptist University, students were required to take four English courses, including the basic Comp I and Comp II and two additional literature courses which examine some major literary works within historical, social, and political contexts. Complaining about these requirements abounds from students (as a student worker for one of the instructors of these courses, I saw my fair share of disgruntled business major responses). Also, I became aware of some tension between a few of the professors in the School of Business and the science division of the School of Arts and Sciences and the English and History department professors. Some had the idea that the Western Civilization classes (the third and fourth English requirements) were something of academic missionaries, converting students in, for instance, computer science into English majors.

Case in point, me. I began as a computer science major. I was a stubborn one, remaining in the program for two years. It took everything the English Department had to lure me into its clutches: I converted, I mean, changed majors after taking the fourth and final required English class. The classes made me realize there was some value in English studies. Some. Just a little. I realized that if I continued to work in computer science the rest of my life, even while making money (...a lot of money...), I might be miserable. While I am not going to complain about coming late to the major and really having to rush to complete my work within four years, after reading the Downs/Wardle article, I feel that if I had taken a Writing-Studies oriented FYC class, I think I would have realized sooner the value in studying English. I lied. I'm complaining.

On a smaller scale, this kind of a structure (and I am now more conscious of the differences between UIUC's program [which I feel, contains some of these techniques in the Downs/Wardle article] and my own college's), young writers at least become more familiar with their own writing: not only their strengths and weaknesses, but also their self-confidence. I may sound like a complete sap but the stories concerning "Jack," about how, in his own words, "I really started to think for myself" (567), and another student, "you made me feel like my opinion mattered" (573) it brought tears to my eyes a bit. Yes. It did. I thank you for your pity. But that's what I think RHET 105 or really, any other comp class should be about: about thinking not just writing.

But that's easy. It's obvious, really. How do we get there as incredibly inexperienced instructors? I think perhaps the key lies in a comment near the end of the article: "the course has the added benefit of educating first-year students, adjuncts, and graduate students about the existence and content of the writing studies field" (578). Maybe it sounds elementary, but the class is a learning experience for both students and teachers (certainly for this teacher), as much as it is an exercise on improvisation and adaptability. This is not what my students learned in high school and this is not exactly what I learned in my college classes --and I think it may be beneficial to communicate this two-way learning experience.

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.

What Would Writing Intensive Studies Look Like?

They just need something to chew on...

In “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’”, Downs and Wardle assess many of the pitfalls of traditional mandatory freshmen writing courses. These classes often fail to prepare students for college-writing across a variety of disciples because they emphasize mechanical skills, separate writing from context, and assume the existence of a unified academic discourse that does not exist in practice.  Downs and Wardle rightly suggest that this model needs to be rethought and they propose transitioning to an ‘Intro to Writing Studies’ class in which students study the writing process (their own and others), thinking reflexively about it as they begin to draft college-level writing.

 While I think an ‘Intro to Writing Studies’ course would be highly beneficial and appealing for many students (particularly those who are already interested in and enjoy writing), I’m not sure that such a class will be any more universally helpful than the current model. I imagine that many eighteen-year-olds would be bored and put-off by the thought of a course that asked them to read about and study writing (even, maybe especially, their own). Such a course might be the academic equivalent of enrolling people who hate exercise in a 5:00 AM boot-camp—you might change some of their habits, but you risk alienating them further before you’ve even started. If you really wanted to help these individuals maintain active lifestyles, it might be better to encourage and support them in the pursuit a specific activity (swimming, biking, etc.) that they already enjoy.  Similarly, I think writing-intensive classes across a variety of disciplines should provide opportunities and support for students to dig into their own interests, enter an intellectual conversation about them, and engage in written work. This requires a course that asks them to focus on sustained writing projects and to think reflexively about those projects, but it need not be a ‘writing’ or an ‘English’ class. For instance, my younger brother might be described as a ‘reluctant writer’, but, when he was given the opportunity to choose to write a paper on prohibition and the history of drinking, he became an engaged and thoughtful reader.  He developed ideas that he wanted to share and became invested in the process of organizing, writing, and revising those ideas. He grew as a writer and as a problem-solver, developing mental persistence and a put-all-the-details-on-the-page-and-see-what-they-say attitude that have been useful to him in chemistry and engineering. (Side note: while I agree that self-reflexivity is crucial to skill transfer, I was otherwise fairly disappointed by Downs and Wardle’s approach to skill transfer. Certainly, we should strive to help students write across contexts, but I would argue for more nuanced and holistic thinking about education and experience. I’m convinced that I learned many of my “writing skills” through calculus, yoga, baking, and kayaking. And that engaged writing helps students develop a wide variety of other skills, some of which may not involve written words at all. Because the brain is a mysterious place.)  This happened in a U.S. history class that was writing intensive—and provided structure and guidance for student writers—but not explicitly about writing. Perhaps, in the long run, it might be more helpful to integrate supported opportunities for writing (and reflexivity about writing) into a wider variety of classes so that students can learn to create and reflect on the kind of writing they need to produce within their own academic contexts.

Comp Wars

This article about Queensborough Community College provides a glimpse into the kinds of battles that go on over the first-year composition course.

The Apparatus

(image found over @ thedisorderofthings.com)

Show or Tell?

     Some of the students in my Rhet 105 class seem to only comprehend the concepts set before them when they have a sample in which to model from, others seem to do better with detailed verbal instruction. And still others ask what "exactly" is required from me? Even after we have gone through the material multiple times. Up until recently, I had only discussed the wider goals of the semester briefly and done a quick exercise to introduce the writing process. We had been focusing mainly on the Observation essay. Realizing that several seemed lost, and kept thinking of this assignment as a stand alone essay, I decided to back up a bit and readdress how this first assignment fit in with the longer term  goals and how it fit into the overall writing process. I broke the semester into a step-by-step diagram for the visual learners, illustrating how each unit, and each essay assignment would inform the desired skill set promoted by the next. I let them know that Observation Essay was to teach them how to create research questions, not conclusions, and that we would next take these questions and start shaping them into exigent and researchable topics.



     This realization of how I had originally failed to give a broader context to the current course is what I interpreted the passage from the Wood, Bruner, & Ross article quoted by Sara to describe, or at least as it applied to my situation as a new teacher.
     I think that the scaffolding design laid out in the Common Syllabus works to the advantage of both the students and new instructors with little experience in curriculum design and lesson planning. I agree, however, that the Common Syllabus serves best as a reference guide rather than a strict, unyeilding agenda. The pace of learning needs room for some flexibility.
     On the topic of class size and individual levels of competence, I think the strategy of group work is beneficial. Students with more understanding helping those with less. It might help to keep students ahead of the curve from losing interest, foster camaraderie, and bring along those less adept a bit faster. I also like the multi-modal approach to engage differing learning styles. The variety of instruction improves attentiveness.
     I also found that my students were less than enthusiastic about the Etext ---- most of them stated a preference for a hardcopy text.

Writing Process Rap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNk41LZoxAs

(Warning! Not all that impressive, but it did remind me of a few of my students)

While thinking about Wood, Bruner and Ross’s study reading I was struck by the assumption that it (and our beloved Rhetoric directors) make and whether or not this assumption is productive; namely the designation “expert” that we as newly minted T.A.’s are accorded. According to the aforementioned trio of psychiatrists a successful tutorial process is one in which an “adult or ‘expert’ helps somebody who is less adult or less expert” to achieve a goal. I could say with near certainty that we all are certainly more adult than our students but the question of “expert” is what gives me pause since the structure of this course is relatively new to all of us. Although the week long training course we all had prior to taking ownership of our respective Rhetoric sections was informative by no means did it leave me feeling like I was an expert who could even begin to really implement scaffolding techniques. It is for this reason that I have largely stuck to the common syllabus (in which I recognize the scaffolding technique. To bring it back to the article, I agree that for a student to succeed in their work that “comprehension of the solution must precede production” but in a sense I feel like I’m still going through the comprehension part myself. Unfortunately my course load does not exactly leave me with huge amounts of free time in which I could come to grips with the overall structure of the course, not to mention the assignments that are scaffolded (not a word, don’t use it) in. My methodology to the course thus far has been to focus on the current unit, wrapping my head around it and hoping that during the short period between rough draft and revisions that I can transition myself into and through the next unit. In this sense perhaps I am more “expert” than my students but employing scaffolding techniques correctly (like simplifying the task to avoid unwanted alternative methods or helping them maintain direction, not to mention how to control their frustration), but only slightly. The Rhetoric database has been very useful in that they have made available the work of previous students so that modeling a solution for the students is possible as well as giving us (the T.A.’s) the opportunity to see a completed work in the hopes that we will recognize the parts that make up the whole. All of that being said, I still wish I had more time to sit with the course materials after our training instead of being fed to the freshman with nothing but a common syllabus to cling to. But I know that my facial stubble, corduroys and cardigans scream “EXPERT” to the students, so I could just rely on the illusion.

(I had to post a completely unnecessary photo of my cats since I don't know how to insert other cool stuff. Sorry)