a new genre for me (2-23)

Well, I’ve been sitting here on and off during the past several days alternately reading the readings for this week and attempting my first draft of my syllabus. Although I always expected that designing a course would be one of the most difficult things I would ever have to do, the worst part is having those fears confirmed. Usually, when I write, I am able to generate broad ideas as well as specific points in my head. Later, I can sit down and write them, and though the first draft is far from finished / polished, I would hardly describe the writing process as painful. The syllabus, however, is another matter. I find myself staring at the computer screen wondering how I can make some words appear that will contain meaning. But, in thinking about the readings for this week, especially the statement of “outcomes,” I realized once again that where I am is a perfect example of the writing process. For me, writing a syllabus is a completely foreign genre. Although I’ve read many of them during my past 5 years in college, I’ve never had to write one. Thus, I have a vague general idea of what a syllabus should look like and what it should do, but because I’ve never had to practice the conventions of syllabus writing, I’m not able to apply the rules when I need them. I guess this is my attempt to console myself at what I consider to be a rather failed, frustrated attempt at writing. I am trying to both develop new content while learn a new writing style at the same time. On a tangential note, I found the Hess article to be interesting, but not because I could ever imagine teaching a course with Surrealism as a theme. (I simply don’t feel comfortable enough with Surrealism. However, I found his use of student-generated primary and secondary sources to be brilliant, although I would be hesitant about trying it because of the problems he had with those who didn’t complete the work.) I guess what I appreciated about his article is the fact that he used it to admit what didn’t work about his class plan. Perhaps one of my biggest fears is that if my class is not absolutely perfect, I will somehow fail my students and jeopardize the potential success of the rest of their education. The truth is, I’m really not that important. I want students to learn, and will try to ensure that they do, but the fate of the universe hardly depends on this class. My first year may not be a success, but like writing, I’m sure teaching is a process, so I will revise my syllabus and try again.

What to teach? (2-16)

Although Braun and Prineas’ article on academic discourse provided a nice summary of the academic research process, what I found most interesting were the initial questions about whether or not academic discourse should be taught. I feel this is something we, and the authors we have read, have been struggling with all semester, and I don’t think we’ve arrived at an answer. In some ways, we as grad students are in the same place as the first-year undergrads we will probably be teaching; we are both struggling to find our place and figure out what is going on and how we can participate. But, the article also made me think of a tangent train of thought that has been in the back of my mind but we haven’t really discussed. That is, what else, if anything, besides composition should be taught in this class? I’m not as familiar with the undergrad course sequence as I would like to be, but English 1000 seems to be one course that all students will take, and it has a small student to teacher ratio. When I think of my undergrad experience, all first-years had to take a course that included a general introduction to the university. While I don’t think we need to be quite that comprehensive (i.e. I don’t think it is my job to give students a tour of campus or the community), I do wonder about other helpful college hints that maybe I should teach. For example, my instructor talked to us about how to mark a text to help with critical reading. The class also included a library tour. I think the text-marking, library tour, and Writing Lab introduction would all be helpful things that I might like to include in this class. Certainly they would help with the class, but I would also hope they would help with adjusting to college study in general. I think my question for myself is what other type of skills might we need to address in this class? And, what is the limit so that the class doesn’t lose its composition focus?

meandering through Flower, et al (2-9)

I found the Flower essay to be surprisingly helpful (why “surprisingly” I’m not sure; I guess, when I first started reading it, I was tired and assumed that its emphasis on writer-based writing would be too obvious and too focused on a type of writing that is not the ultimate goal of English 1000). What I eventually appreciated about the article, however, was its way of talking about writing. The more I think about how we talk about writing, the more I realize that the ability and language to talk about writing is very important to improving writing. For example, when I was in the Writing Lab last Thursday or Friday, I went to the Online Writery and responded to one student’s paper. The assignment asked him to analyze an image, but what he had written was a jumble of ideas that ranged from description to analysis and wandered through first, second, and third person. Fortunately, I think I addressed his problems positively, suggesting that his first draft had helped him to generate a number of ideas, which he now needed to organize for his readers. This is exactly what Flower’s article is discussing: the student had the writer-based writing, but he had not taken the next step to help the reader. Intuitively, I guess I knew a lot of what Flower was discussing, but sometimes it just helps to have it explained more formally. (I suppose Flower did the reader-based transformation for me; we had the same ideas, he just happened to do more with them.)

The only question I had for the article, however, was if there was something else besides writer- and reader-based writing? While I was an undergrad and observed some of my roommates writing, it would sometimes take them a painfully long time. They would try to pin down exactly what they wanted to say in every sentence as they wrote it. Thus, they were almost painfully aware of their readers, and yet their writing sometimes still failed. Perhaps they can serve as an example of the necessity of the writer-based step; it helps get past the initial flow of ideas, which otherwise might overwhelm the limitations of human thought/memory. Actually, this “gap” in the article is where I see Flower and Bartholomae as fitting together. (As in most academic debates, I think the truth often lies somewhere in between the two different responses.) Not only being able to think in complex thoughts but also being able to express them in the language of a discipline is very difficult indeed. (And I’m not even sure where I stand on the issue of whether or how the academic vocabulary is allows the expression of certain complex ideas.) Ultimately, I think what I appreciate about both theorists is that they emphasize the process nature of writing—they don’t say so much that basic writers make mistakes, but rather they try to focus on where they are in the stages of writing and how we can use where they are to help them reach the next level.

Barthalomae’s essay, however, also disturbs me because it awakens my own fears about my ability to truly communicate with the proper level of authority. In other words, I realize that I am a master’s student in English, and one would think that I would be fairly comfortable with the discourse of the discipline by now, but I’m just not sure that I am. I am usually fine in class, and although reading journal articles takes me forever, I am eventually able to arrive at an understanding. Nevertheless, I feel most ignorant at Friday afternoon colloquiums. I can sit there and listen and honestly not have a clue about what the speakers are saying. I know all of the words, and yet I do not understand their organization, references, or sometimes even the main point.

In reading these articles, I wonder how many of these ideas/concepts/theories of writing I should teach to my students. I found the terms writer- and reader-based writing to be extremely helpful. However, I do not want to bog the students down with vocabulary, especially if they see the vocabulary as an ends in itself and not as a means to discussing and improving writing. Maybe it is enough if I use the terms and explain them the first few times I use them but not have them read the articles.

And I feel like I have to respond to the Punk article, because it always interests me how we can relate popular culture to academia. That does, however, leave a large guestion: what does it mean that we read academic articles about the Sex Pistols (and that Dr. K. can form a senior seminar around them)? I have this suspicion that the Sex Pistols might not appreciate our use of them, and it certainly seems to change them if we can write a fairly mainstream academic paper about them. My other question revolves around my own lack of familiarity with such cultural movements as Punk: what if I just can’t teach Punk because I don’t understand it? Of course, I’m not sure that the article way saying that everyone must incorporate the ideals of Punk into their teaching. (That goes back to the idea that teaching Punk in an institution like school just seems wrong and oxymoronic.) Maybe, rather, it helps in demonstrating how attitudes toward pedagogy change, and how one teacher may not be a perfect match for every student.

Final note to self: go back and ask my brother about the conversation we had about metacognition over Thanksgiving break in relation to ABGW p. 719 where it uses the word.

what have I learned (2-2)

This is going to be a contintuation of what I posted as a new post on the class discussion board. I sincerely hope that post did not sound like an ill-logical rant. I guess I feel that I learned a lot from writing the dreaded “five-paragraph theme.” As a high school student, it gave me the structure I needed to feel comfortable enough to be able to express my ideas. I guess I appreciate Brittany’s idea that it can be used as a formulaic answer (and I’m certain that any teaching tool can be distorted), but it can also be a valuable device to help students streamline their thoughts and help them to think about how writing can be structured.

Since I’m thinking about high school, it might be helpful to try to remember what I learned there. Yes, the five-paragraph essay was a main form of writing for me. However, I also did learn about research writing. Certainly, I was not an expert at it, but I had been introduced to it well enough that integrating sources was something I was very comfortable with. I even remember doing a character analysis of Jane Eyre my senior year of high school of which I was very proud. It very much foreshadowed my college career, but since I thought I was going into history at the time, I didn’t realize it. Of course, the problem with using myself as a model is precisely that I never took English 190 (Truman’s version of English 1000) because I had received credit for it in high school. So, I will be teaching to those students who didn’t get college credit, and I have a harder time understanding the abilities of such students because I have not been in their place.

In thinking about what I learned in undergrad, I think one of the most powerful concepts was that you can generate thinking through writing. I take the concept so much for granted now, but I guess I didn’t really become convinced of the idea until sophomore year of undergrad. (Although, now that I think about it, in senior English in high school, we did have to keep reading journals, and thinking through writing was probably the point of those, although I don’t think I quite realized that then.) I remember several professors in undergrad who did the freewriting exercise where we just had to keep writing, even if we were just writing “I don’t know what to write” over and over again. Another helpful professor was my American Realism and Naturalism professor. She had us turn in two page responses to what we had read for every class. At first that was an enormous challenge, but eventually I became very comfortable with it and loved the thinking that it helped me to generate. At the end of the semester, those responses became almost easy, and I can’t tell if it was senioritis, or if I had really improved in generating content for a literature discussion.

I guess what I want to take away from today’s blog is the importance of freewriting for me. I want my students to understand how it is done and how it is useful. (But this is where I always feel bad because I simply don’t do it unless I am forced to—it’s usually a matter of time—I spend all my time reading and never manage to get to the writing. Of course, the same will probably be true for my students—most could probably write better essays if they were only willing to spend the time. I even know its still true at the graduate level, so I guess teachers never escape it, and I’m sure it also exists outside of higher education, so oh well.)