You're a Hippie Liberal, I'm a Hippie Liberal

When John Trimbur wrote, "the writing classroom has the intimacy of home," I thought Is he kidding (194). When he compared teachers to parents, I thought No Way! But then I began to consider how much teaching reminded me of being a mother. I call my grown-up students "kids" and threaten them with my mom voice. I have complained, on more than one occasion, feeling more like a parent that a professional. Still, I'm not sure Trimbur can claim that teachers act in loco parentis. If anything, we are the parent's evil twin, the academic antiparent.

Parents teach children to obey, to follow rules without question. "Do as I say, not as I do," etc... Liberal Arts instructors want only for their students to open their eyes, to at least be willing to question the rules. Writing on cultural studies, Trimbur claims that there is a "danger of representing students as cultural dupes," but in their freshman fawn-like state, that's exactly what they are (198). I can't tell you how many times I've seen a student roll their eyes and say "It's just a book," or "Can't we just enjoy a movie without having to pick it apart?" I think parents want teachers to act in loco parentis. Their worst fear is a hippie-holdover liberal in the classroom. Someone who will force them to rethink cultural "truths" like Christianity, heterosexuality and male dominance. Trimbul believes that some instructors have turned education into an institution that serves the capitalist agenda. I believe that parents (and students) are the ones with the capitalist agenda, the ones who believe that education=money. Liberal Arts (or just plain liberal) instructors have a lot to do to work against this agenda, especially when the colleges and universities they work for are capitalist institutions run by people who believe money=education.

An Inauthentic Existence

In "The Loss of the Creature" Percy bemoans the loss of the observers sovereignty. He provides his reader with the example of a couple traveling through Mexico in search of that authentic experience. Believing they have found that experience in a small mountain village, they seek validation from a friend of theirs--an ethnologist. Percy writes, "What has taken place is a radical loss of sovereignty over that which is a much theirs as it is the ethnologist's" (54). Percy believes that the couple's feelings of "uneasiness" come from a perceived inability to judge authoritatively the authenticity of their experience (54). But Percy is wrong. The couple's uneasiness comes from an subconscious awareness that authenticity does not exist.
Let's consider the couple's experience. They show up in a small Mexican town on a day when a religious ceremony is being held. They spend their visit "observing the Indians and being themselves observed" (52). In this act of observance is the death of authenticity. The Indians will behave differently for the benefit of outsiders; the outsiders will be on their "best behavior" as not to offend the natives. Native and visitor are now performing to the expectations of their observers. Our American travelers seek validation of their "authentic" experience because deep-down they know what they have experienced is not authentic in the true sense of the word but an authentic performance.
The same can be said for the Shakespeare student. The difficulty is not in "salvaging the creature itself from the educational package" but in recognizing that the creature is an unknown value P--one that can never be known "authentically" outside the mind of its creator (57). The job of student and educator, then, is to recognize the unknowability of authenticity, to know that there is no right or wrong interpretation, that each reproduction, each re-reading is a new form of performance and to learn to respect the inauthenticity of that experience.

Designing a Syllabus

Recently, while attending the Pop Culture Conference in New Orleans, I took part in a round-table discussion about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. What I found most interesting about the discussion was the passionate responses of both lovers and haters (and love/haters) of the series. The round table reminded me of a discussion I had had, as a freshman, with lovers and haters of Harry Potter. What I've come to understand is that these fantasy series have a massive following. The stories have an overwhelming effect on readers and watchers of the movie spin-offs. They are not just books, they are cultural artifacts with social importance--an importance that young readers are virtually unaware of.
My theme for 102 is fantasy. Now I have to admit, I was a little lukewarm about my theme, until I started to teach it. Now I see fantasy everywhere--ideological fantasy, psychological fantasy, generic fantasy... So it comes as no surprise that I designed my syllabus with fantasy in mind. And I brought Twilight and Harry Potter along for the ride.
I am planning on teaching at a high school level, so I made a syllabus appropriate for teaching 12th graders. If teaching comp has taught me anything, it's this: high school students are not being prepared for college level work. I can understand the dilemma of many high school teachers. The drop-out rate is so high that the goal of many teachers is to keep kids in school long enough to graduate, and many of them are not interested in literature or writing. So how to overcome their resistance? Enter Twilight and Harry Potter, and maybe even a little C. S. Lewis. Why not have students read and write on things they're already interested in?
I created three major assignments for my fantasy unit: a rhetorical analysis on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; a group assignment that includes an annotated bibliography and class debate; and a critical analysis of Twilight or a combination of Twilight and the other two texts. This syllabus addresses the three areas that I feel highschool students are deficient in: Reading analytically and rhetorically, writing argumentatively, and researching academically. And they can learn all these things while discussing texts they are passionate about. How much fun is that?

Modality Mayhem

In her blog on Takayoshi’s and Selfe’s chapter “Thinking about Multimodality,” http://tatetalks.blogspot.com/ Heather Tate admits to being intimidated by modern-day technology. Her fear is a common one and one that I share. In the past, technology has always intimidated me. I considered my computer to be nothing more than a glorified word processor, one that froze up on me more times than I can remember. But creating blogs and wikis has broadened my technological horizon and like Heather, I think it's important to pass on that knowledge to our students. Southern Miss classes, however, are not really designed for multimodal teaching. Heather writes, "instructors will need to put in extra time training themselves." But I worry about the extra time instructors will need to put in to train their students. Most freshman classes are not smartrooms with computers and projectors; in fact, most are held in old buildings with twenty-year-old desks and faulty heating and air. How do we teach students without the proper equipment? One of two options comes to mind. One, we lecture and have the students take notes, or two, we take small groups of students to the library and show them how to create links or include photos into their papers. But neither option really seems plausible. First of all, we can't forget that as composition instructors, it is our job to teach our students how to write and writing instruction consumes a lot of class time. Can we really sacrifice hours of class time to technology instruction? Lecturing, moreover, is not really an effective way to teach computer applications. Students need to see and do first hand. As for the second option, is it really fair to expect grad students, poorly paid and severely overworked grad students, to meet with each student outside of the classroom? And can we expect our students to be willing to meet outside of class? I don't know about the rest of you, but I heard a lot of grumbling when my students learned that they would have to meet with groups of students outside of class for project four. Like Heather, I do think that "our composition courses could adapt some of our existing assignments to make them even more multimodular," but I have to say that that is going to be harder than it sounds. Remember how much time it took to explain to your 101 students how to include photos into their photo essays! Again, I think too much responsibility for training our freshman is being placed on comp teachers. Isn't their a way to get all departments involved in multimodal teaching? Wouldn't it be more effective if all disciplines encouraged their students to engage with technology? Or should we keep putting all the weight, and all the blame, on comp teachers?

Keeping Kids in School?

In her address to the CCCC, "Made not only in words: Composition in a new key," Kathleen Blake Yancey claimed that enrollment for college-level freshman students was at an all time high. Unfortunately, that statistic did not translate into an all time high of graduating students. According to Yancey, only 28%, less than a third of incoming freshman finish their four-year degrees (306). Curious to know why that is, I conducted a little experiment with my freshman comp students. I had five of my twenty students stand; then I told the class to take a good look around. "Best case scenario," I said, "these are the only people who will stay in college long enough to graduate." Then I asked my students to tell me why they were dropping out. Some said tuition was too high and students couldn't afford to stay in school. But when I asked the students how many of them received scholarships or grant money, or how many of them had their tuition paid for them by their parents, an overwhelming number of them raised their hands. "Okay," I said, "so money isn't the issue. What is?" Some said courses were too demanding and that it was hard to keep on top of the work. So I asked them, "How many of you feel you have too much work to do?" One or two students raised their hands. "So that's not it--what's the problem?" Some of them said that they didn't feel prepared for the work they had to do, so I asked, "How many of you felt that your highschools prepared you for college-level work." No one raised their hand. Now we're getting somewhere, I thought. "So highschools aren't preparing students for college--that's one issue. What else?" One of my students said, "College doesn't mean the same for everybody. I know a lot of people who are here just to be here." "Interesting," I replied, "How many of you are here because it seemed like the next thing to do after highschool, or because your parents told you you had to go to college?" Almost every student raised his/her hand. In her speech to the CCCC, Yancey claimed that the 80s saw a change in the way people thought about college. She said, "The U.S. began moving away from the view than college is good for the country, a view that enfranchises all of us, and began shifting toward the view that higher education is good for the individual" (304). There is a feeling, among the members of the credit card generation, that everyone is entitled to a college education, but is that really true? Should college be available to minorities and members of the lower classes? Absolutely. But what about those students who don't want to be there, who don't work hard to better themselves? Is it my fault, or the fault of any freshman level instructor that they choose to leave college behind for greener pastures? I agree with Yancey that we should provide our students with the skills they need to succeed in the outside world--even those students who drop out. But I think the problem with college drop out rates goes deeper than that. Parents need to realize that their college-age children are adults and allow them to decide what is best for them. Young adults need to take responsibility for themselves, financially and educationally. And highschools need to provide a well-rounded education for their students. The American work ethic is not what it used to be, and people expect to get without giving. When they fail, they're ready to blame anyone but themselves for that failure. Should we do what we can to improve as educators? Definitely, but the buck stops with the individual. Clearly, the problem with college enrollment has less to do with what we teach in the classroom than it does with the downward shift in social ideology.

Performance Anxiety

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have what can only be described as a sarcastic wit. My extensive vocabulary gives me the ability to play on words and when those words are performed aloud before a live studio audience--who has the added benefit of seeing my facial expressions and hearing my sardonic tone--the results can be hilarious. Unfortunately, that sarcasm rarely translates into my writing. One of my worst memories is writing an email to a college professor that I had a somewhat informal relationship with (emphasis on the word had). In the email, I chastised him for bragging about spending his summer traveling through Europe while I sweltered in summer classes. To make a long story short--he didn't get the joke. When I told this story to some friends of mine they asked, "Why didn't you just use one of those little smiley faces?" Damn, I thought, why didn't I use one of those smiley faces?
Because I thought it was obvious. I could hear my voice in my head as I composed that email and thought--this is funny. Moreover, I always think of emoticons as informal, unprofessional, even embarrassing. Why should I care if the smiley was unprofessional when I was already writing an unprofessional letter? I didn't consider my writing as a sort of "performance." For me, writing and speaking were two distinctly different acts. That's why I find "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy" so interesting. When they write for comp classes, students write in a vacuum. They rarely see what Fishman (et. all) call the "purposefulness" of writing in a class setting. By combining performance with writing, students may learning to write interestingly and interestedly (230). If they perform their work, they are forced to consider their audience. It is our jobs as instructors then to show them how to channel performance into the written word.
I, for one, have learned my lesson. I keep professional letters strictly professional, but when I need that extra flare, I bring out the emoticon. :)

Afraid to Grade?

I can understand the desire of early twentieth century comp instructors to find what Connors and Lunsford term "a defensible rating instrument" (201). There is perhaps nothing scarier than having your grade challenged by a student who reads your comments but still can't understand why they got a C. I know instructors who use a grading scale. They assign a numerical value to grammar, thesis, organization, and their numbers are rarely challenged. This doesn't make their grade any less "objective" than mine, but somehow, students don't feel justified in arguing with a list of numbers that add up to a numerical grade. And in all fairness, a system like this has its merits. When I was grading papers for the online 203 class, I was given a grading rubric that I was required to follow. A paper was divided into five "gradable" sections and each section was worth two points. This meant that even if a student's paper was deficient in the "thesis" category, they could "score points" with perfect grammar and still pass with a tolerable grade. For an online class that spends so little time on writing instruction and offers students no opportunity for revision, this rubric seems like the only fair way to grade. But for comp instructors who work one on one with students, we need to have the ability to be more flexible. For paper one, I told my students that they needed to have an arguable thesis that was backed up with evidence. We workshopped theses in class; I gave them examples; and still, I got close to forty reports on various discourse communities. Admittedly miffed, I wanted to send a message to my students, so report-like papers automatically got a C. I believe this will force my students to pay attention to the assignment's requirements and revise their papers accordingly. I would not have been able to send this message if I was forced to adhere to a hard and fast rubric like that used for 203.
Like the example papers described in "Teacher's Rhetorical Comments on Students Papers," I spent a lot of time defending my grades in my end comments. As always, I began by making a positive observation, and then like most of the instructors in Connors' and Lunsford's study, I point out deficiencies and make constructive suggestions. I consider my students' feelings and try to make my comments beneficial, but they are often extensive and repetitive, a repeat of those given in the margins throughout each paper. I think I'm afraid of my students' reactions to their grades and worry too much about avoiding conflict.

Time for a change?

Kathleen Welch's "Ideology and the Freshman Textbook Production" provides some interesting food for thought. I tried to think back to my own freshman days--tried to recall any textbook words of wisdom--but I can't even remember if I had a freshman comp text. I'm sure I had some sort of technical handbook, one that answered basic formatting questions, but a text like the Norton? I don't recall. Of course students feel disconnected from composition texts. Hell, even teachers hate them. That's why we ignore the text half the time and pad the syllabus with "interesting" supplemental material. So why have a text at all? The only logical answer is money. Publishers make money off selling texts to schools, colleges make money off of selling texts to students, but whether they receive any benefit from them at all is a mystery. It's practically impossible to create an affordable comp text that doesn't reproduce writing samples, thereby disconnecting text from context. I like Welch's idea--make student writing the focus. I say, get rid of texts all together. No, seriously. Think about our own writing as grad students. Grad classes help foster some kernel of an idea. We take that idea, research it, formulate a thesis, and because of time constraints, write a poorly executed seminar paper. But for us, the project doesn't end with a final grade. We hold on to that seminar paper, write abstracts in defense of that original brilliant idea, condense our best thoughts into a twenty minute conference paper, and if we are lucky, revise and expand those thoughts into something publishable. With every step, that original idea gets better, more complex maybe, but the writing itself, the execution of the idea gets better. Why not make freshman comp that simple. Make our students start with a kernel of an idea and revise, revise, revise, each time with a new audience or a new goal in mind. We base grades on improvement over time. Just one project--one grade--and hopefully, one brilliant idea.

Amy Devitt writes, "Genre entails purposes, participants, and themes, so understanding genre entails understanding a rhetorical and semiotic situation and a social context" (576). Let me preface this blog by saying that I agree whole-heartedly. In fact, I've based my thesis on a similar claim. In the comments I make below, I am not disagreeing with Devitt as much as I am simply writing into some questions I have about my own teaching methods...

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a veteran comp. "How do you feel about the five paragraph essay?" she asked. Reflexively, I answered, "It's restricting. I teach my students to break away from the it--to become more sophisticated writers."
"I teach it," she answered. We then had a lengthy conversation on the merits (and detriments) of teaching the five paragraph essay, and I must say, I found her arguments compelling. "How can we expect them to become more sophisticated writers," she asked, "if they still haven't learned how to master the basics?" And isn't this how the rest of us learned to write? We learned poetry by writing sonnets and copy the rhyme schemes of the great poets. We wrote horrible juvenilias based on the books of our favorite authors. And we mastered the five paragraph essay in our English classes.
I did well in my comp classes. So it's hard for me to argue against teaching a genre that I benefited from learning and writing into. I know that it's restricting. I know some students will never be able to break away from it, (but I wonder if nursing students or biology students will ever need to). Sometimes I feel that by allowing them to select and "write within a genre" of their choosing, I am actually doing more harm than good (578). For one, the organization of their papers suffers. For two, most teachers are used to (and fond of) seeing this form, and when they don't get it, they punish the student. Devitt doesn't want comp students "writing for the teacher," but isn't this a skill--one student's must master if they are ever going to get through college?

Blogging Sucks!

Yes folks, blogging sucks. It took me three hours and an infinite number of tears to create what I must admit is one of the least attractive websites I have ever seen. First, I had to screw with my cookie setting--which made no sense because according to the blog site my cookies were set perfectly. Then I destroyed Colter's link to his blog site and spent the next 20 minutes searching for the right address so I could reset it. Sorry Colter. And I created a new link on the sidebar of the Wetpaint site--a link that goes no where but refuses to be deleted. My eyes are sore and I'm out of cookies (the chocolate chip kind, not the computer kind). Yes sir. Blogging sucks!

Now on to business.

What I found most interesting about Hesse's article, "Teachers as Students, Reflecting Resistance," was not the similarities between Graduate student and freshmen reactions to theory but the similarities between the reactions of teachers of Graduate students and the teachers of freshmen. Teachers spend hours preparing for classes, finding reading material for their students that they feel is both interesting and beneficial; we preview class discussions in our heads as we lie awake in bed at night, practicing what we are going to say, imagining our students responses and reacting to those responses. It's no wonder we're pissed when things don't go according to plan. Teachers must contend with the resistance that comes with academic "inexperience" as well as the resistance that comes with outside experience. When we react negatively towards resistant students aren't we, as teachers, enacting the same forms of resistance our students use?