teaching: September 2006 Archives

My students really wanted to go home early on Thursday. (I think it's because they liked my sub better than me! sniffle sniffle, "She," [they said] "is an unstoppable force of awesome." I know this, but did they have to rub it in?!)

I did have a lesson plan, though, even if I couldn't quite hold it all in my head on a consistent basis. We're trying to sort out the differences among position, argument, and identity.

We used Henry Jenkins' piece, Complete Freedom of Movement, as our example. If I had had more energy, I would have become apoplectic at the perception of half the class that Jenkins' did not include any of "the negatives" of videogaming. Instead, all I could do was tell them I was trying not to lose my mind. The next day, Friday, I met with several students for individual consultations. One of them cracked me up with her description and self-reflection on the discussion: "[One of the students] used misogynistic in a sentence! Do people really talk like that?!" The humor does me as much good as the hugs. :-)

"I thought that I was doomed at first, but now I realize that I can possibly do okay in this course." A student in an introductory course on interpersonal communication wrote this during an early check-in of a class I taught one winter session. Were students in the writing course I'm teaching now feeling "doomed" on our second wiki day? It was definitely worse than the first (read the student critique). My brain is churning over alternative configurations to improve the flow of wiki days. Hopefully, the amount of activity in the wiki - despite a few technical glitches (of both the inevitable and inept kind, sigh) - demonstrates that most students are getting the hang of it. I trust that those who are still struggling will persevere.

Next wiki day, I'll try divvying the students up into small groups and rotate them among the various tasks. For Day 4, I tried to take us through each activity chronologically and simultaneously, like one usually does in a face-to-face setting. Some students, for instance, lost posts to the online brainstorm "Compar[ing] what you learned about a classmate from the oral interview and what you learned about about another classmate from an analysis of their writing" and therefore had to repost them later. Most students are still learning the syntax (the commands) that tell the wiki what to do with each bit of writing. It took only a few minutes for everyone to be in their own bubble of struggle. Different people reacted differently: one student exclaimed,

“That’s such a good rule!” She might be the only one of my students who thinks so (?) but she did say it out loud after I passed out the daily lesson plan in yesterday’s class (having just discussed the grading policies). :-) We had several different activities as I try to move us on several elements simultaneously. The first was a debriefing of the process of generating two-to-three pages based on their viewing of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I don’t know if they were so open and comprehensive with their comments because they read the essays critiquing writing on the Junior Writing Class wiki or if all of this would have come out anyway, but I could barely keep up with the first outburst:

So Natalie Goldberg was advised by her Zen teacher. I have come upon this knowledge much less glamorously, discovering through necessity that writing is "a way to help you penetrate your life and become sane." I listened to Side 1 of Writing Down the Bones yesterday morning, which includes periodic commentary by the author updating her own inspired words. She talks about breathing the words by reading them out loud. Goldberg doesn't mean tone, nor is she talking about voice, she means literally giving breath to language, enabling it to move.

I scribbled down some memorable lines, those that might be useful for teaching as well as some that touched me personally. For teaching

As I always do, I've been wondering about the "silence" regarding my last few posts/emails regarding the discussion about Lebanon (outlined here.)

Lo and behold Swati walked in the door the other night. No small talk for us! We dove into politics. :-) It was intense: she was jetlagged and I'd just downed a beer. I kept telling myself, "Think, Steph, think! This is serious!"

It seemed to come clear that we were both "missing" or "misinterpreting" something in the other person's talk. The point I gained from our talk was that maybe the concept of "discourse" itself is biased? I'm not sure if this is what Swati was trying to get at, but (it seems?) she was reacting to a certain narrowness (?) in the term. I don't mean to speak for her: I'm publicizing my interpretation for correction and/or confirmation. Hopefully, also expansion! :-)

Swati critiqued my emphasis on discourse as limited only to culture. This isn't my view, but I think I can imagine why it might seem so. I tried to clarify that what I'm really interested in (and trying to talk about) is language. "Discourses" are units of language (I add, now, as further clarification) that make wrapping my mind around the complexity of language somewhat manageable. I think the political and economic count just as much as the cultural, perhaps - in substantive, material terms "more" (although I'm not sure this kind of quantitative hierarchy gains us much theoretically). Language (perhaps only in my imagination?) is a way "in" to understanding and changing these systems, specifically at the level of values and choices that uphold them.

Meanwhile, I was amazed by this story: Hamas Spokesman Blames Palestinians for Gaza Chaos, which came shortly after I challenged my friends to participate in a discourse of self-criticism (August 26th). NYTimes: "In an unusual instance of self-criticism, a well-known Hamas official has deplored the collapse of Gazan life into chaos and has said that much of the blame belongs to Palestinians themselves."

“'I’m not interested in discussing the ugliness and brutality of the occupation because it is not a secret,' [Ghazi Hamad] wrote. 'I prefer self-criticism and self-evaluation. We’re used to blaming our mistakes on others.' Palestinian joy after the Israeli departure 'made us forget the most important question — what is our next step?'”

Now, will my friends reading other sources situate this official for me in some other narrative, some other discourse? Another thread of the argument (!) between me and Swati is the credibility I attribute to the NYTimes (source of the above-linked story). I read a variety of viewpoints in the Times, including political and economic critiques. I'm not entirely convinced the alternative press is saying anything that unique? As a case in point, a student in the intro to mass media class I taught last semester presented on alternative and mainstream press coverage of the May 1 immigration rights protest in Boston last spring. ALL SOURCES USED THE SAME AP ARTICLE, they had simply changed the headline.

I haven't worked out a balance between readings in the assigned texts (which students are required to buy so I better use) and contemporary/current event readings. I know the issues that are covered in the Text-Wrestler are real and relevant, especially those for Unit 1 (self/other identifications in context and the challenges of self-reflection), but there is something about them that reinforces a sense of individual autonomy that troubles me a bit. It is as if identity/identification is only a social phenomenon, not one with political and economic ramifications. [Take me with a grain of salt: I'm "writing out loud."]

Compare the essays in the text with THE FUGITIVE GIRL ACT by Paul Rogat Loeb. He doesn't wrestle with what it means to be a girl (or a boy, for that matter), but with what it means to be an ally.

I guess I'm wondering what students might do with a requirement that asks them, after the critical assessment of self-in-context, to situate their contexted self in the larger political/economic system. Does it add too much complexity? Is the wording confusing or does Loeb's article provide a clear enough example to illustrate the task?

Sangram (one of my five bachelor roommates) asked me to clarify which word I'd said when he inquired about the purpose of my blogging. I had said "consciousness" but he heard another level of what I also meant. I was reminded of this yesterday morning, the last day of the teacher training for the Freshman Writing Program. A friend asked, "Do you have to censor what you write since you know so many people might read it?"

My goal is to be authentic to my experience at the perceptual and analytical level, but I do think about reception and make every effort to say things in a way that is affirming to the other persons involved. It's hard to know how well I pull this off because of the strange silence that occurs in the "space" between reading my writing (occurring elsewhere & elsewhen) and talking with me face-to-face. :-) I usually do not know what meanings are being made by others in response to my observations, interpretations, teases, and other offerings.

Ultimately, I imagine a forum in which we practice combining consciousness and conscience in a collective discourse. This means the first challenge is one of joining: me with others, others with me, us, together. :-)

In that spirit, I received constructive feedback from Mark (whose own choices hinge heavily on what works linguistically), Janel (who reads at the implicational level) and Peggy (who might well be wondering, “did we really hire her?”) about my grading policy. ;-)

During the small group task with Rachel, Sarah, Haesang, and Randall I was struck (again, as I have been at various times all week) with how earnest everyone is about doing a good job. Actually, not just a good job – an excellent one. I feel honored to be part of this high caliber group of knowledgeable and committed personalities.

Not to mention integrity and sharp recall: the pen I loaned to Emily The First was returned!

Brian gave a hilarious presentation on the twiki, including campus geography (everything is north, avoid the big holes) and this link that we're being encouraged to introduce to our students: My CompLab.

Josh's hot tip for dealing with students:

"Assume goodwill."