I should have said something.
I’ll just write what I was thinking during those fifty minutes, and maybe that will make up for some of it.
This is where we as intellectuals separate, splinter and co/llapse into our di/tri/vided subject/ivisms.
I like ol’ Vic. You’re right, class, he’s not a man of clarity, but is that such a bad thing? Does/is everything (need) to be so c/leaved and sapless as to render all readers prostrate with comprehension? Dare I say no? Dare I say that no one understands what I understand?
I wrote in another post, "When I say Horse, what do you think of?"
I think of my youngest brother. He had laryngitis when he was twelve. We spent two weeks making up sign language in order to communicate, but mainly to cast aspersions against my older brother when he was in the room.
Of course, the words Horse and hoarse aren’t spelled the same, but that just adds something to my definition.
This individual response is what Vitanza is digging for/cultivating/planting.
There is a state of individualism that goes into personal thought. A state which is influenced by past experiences and vague/fugue opines that I, as I am not you, will never under/stand. And I suppose that is quite alright, because it drives me to try to understand. It begs me to take my feelings and combine it with a dozen other thoughts which are floating, aimless, above my head.
I think that fuzzy gray condition is the shape/spatial arrangement of something as different from its substance/trapezoid from which Vitanza is stuck and wandering/wondering.
In class, we spoke of Sophistic argument as being manipulative and lacking a point. Maybe. Does it manipulate or simply present. Sometimes pre/suming a unequi/vocal answer to any question can be a shameless display of ignorance. To expect someone to follow a recipe and an outcome of thought is not proliferating critical cerebration. I think that it presents options. It urges the reader to come to a conclusion, or at least formulate an idea.
Or at the very least think about it some more.
I honestly believe that Vitanza uses the con/muddled language because he wants to present something else. He wants to present the in/fin/ite/beginning options. Vitanza uses word-play and metaphor to illustrate that every word is subjective and suggestive.
ThEYEorize.
What do you think of that word? What does that word entail and presuppose for you-- the reader/thinker?
Its definition changes with each person, because how could one person presume to hold the definite definition for any given word, for any given emotion?
He uses political revolutions/historical events to incur emotions, to foster knowledge, to find that lagging attention.
Words foster emotions, and the desire to understand. So, if a confusing sentencial relation makes the reader need to read and re-read then maybe that is all he wanted in the first place.
I’m not saying that I know what he was saying in his essay, only that he was probably saying quite a few things.
Well, anyway, that’s how I feel about it.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
Le brouillard de l'etude
The writing process.
We've spent this entire semester learning how to teach writing. As a graduate student, I have spent the last three semesters learning the "Writing Process," or was it product?
We're learning to inoculate, to break down, to build up, to ride around, to run around post/modernizing the writing process and the students that we teach. ( I'm using the royal "We" here, since I am not teaching this year, and so can only look at these processes through the dim and unfocused eyes of the outsider.)
But I can see quite clearly with the eyes of the student learning to write.
This week someone touched upon the idea of high school versus college writing. Or maybe the actual subject was "My English Teacher Taught Me During Half-Time." I felt rather lucky during that conversation. My high school English teacher was wonderful. Most of the students hated her because she wouldn't let anyone chew gum during class, and her druthers involved assigning twenty page papers. I dug on her. I was fully prepared for my first semester in college, and I think it was because we wrote constantly in her classes. We generally kept within a very formulaic outline of reader response and criticism, but it certainly didn't hurt me to write more.
So, I'm just wondering about that first semester at the university.
Does it really make or break a writing student? Or is that giving too much credit to 100 and 110 classes?
How does one start to teach writing? How does a teacher get through the fog of learning that is hovering around some of those first year college writers?
How do graduate assistants get rid of the idea that the writing really isn't as bad as all of that?
When I was in high school my math teacher was the woman whom I named as my arch nemesis. Our relationship and interactions were uncomfortable at best.
I guess what I'm saying here is that I still hate math. Walking into a math class makes me want to drop out of school just so that I don't have to deal with any math teacher/pro/fessor ever again.
I know that every teacher is not Mrs. Clark, but I always see her 50's hair and huge glasses when I encounter arithmetical theorem.
So how do teachers deal with the presuppositions of the student?
Any teacher can reference those icons until his/her breath is absolutely gone, but when all of those greats have death-rattled their way into the sunset, it really is up to the Teacher to tear away those prejudices.
Because, you know, I really loathed Mrs. Clark.
We've spent this entire semester learning how to teach writing. As a graduate student, I have spent the last three semesters learning the "Writing Process," or was it product?
We're learning to inoculate, to break down, to build up, to ride around, to run around post/modernizing the writing process and the students that we teach. ( I'm using the royal "We" here, since I am not teaching this year, and so can only look at these processes through the dim and unfocused eyes of the outsider.)
But I can see quite clearly with the eyes of the student learning to write.
This week someone touched upon the idea of high school versus college writing. Or maybe the actual subject was "My English Teacher Taught Me During Half-Time." I felt rather lucky during that conversation. My high school English teacher was wonderful. Most of the students hated her because she wouldn't let anyone chew gum during class, and her druthers involved assigning twenty page papers. I dug on her. I was fully prepared for my first semester in college, and I think it was because we wrote constantly in her classes. We generally kept within a very formulaic outline of reader response and criticism, but it certainly didn't hurt me to write more.
So, I'm just wondering about that first semester at the university.
Does it really make or break a writing student? Or is that giving too much credit to 100 and 110 classes?
How does one start to teach writing? How does a teacher get through the fog of learning that is hovering around some of those first year college writers?
How do graduate assistants get rid of the idea that the writing really isn't as bad as all of that?
When I was in high school my math teacher was the woman whom I named as my arch nemesis. Our relationship and interactions were uncomfortable at best.
I guess what I'm saying here is that I still hate math. Walking into a math class makes me want to drop out of school just so that I don't have to deal with any math teacher/pro/fessor ever again.
I know that every teacher is not Mrs. Clark, but I always see her 50's hair and huge glasses when I encounter arithmetical theorem.
So how do teachers deal with the presuppositions of the student?
Any teacher can reference those icons until his/her breath is absolutely gone, but when all of those greats have death-rattled their way into the sunset, it really is up to the Teacher to tear away those prejudices.
Because, you know, I really loathed Mrs. Clark.
Friday, October 13, 2006
IntraPersonal Communication: Office Politics in the CLASSroom
I believe that every semester on whatever day that Friday the 13th falls upon, I start to re-evaluate my role as an aca/pandemic in the classroom. I start to scrutinize my place in the student/teacher/student trifecta and bemusedly question pretty much everything that goes along with it, but mainly I analyze. I like to look at the student/ teacher relationship, because, it is, for most of us, is a sub/stantial part of our lives
Should I have tried harder these past few months?
Does it matter if my teacher actually likes me?
Does it matter if I actually like my teacher?
Am I an ignorant person ?
Am I doing well in the class based on any of these questions or their not-so-forthcoming answers?
I remember school as something..dare I say...cool, until I started attending. My older brothers climbed on and off bus number 7 five days a week. My mom bought them new shoes, and pencils, and crayons, and plastic boxes in which to place those crayons.
Then I went to school and learned that the bus was possibly the worst thing to ever enter my life. Large. Yellow. Rank. Unnerving.
The bus took me to a place that was just as large, yellow, rank and unnerving.
If I were to go out on a limb and actually write that this has been the standard for the whole of my education, would that limb hold me?
This has been every classroom, every assignment, almost every teacher, every hallway for the duration of my academic career. Granted, there are those students who have experiences that are quite nice---those wonderful academic careers full of dandelion wine-- those classes in the shade.
But not always.
So, if I know the abject horror I feel toward most classes, how can my personal teaching pedagogy hold my students to higher standards?
Should I assume that every student is academically prepared for every class and for every assignment?
Should I raise an eyebrow at every seemingly ludicrous question?
Or should I just answer the question and let it go?
Should I have tried harder these past few months?
Does it matter if my teacher actually likes me?
Does it matter if I actually like my teacher?
Am I an ignorant person ?
Am I doing well in the class based on any of these questions or their not-so-forthcoming answers?
I remember school as something..dare I say...cool, until I started attending. My older brothers climbed on and off bus number 7 five days a week. My mom bought them new shoes, and pencils, and crayons, and plastic boxes in which to place those crayons.
Then I went to school and learned that the bus was possibly the worst thing to ever enter my life. Large. Yellow. Rank. Unnerving.
The bus took me to a place that was just as large, yellow, rank and unnerving.
If I were to go out on a limb and actually write that this has been the standard for the whole of my education, would that limb hold me?
This has been every classroom, every assignment, almost every teacher, every hallway for the duration of my academic career. Granted, there are those students who have experiences that are quite nice---those wonderful academic careers full of dandelion wine-- those classes in the shade.
But not always.
So, if I know the abject horror I feel toward most classes, how can my personal teaching pedagogy hold my students to higher standards?
Should I assume that every student is academically prepared for every class and for every assignment?
Should I raise an eyebrow at every seemingly ludicrous question?
Or should I just answer the question and let it go?
Monday, September 25, 2006
Abnormal discourse
"The first steps to learning to thing Better,and learning to converse Better and learning to establish and maintain the sorts of social context, the sorts of community life that foster the sorts of conversation members of the community value." -K. Bruffee
Academic discourse truly is an amazing beast. It is unbearably pompous and I can't help but cheer those students who try to engage in "abnormal discourse"---- when someone joins in the discourse who is ignorant of the conventions governing that discourse, or who sets them aside." (Rorty ref. by Bruffee--Conversation of Mankind, 429)
I know that there are students out there who tend to manipulate assignments. I've always been a huge proponent of socially accepted rebellion-- those intellectual revolutionaries. I've participated in the occasional revolution and I've paid for it by not getting an "A." I've paid for it by having to re-write, or conference.
I've become weary of it.
I re-read D. Bartholomae's "Tidy House" this weekend. In his essay he discusses a student he had in his first year of teaching. The student wrote an essay which discussed the fact that he.....thought the assignment was stupid. The student used different language, of course, but that was the gist of it. It made me question the idea of rebellion and resistance within the classroom. Paired with Bruffee's essay, "Tidy House" once again, made me re-evaluate the acculturation that goes on within academia.
So many teaching "techniques" seem to be stifling, seem to be hoop-jumping, and when a student decides to vocalize frustration and annoyance via essay, the student is proverbially put in the corner to think about what s/he has done.
Is it always "wrong" or "right," "correct" or "incorrect" within the classroom?
I disliked the idea of abnormal discourse simply because it set the scene. It was/is abnormal because it isn't normal. Instead of realizing that abnormality has its roots in normality--its causal ancestor-- we set the two up against one another, and we pick one over the other, when, in fact, they are simply variations on a theme.
Academic discourse truly is an amazing beast. It is unbearably pompous and I can't help but cheer those students who try to engage in "abnormal discourse"---- when someone joins in the discourse who is ignorant of the conventions governing that discourse, or who sets them aside." (Rorty ref. by Bruffee--Conversation of Mankind, 429)
I know that there are students out there who tend to manipulate assignments. I've always been a huge proponent of socially accepted rebellion-- those intellectual revolutionaries. I've participated in the occasional revolution and I've paid for it by not getting an "A." I've paid for it by having to re-write, or conference.
I've become weary of it.
I re-read D. Bartholomae's "Tidy House" this weekend. In his essay he discusses a student he had in his first year of teaching. The student wrote an essay which discussed the fact that he.....thought the assignment was stupid. The student used different language, of course, but that was the gist of it. It made me question the idea of rebellion and resistance within the classroom. Paired with Bruffee's essay, "Tidy House" once again, made me re-evaluate the acculturation that goes on within academia.
So many teaching "techniques" seem to be stifling, seem to be hoop-jumping, and when a student decides to vocalize frustration and annoyance via essay, the student is proverbially put in the corner to think about what s/he has done.
Is it always "wrong" or "right," "correct" or "incorrect" within the classroom?
I disliked the idea of abnormal discourse simply because it set the scene. It was/is abnormal because it isn't normal. Instead of realizing that abnormality has its roots in normality--its causal ancestor-- we set the two up against one another, and we pick one over the other, when, in fact, they are simply variations on a theme.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Other Others
At the University, in our literature courses, in our theory course, the idea of the misunderstood Other usually makes a few appearance and usually decides to hang around for the duration of the eighteen week course. A few students identify, a few students re-define and a few Others remain quiet and re-read the texts in order to understand something “else.”
We discussed the term “Other” in class the other day, and I once again pondered the significance. Every semester that I have heard and discussed this term it has been in reference to something different: race, women, caste. But this semester, being in a classroom chock full of teaching assistants, I feel that this semester the Other has significance in the English 100 and 110 classroom. We read Comp tales forever ago (or was it just two weeks?), and I thought about it then. Those undergraduate students who are taught. Those undergraduate student who are finding their place in their first semester writing class in college. They are the Others this year. They have the trivial place of being the unknown and sometimes misunderstood role of being “rubbish” writers.
Of course, I am at the disadvantage of not teaching them. I really have nothing to do with them. I merely hear the stories from TA’s. But in the classroom, in front of the graduate student, in front of the Associate Professor, in front of the tenured Professor, how can that student not feel at a disadvantage. How can that student not feel as if whatever voice s/he had before is now gone, lost to an academic version of laryngitis?
This will be the first year of learning to write academically. This will be the first year of stifling personal “voice” in order to fulfill that requirement. I have heard some teachers voice bemusement at confused and muddled essays wherein the requirements were not met, or the writing was dry and boring, or there was no essay at all.
I just remember thinking in my undergrad, “Okay, the first essay is the hardest, because you don’t really know what the Professor wants. My Mind or repeat after me.”
We discussed the term “Other” in class the other day, and I once again pondered the significance. Every semester that I have heard and discussed this term it has been in reference to something different: race, women, caste. But this semester, being in a classroom chock full of teaching assistants, I feel that this semester the Other has significance in the English 100 and 110 classroom. We read Comp tales forever ago (or was it just two weeks?), and I thought about it then. Those undergraduate students who are taught. Those undergraduate student who are finding their place in their first semester writing class in college. They are the Others this year. They have the trivial place of being the unknown and sometimes misunderstood role of being “rubbish” writers.
Of course, I am at the disadvantage of not teaching them. I really have nothing to do with them. I merely hear the stories from TA’s. But in the classroom, in front of the graduate student, in front of the Associate Professor, in front of the tenured Professor, how can that student not feel at a disadvantage. How can that student not feel as if whatever voice s/he had before is now gone, lost to an academic version of laryngitis?
This will be the first year of learning to write academically. This will be the first year of stifling personal “voice” in order to fulfill that requirement. I have heard some teachers voice bemusement at confused and muddled essays wherein the requirements were not met, or the writing was dry and boring, or there was no essay at all.
I just remember thinking in my undergrad, “Okay, the first essay is the hardest, because you don’t really know what the Professor wants. My Mind or repeat after me.”
Friday, September 08, 2006
Multi-Vocal Listening
In class today, we discussed the idea of research and it’s inherent in/objectivity. Someone brought up the idea of an interviewee bending his/her “story” to accommodate the interviewer.
“That’s not the way people work,” was the response. Maybe, but maybe in certain situations they do censor self. Maybe the story is just a bit different. Maybe one aspect is left untold. I have a difficult time believing that all language is value-free or universal especially in the arena of research. Every researcher has a motive, something to find out, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to research. The questions would not be there to ask.
I mean, when I say "Horse" what do you think of?
Michel Foucault in his essay, “The Discourse on Language,” writes of prohibition in discourse communities. “We know perfectly well that we are not free to say just anything, that we cannot speak simply of anything, when we like or where we like; not just anyone, finally, may speak of just anything.”
There are power struggles in discourse. What should be revealed and what should be hidden in any conversation? How will I, the researcher or the human-subject, interpret your symbols of communication?
“Whose theory, whose language, whose interpretation, and whose narrative voice would prevail?”
Language is subjective. Language is interpretive. Most things are, in fact, up for grabs.
“That’s not the way people work,” was the response. Maybe, but maybe in certain situations they do censor self. Maybe the story is just a bit different. Maybe one aspect is left untold. I have a difficult time believing that all language is value-free or universal especially in the arena of research. Every researcher has a motive, something to find out, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to research. The questions would not be there to ask.
I mean, when I say "Horse" what do you think of?
Michel Foucault in his essay, “The Discourse on Language,” writes of prohibition in discourse communities. “We know perfectly well that we are not free to say just anything, that we cannot speak simply of anything, when we like or where we like; not just anyone, finally, may speak of just anything.”
There are power struggles in discourse. What should be revealed and what should be hidden in any conversation? How will I, the researcher or the human-subject, interpret your symbols of communication?
“Whose theory, whose language, whose interpretation, and whose narrative voice would prevail?”
Language is subjective. Language is interpretive. Most things are, in fact, up for grabs.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Traveling with Exxon
I personally have never been a huge proponent of “freewriting.” I don’t like participating in the activity, and therefore, presume that most people couldn’t possibly glean anything from that sort of pursuit.
I must admit though, Elbow made me wonder.
Maybe it is a good idea, or maybe it’s not. Either way he added a certain amount of insecure charm to the whole process of not being able to string a few words together in some sort of pre-approved of rhetorical structure.
I taught English to...well, highschool dropouts in Anchorage, Alaska. The goal of the class was for the students to be able to answer a prompt, a basic question–“What are some qualities in a person whom you admire?” in the form of a five-paragraph essay.
It was difficult. Sometimes the students didn’t even understand the question. Some students grew tired of writing and never returned to class. Sometimes I had no clue what I should do with an essay. “Um, yeah, okay, the essay subject is good. Essentially, this is what I’m looking for. But are you aware that you wrote this entire essay phonetically?”
“It’s not right? But I did that free-writing thing. See?” The student showed me two crumpled pieces of paper which had been thoroughly written upon, erased and written upon again.
We teachers were pushed to get students to brainstorm using freewriting and webbing.
I guess what I’m curious about is whether or not freewriting and stream of consciousness writing can be effective in most situations? Is our center of gravity really located around the ability or inability to find topic sentences and the willingness to lose control of our writing?
Does freewriting even make sense beyond the hallowed halls of academia? It seems like a privilege to be able to use this style of writing. The students I had came to class on their lunch breaks. They came for an hour when they could get a friend to watch their kids.
Their goal was to take a test which culminated in a timed five paragraph essay. They didn’t have an hour to spend freewriting.
I’m not saying that I don’t agree with Elbow. I guess I’m just remembering the kid who just didn’t want to write a lot, or the girl who didn’t care enough to spend time growing and cooking. “Actually, I’m only here because my mom said that she would buy me this Coach purse if I came. No offense. Hey, do you want to go to this party with me tonight? There’s always tons of mushrooms. You should come.”
I think this would be the appropriate time to hearken back to Comp Tales.
I never saw that student again.
I must admit though, Elbow made me wonder.
Maybe it is a good idea, or maybe it’s not. Either way he added a certain amount of insecure charm to the whole process of not being able to string a few words together in some sort of pre-approved of rhetorical structure.
I taught English to...well, highschool dropouts in Anchorage, Alaska. The goal of the class was for the students to be able to answer a prompt, a basic question–“What are some qualities in a person whom you admire?” in the form of a five-paragraph essay.
It was difficult. Sometimes the students didn’t even understand the question. Some students grew tired of writing and never returned to class. Sometimes I had no clue what I should do with an essay. “Um, yeah, okay, the essay subject is good. Essentially, this is what I’m looking for. But are you aware that you wrote this entire essay phonetically?”
“It’s not right? But I did that free-writing thing. See?” The student showed me two crumpled pieces of paper which had been thoroughly written upon, erased and written upon again.
We teachers were pushed to get students to brainstorm using freewriting and webbing.
I guess what I’m curious about is whether or not freewriting and stream of consciousness writing can be effective in most situations? Is our center of gravity really located around the ability or inability to find topic sentences and the willingness to lose control of our writing?
Does freewriting even make sense beyond the hallowed halls of academia? It seems like a privilege to be able to use this style of writing. The students I had came to class on their lunch breaks. They came for an hour when they could get a friend to watch their kids.
Their goal was to take a test which culminated in a timed five paragraph essay. They didn’t have an hour to spend freewriting.
I’m not saying that I don’t agree with Elbow. I guess I’m just remembering the kid who just didn’t want to write a lot, or the girl who didn’t care enough to spend time growing and cooking. “Actually, I’m only here because my mom said that she would buy me this Coach purse if I came. No offense. Hey, do you want to go to this party with me tonight? There’s always tons of mushrooms. You should come.”
I think this would be the appropriate time to hearken back to Comp Tales.
I never saw that student again.
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