and now some reading for your break

OK.  I know that our little investigation into English Studies this semster has been quite a ride.  Pulling the curtain back on the field has been frustrating, enlightening, disconcerting, invigorating, disheartening, overwhelming, empowering, and a whole slew of additional “ing” words that you can feel free to add youself.

So, as a way to end the semester…or better, to provide some suggestions for a little post semester detoxing…I thought I’d send a list of lighter English Studies narratives.  I don’t know how many of you have poked around in the subgenre of academic novels–that is, novels about the academy and academics–but these will certainly provide a little levity suitable for snowy day reflections on the field we love.

• Straight Man: A Novel
  by Richard Russo
• Moo
  by Jane Smiley
• The Lecturer’s Tale: A Novel
  by James Hynes
• Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror
  by James Hynes
• Small World
  by David Lodge
• Blue Angel: A Novel
  by Francine Prose
• The Groves of Academe
  , by Mary McCarthy

I’ll admit that I haven’t read all of these.  However, after our class, I put the ones I haven’t read on  my Christmas list!

If you decide to pick up a couple of these and find yourself feeling a bit edgy…it might be because you still have that pen in your hand as you read and your are craving secondary texts–you know, criticism!  Don’t worry.  Be calm and check out Elaine Showalter’s Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents
Whew.

Anyway, I hope you have a restful break.  Thanks for a great semester.

P.S. don’t forget to fill out the survey!

CFP: Conference Proposal

Hey all.  I hope you had a great Thanksgiving break and are ready for the final stretch.  Last week, coming up! I wanted to post the brief guidelines for the conference proposal that we discussed in class for your reference.

First, remember that conference proposals are not summaries of your work or work that you plan on doing.  A conference proposal is first and foremost an argument.  That is, you are trying to persuade a conference committee that your proposal/paper should be accepted to the conference.  Toward that end, the guidelines for your conference proposal emphasize important components of the argument you need to make.

Second, since many if not most conference proposals limit you to 250-750 words, you need to be both concise and strategic.  That is, since you have to be very economical in your writing, what you choose to put in your proposal should both explain your project and forward your argument.

So, without further delay, here’s the three components I want you to focus on in your proposals:

• Context/Issue.  In this part, what you are doing is attempting to situate and/or construct your reader.  Think of this part as first providing any needed context your reader might need to feel “comfortable” with your project.  By “comfortable” I don’t mean water down your project.  I mean that you want to make sure that your reader has enough of the “backstory” so he/she doesn’t get hung up on trying to figure out where you’re coming from.  This might mean sketching out a social/cultural/historical development that you are in conversation with.  It might mean introducing the conversation that your paper is entering.  Or, it might raise a series of questions to which your paper responds.
• Heart of your argument.  The second component is your opportunity to “pitch” your project.   This means making your argument–albeit in a very condensed form–not writing about “what you plan to do” or “ideas you have” or summarizing everything in your paper.  Since the person reading your proposal has some kind of investment in the conference being engaging, interesting, and “successful” he/she will be looking for arguments that are well thought through, pointed, and engaging.  The goal of this component is to make your argument “shine” and to pique the interest of the reader.  You do not need to make every aspect of your argument clear (quite difficult in so few words).  But it should be clear to the reader what motivates your project.
• Significance.  While we all strive for our writing to be significant in some broader sense, here your task is more narrow.  You need to make it clear why your specific project is significant to this specific conference.  This is where the CFP is your friend.  Most CFPs will do more than announce that there is a conference.  The CFP is likely to include suggestions for papers, key questions that the conference organizers are asking, the motivation or theme of the conference, and a wealth of other information.  The CFP basically provides you with a profile of the conference organizers and likely participants.  In this component, you should make it clear where your project (and why your project) fits in.   If relevant, you can also use language right from the CFP to show your project’s connection to the conference.  However, do not rely too heavily on the language of the CFP; you don’t want your readers to think that you are just kissing their butts to get your paper accepted.

I hope that is useful!  I look forward to class on Wednesday…I’ll bring the pizza.

English, relevant? YES!

 

In this article Mathieu and Sosnoski talk about what they believe is the “dying” field of cultural studies.  This is not to say they think the field is dying or should die, but instead that the theory as we know it is dying.  It is time for a change.  They argue that cultural studies has many complaints against it, but focus on one:  “its reliance on ‘cultural critique’ as a pedagogical technique” (325).  They suggest that the idea of critiquing has rhetorical limits.  While they respect and admire Berlin’s ideas of the cultural critique “method”, they do not think it works.  Instead, they offer up a comparison of cultural practices as a way into cultural critique.  This comparative method seems to work.  I must say, I like it a lot. 

 

After reading the article by Paula Mathieu and James J. Sosnoski I am left with the desire to have my students do an assignment like theirs.  To have the students explore a problem in their own school seems so simple, such an obvious assignment, but it is something I have never done.  I love the idea of comparing our school to others and having them express their wants and needs.  We have students who do express their concerns, once a year, to the administration, but they are not the voices of my students.  I teach the lowest level kids, the kids who never get heard.  They usually do not get heard because they do not say what they have to say in an acceptable way.  If they had a voice, and they thought it might make a difference, then maybe they could learn to use their voice in an acceptable way.  I am going to do this. 

 

The Return of the Cybrarian…or, Why I Love the Blogosphere

Hey all, just a quick note…when you get a chance, check out the comments for “Sorry Nellen, But…” I think you’ll recognize one of the commenters (or is that commentators).

Student-centered relevance

Slightly out of chron. order here, but…

Donald Tinney may have been talking about high school students, but I immediately related to what he was saying. The age of the student does not really matter. His message as an English teacher is what counts: “If I am to believe that I am relevant, that my life has real value, then I must believe that my work has real meaning and value, as well. In other words, I am important. What I do matters” (143). With his straightforward style, Tinney summed up much of what I personally have come to feel about whatever teaching I do. I am a writer, as most know. Though I teach at the college level, I am not a trained teacher (unless living with my professor-parents for 16 years “trained” me by osmosis or something), but I do value the hours I spend in the classroom, and if I am any good at this profession it is precisely because I do not see myself as separate or tangential to my students’ lives. While they are in front of me for a semester, they matter to me. Often I have tried to pretend that perhaps they do not really matter to me, or that I do not really matter to them. But that usually lasts only a day—because such thinking is, in fact, a complete delusion. The best classroom is the one Tinney refers to as “filled with narrative, filled with stories” (144); beyond the personal stories are the stories we read together, allowing students “to experiment with emotions, ideas and, albeit vicariously, decisional and subsequent actions” (145).

This little essay helped me re-love the fact of narrative, our need for it—the main value of literature beyond all these cultural molding arguments that we have been reading about. I needed Tinney’s view… I think I will reread this when I get discouraged.

An amazing thing happened last week. A group of 3 freshmen presented a final project (PowerPoint) for my freshman forum class called “What’s in a Name?” Their research topic was the origins of bands’ names & song names. The audience of 20 other freshmen was rapt: this was a topic they cared about. To my complete astonishment, the trio pointed out that there were two key influences: (1) Literature and (2) Experience. Wow. Suddenly, literature looked very appealing, very accessible–to everybody. It was a miracle moment for all of the “relevant” members of the tribe. We must “accept [our] own importance as the keepers of stories” (150) and encourage students to embrace stories. As Tinney says, “your value is determined by your contributions” (150).  

And now just a fast word about the Robbins piece. I was disappointed with this piece simply because it was not specific enough for my taste. I look for concrete examples to give me a deeper sense of the work being described. I do like the fact that these authors took on the “standardizing approach to teaching English” (159) with its ridiculous emphasis on “literacy” as “the ability to display a collection of discrete bits of information” (159). These enterprising teachers share how exactly they combined literacy and community building successfully. I am not too sold on the approach (seems contrived), but I like what they said about dealing proactively with parents by communicating goals. I also agree 100% with a process aspect–about having students write first before engaging in discussions. This is a key thing to remember. Every time I have reversed the process in a classroom, I wound up saying later: “Should have had ‘em write first.” Robbins writes also of middle schoolers’ need to develop “voice” and “ownership,” which are great goals in and of themselves.    

Paula’s plan

I think that Paula Mathieu’s essay might be my least favorite thus far in “The Relevance of English”, and I’m not entirely sure why. It might have something to do with the fact the Paula Mathieu referred to herself in the third person, which I find a bit pretentious; or it might have something to do with the fact the Mathieu seems to be of the opinion that she did something revolutionary for her poor, under-privileged students by publishing the “missing links” on the English department website.  I just don’t know that I learned anything worthwhile from her essay, although I don’t think it has to do with the content – the “experiment” Mathieu conducted actually is interesting and worthwhile and probably had a positive impact on the majority of the students – it was her writing style and tone that I found off-putting. The essay described a class Mathieu co-designed and taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, that was focused on “utopian writing” and “comparative criticism”. She wanted her students to research UIC’s home webpage, and create “the missing links”  - those links the students were interested in and unable to find. It’s an interesting project, and a great tool for cultural studies, but I don’t know that it had much to do with English studies. Mathieu’s plan was to “present the idea of cultural criticism to students in a way that is more organic and more rhetorically palatable than traditional methods” (341), and to get the students to “enact culture” but I’m not entirely sure that an underground method of updating the school’s home webpage really did it- especially considering that some of those same students didn’t think “the missing links” were successful. 

Sorry Nellen, but…

I just got finished reading Nellen’s article, and I must say I am a bit put off by it. I usually try to give every article a chance and find something beneficial about what the author is saying, but Nellen’s was just…weird.  It seemed disconnected. For such a short article, to spend so much time at the beginning detailing his every morning routine seemed like kind of a waste of space. Then he goes into his personal educational experience. I wanted him to get to the point. Then he did, and the point was…odd. His proposed “learning centers” seemed like some sort of futuristic society where everyone is mind-controlled by a computer. Can you imagine just sitting in front of a computer all day long? How do you work in groups if the student (oh, sorry, scholar) sits in front of a computer screen all day? It seemed like creating zombies, not scholars, whose every move is being watched.

Wouldn’t most students just be playing solitaire or browsing the Internet when they think the cybrarian isn’t looking? I tutored an education student in the writing center who observed at Kutztown High school, where each student gets a laptop computer. This is supposed to help them with their studies, but the student told me that all the students do during class is ignore the teacher and play on their computers.

Not to say that there isn’t some value in his vision. I agree that we need to incorporate technology into our classrooms (which I believe a lot of schools do already). But we can’t let technology take the place of good ol’ human interaction. There needs to be a balance. Nellen didn’t explain his vision enough for it to fly with me, but it did get me thinking about technology and education, so I guess that is a good thing. Did anyone get the feeling that Nellen is a cyborg in disguise?

ISO: Plural Commons

Yancey begins her essay with mentioning Alaska, and of course I spent the remainder of my reading time devoted to seeing Sarah Palin’s name somewhere in the text. I was grossly disappointed by the sad lack of Palinisms within the text, and actually, I don’t know if I was disappointed by the text as a whole, or just left void of a finite purpose for the text.

Throughout the essay, I kept asking myself, “What’s the point of this? What are you trying to get to?” A plural commons is the hopeful end result, but what exactly is a plural commons? My definition: a place where people stand on similar ground, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences. I might be a little jaded because of extenuating circumstances, but I’m not sure that any English teaching experience could ever truly reach that status of being a plural commons.

Near the very end, Yancey explains the way we become a plural commons:

- That we ask students to work within poetics and rhetoric and expand them both and bring them back together.

- That we allow students to play with the texts produced and encoded by new technologies.

- That we ask students to represent and express the multiplicity that they are, in text.

This, I understand– to an extent. But what is Yancey really saying? I have no idea, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that. I totally missed the point of this essay, outside of the importance and influence of democracy, as quoted by Berlin, in the classroom. The rest of it? No idea- or maybe I simply did not connect to the text. There was a severe lack of plural commons for me.

Word

I kind-of feel like I don’t need to write a blog because I read Nicole’s and I’m in the same place.  I read the same articles she did, and I also teach seniors.  The same laments and complaints that she faces over teaching British Literature are the same ones I face.  As I read Drye, I felt a small sense of relief that I teach seniors and don’t have PSSAs looming over me.  It sort of makes me feel guilty that I don’t have to deal with that, but at the same time, I feel the pressure of getting students ready for college, and if students don’t do well in their college English classes, I feel personally responsible.  

I sympathized with Drye because I feel like I entered my first year of teaching with ambitions similar to hers, and was similarly blindsided by the difficulties of actually getting students to care about what I was teaching.  Fortunately, I didn’t have the pressures of teaching to state testing controlling my lessons, but it was hard nonetheless.  What Drye wrote about attempting to teaching relevant, exciting material resonated with some of my attempts, and I know I have walked away from those attempts as mixed as she was.  In some cases, I felt like students produced really great work.  In others, I felt like the work kids did was no better than if I had taught more traditionally.  This lack of student response is something that has haunted me all five years of teaching, and bothers me still to this day.  

In terms of Nellen, I have to agree with Vanessa.  I think the computers are a great idea for working with the writing process, but I would hate to see kids sitting behind computers all day long for every class, especially as a replacement for books.  His proposals, albeit sketchy and lacking in detail, seem genuine and well-thought out, but I don’t think computers are the end all, and I don’t think we should rely on them all day every day.  Anyway, in my district I suppose it won’t be a problem–EVER–as we are experiencing millions of dollars worth of budget cuts, and the computers that we did get three years ago have mysteriously disappeared.

Technocentric America

The article by Selfe & Selfe was a good read, insofar as it relates another series of relevant issues within the English curriculum. Once again, an article seeks to add on to the role of the English teacher, and I feel this article was at least as successful as some of the less-engaging treatises that preceded it, if not more successful. Of particular relevance to me was a passage in which Selfe & Selfe argue that

“technological literacy is based on our ability to ‘read’ our technocentric culture. It refers to the direct linking of technology and literacy at a fundamental level of both conception and practice — so that technological contexts for communication become an essential part of our cultural understanding of what it means to be literate and to practice literate behaviors, the reading and writing and exchange of texts of various kinds.” (350)

Essentially, technological literacy equates one with being civilized in this 21st century society. To that end, I feel that this is a necessary discussion to be having. I feel that English teachers, in the coming years, may run the risk of relying too heavily upon technology to produce pedagogy. That is to say that teachers will expect their students to accept technology as the instrument through which their education is realized, when it should be, in effect, the teachers themselves that produce the education within the student, not antiquated canon, nor modernized technological advancements.

Yes, it is necessary to integrate technology into the curriculum since, as Selfe & Selfe write, it is an entirely unrealistic and impossible expectation, in the 21st century, to think that technology can be avoided. However, “integration” seems to double with “replacement,” and while it may sound ridiculous, I could conceive that we might be heading for an age where teachers become obsolete. We already have online classes. Hell, we have online colleges. How far away are we from online high schools? Online elementary school? Online daycare?! Okay, we’ll never have online daycare, but that’s not the point. The point is that technology is too often accepted on its face and never questioned. Critical technological literacy is the questioning of technology, and its value to 21st century academia (indeed, to 21st century living in general) cannot be overlooked.

Cultural Critique

I found Mathieu and Sosnoski’s chapter on comparative cultural studies relevant to my own classroom.  I assure you that this is not simply due to the book’s title which suggests as much.  The best way I can show its relevancy is to describe a typical assignment dealing with criticism in Mr. Reibsome’s class.  After spending  a few days looking at  examples of the expected format of an essay and allocating an additional day or two specifically focusing on editing procedures, class time is afforded the students to work on their essays.  The students usually struggle to find their voice and slowly, over the course of a day or two, they produce a rough draft. 

The students then swap papers and edit for grammatical errors as well as overall clarity of writing.  They have to write a few sentences at the end and sign their names.  Now I tell them that I expect the editing to be thorough and that I will hold the editor accountable for overlooked blatant errors but the result is predictable.  The rough drafts have a scattering of corrections–some of which are incorrect–that mostly deal with superficial errors.  Issues of argument formation and clarity of position are never addressed.  While I understand the hesitancy on the part of the students to critique classmates’ papers, I do not think I fully appreciated the idea of criticism as an alien, even offensive, practice to my students until reading the article.

I think by allowing students to choose a topic of interest in their own lives (for those of you who might not have had a chance to read the chapter yet, the students in the essay looked at university procedures dealing with a range of issues such as daycare, housing, meal plans, etc.) and comparing it to alternative examples to determine which is better, students achieve a better understanding of the usefulness of criticism.  It doesn’t appear to hold the same destructiveness as previously conceived.

I think I am going to implement a similar project in my curriculum next year.  Hopefully by allowing them to practice criticism something in their own lives (I can already imagine the flood of papers dealing with school policies on call phone use), students will be more willing to extend the practice to the peers’  papers.

watching you

A collection of writing that brought some strange reminiscent rememberings back for me.  Subversive teaching- I used to go to work this way.  I began my career this way.  After my first observation in 2000, my administrator told me, “You’re heart’s in the right place Ryan.”  It was Spirit Week, the day was career day, and because I was playing drums in a band at the time, I thought it appropriate to wear a Mighty Mighty Bosstones t-shirt (The school’s mascot was a bulldog likened to the Bosstones’).  I had to hit myself in the head everyday because I could not believe I was having such a good time teaching.  I went to work everyday as a spy.  It was how I framed the conversation in my mind upon entering the trade school called education.  I would infiltrate their pedagogy, equip my ES students, and send them-well read into the darkest places of the regular curriculum.  As for my work, I was mixing with athletic coaches and dropping buzzwords with administrators-I was well on my way to infiltrating their dreaded subversive act called education. 

I still sing in the halls at the top of my lungs early in the morning the dreaded verses of Pink Floyd,  “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom-” I have tenure.  I mean it, and like the Bomer of Dryer’s article, I consider retreating, yet for me it would be to a self-contained classroom where standardized tests are a thing I can conquer while living the dream.  The dream of creativity, the dream general education teachers struggle with, the dream Dryer proposes.       

These essays appealed to me much more than last weeks. 

I found the essays concerning the role of community colleges reaffirming.  With the recent election and the party’s emphasis on reversing past legislation, more money may be allocated for student loans.  Many of the recipients of this legislation will begin their education as I did at the community college.  The first time I tried it, I didn’t go to class and spent most of my time either in the library reading books I didn’t know existed or playing sand volleyball in the park adjacent to the school.  The second time I attended, I was promised to my wife and needed a job (as a spy).  While at the community college I took; English 101 & 102, two courses in surveys of world literature, a film class, two art history classes and a speech class- a full humanities load.  I also got my math done there, linguistics, and whatever else I needed before entering trade school.  I found these essays to be spot on concerning the current and future role of community colleges.  The elaborations of the demographic and experimental mood I remember to be true.  The mood was much more liberating than I had experienced at ASU.  For a sociology prioject I played videos by; Ministry, Rage Against the Machine and Fishbone. In order to extend the unit on proportions, my math instructor had the class meet him for the day (or as long as you could last), at the horse track-how cool is that?  It hadn’t occurred to me that these settings were the places where cutting edge pedagogy was taking place, but in retrospect some of those instructors really got to me.         

 

 

As much as I’d love to stay and elaborate on how much I liked Mathieu and Sosnoski’s essay, I must accomplish some of the work I brought home-piss.  

Mixed reactions

The articles that I read for this week, by Drye and Nellen, left me both inspired and at the same time a tad depressed.  I enjoyed the articles thoroughly but each one left me questioning where English studies is headed in our highschools and colleges.  Let me explain.

Drye’s article, The Future of English Studies Made Personal, or The Subversive Act of Teaching Well, was for me, very enjoyable and moving.  Having begun my college career with the intention of teaching English at the highschool level, I can to a certain extent understand her feeling of wanting to change the world beginning with her students.  Indeed, in my education classes we were encouraged to be creative and experiment with different ways of teaching that would show the strengths of our students,  However, upon observing different classes during my practicum and seeing all that had to be done to prepare for the “tests” it became obvious that creativity had its limits.  What was most frustrating for me was seeing the way a teacher at one of the schools watered down his assignments for his classes because of their ethnic and social background ( this was as much as stated to me).  Upon working with the students I found them to have very creative ideas and despite what the teacher believed they were inteligent.

As I read Drye’s essay I could sense the passion she has for English and the concern for her students.  I found her determination to make English interesting to the students despite the odds quite inspiring.  The genre study with which she concluded the year seeemed more important to me than teaching to the test.  I think it corresponds to the idea that we must prepare our students, whether in highschool or college tp examine their society.  Now, my concern pertaining to Ms. Drye’s article pertains to the issue of testing.  She spent the WHOLE YEAR preparing for a test, leaving only five weeks for her to impart something to her students that was worthwhile for use in their often confused lives.  All the pressures that students are under-at home, at school, in society-should cause the makers of these tests to realize that they are more of a hindrance than a help.  At the end Drye states that she will rebel by teaching well and not give up.  While that is refreshing to hear, will it really change the system?  I do not see tests going away in the near future and it is a dismal thought to think they might become more stringent.   How will it affect English studies in general, but also incoming college students?  What is even more depresssing is when one knows teachers who are simply there to earn the money and do not care about the students.

In closing, I would like to briefly address Nellen’s article about the future of the English classroom and technology.  While I thought his article was interesting, to be truthful I did not agree with his idea of a classroom where students work on computers all day.  I realize that we are probably headed that way, but part of me hopes there will always be a book to hold in one’s hands.  For me English studies has always beeen about an interaction between people and the computer seems to take that away.  I am well aware that people can discuss over the internet and even see the person to whom they are talking, yet there is something special about having a discussion in a room with four walls, everyone in a circle, sharing their ideas and opinions.  At the highschool level I think physical interaction is important because it gives students social experience and prepares them for the work place( I know, maybe work will be over the computer).  Still, I just think that sitting at a computer for an entire class period is not beneficial.  However, I do believe technology, especially computers, is esssential to English studies and should be utilized in classes; but not to the extent Nellen proposes.

This Summer, Schwarzenegger is: The Cybrarian

I couldn’t resist utilizing this as my title strictly for comedic relief.  I figure that it is easier to begin with something off-topic so I don’t have to digress later!

In Drye’s “article” I found myself looking at it as an “article”, with the quotation marks.  Perhaps this struck me more as a biography, reflection, and complaint – a glorified blog.  For me, the most valid points made were not by the author but by the various block quotes and references to other work (hello again Scholes).  The personal aspect of the article made it more “accessible” as we like to say, but it came across as devoid of purpose.

It left me with nothing truly addressed other than our dead but continually beaten horse of attempting to frame English curriculum within the strict framework of a state-run evaluation process.  It did not seem to establish a way of changing things but only identified the issues of students truly learning versus teaching to the test.  Whatever small change the author wanted to make fell on deaf ears since her experiment went unfinished due to time restrictions.  In the end, I’m still unclear what she was trying to do…

OK, Nellen’s article made me giggle more than once since it was obviously a bit dated.  I couldn’t help but perceiving his classroom as a place where Neo would teach you kung-fu through computerized osmosis while Hugh Jackman utilized the entire classroom, with all the monitors, to write a money-sucking virus a la Swordfish.  Once I got by the absurd (but entertaining) premises running through my head, I understood where Nellen thought the classroom might be going.  We do actually see the cyber-classroom being used throughout various levels of education and it can be a more efficient way to utilize time.

I don’t know if “cybrarian” was supposed to be a cute play on words or if he was actually serious about this terminology, but the premise isn’t too terrible and how he attempts to implement the teacher’s role as this “cybrarian” seems logical.  Teachers once again become guides as they use the technology as a shortcut to save time and focus more on peer reviews etc.  His mathematical example of 1 minute per student is a bit disconcerting and his final goal of a computer-heavy classroom, though too computer-heavy to me, is a valid way to attack that main problem.

Don’t forget to buy your tickets for The Cybrarian which comes out this summer.  Also, there are rumors of a sequel, The Cybrarian 2: The Cybrarian vs. Graff, in the works.

Experiencing a new feeling…

And that feeling is that I am speechless.

To be honest, I can’t really say that I have much of a response to the two essays that I read this week, by Drye and Nellen.

I will deal with Nellen’s article first because it was short, ha!  Seriously, though, I can relate to Nellen’s hesitance to utilize computers in the classroom.  In my years as an undergrad, I worked in technology center where I taught professors how to use new technologies.  The majority of them did not know how to turn on a computer, let alone how to create a powerpoint presentation or create a podcast.  However, when they recognized that in learning these methods, they would find new ways to reach their students, they committed to the process whole-heartedly.  I enjoyed Nellen’s article for this reason.  After seeing the impact these computers could have on his students, he really got into it.  I only wish that the article would have been longer so that he could have listed more of his methods and student reaction to those methods.

I have to be honest, for some reason, the Drye article was like pulling teeth for me.  While I can appreciate anyone’s personal experience, and how that relates to teaching methods, I felt like this was just another lament about how teachers are limited by curriculum and the powers that be.  I certainly don’t agree with the limitations placed on teachers in this country, but my point is that Drye is presenting something we’ve already heard and already know to be a problem, and while she does assert her desire to implement writing workshops, she doesn’t provide in-depth methods for teachers to use in their classrooms.  Sure, she shows a few examples, but she makes it clear that she didn’t get to practice these methods very often, as she was on a strict schedule in order to adhere to her curriculum and testing requirements for her students.

I don’t know, maybe I’ve just had an off weekend, ’cause usually I can find something to enjoy in these pieces, but this week I just wasn’t feeling it. 

I am constantly struck by limitations placed on teachers.  It’s really sad to me that even the most innovative methods that could really push students to excel never seem to go anywhere because schools are so fixated on strict curriculum and testing.  Sometimes I wonder if they will ever change.  The optimist in me prays that it can, and will soon.

Consumerist Catch-22

In Yancey’s article, she quotes Sheldon Jackson’s 1892 explanation of Alaskan education:

It was to instruct a people, the greatest portion of whom are uncivilized, who need to be taught sanitary regulations, the laws of health, improvement of dwellings, better methods of house-keeping, cooking and dressing, more remunerative forms of labor, honesty, chastity, the sacredness of the marriage relation, and everything that elevates man.  So that, side by side with the usual school drill in reading, writing and arithmetic, there is a need of instruction for the girls in housekeeping, cooking, and gardening, in cutting sewing and mending; and for the boys in carpentering and other forms of wood working, boot and shoe making, and the various trades of civilization.

I read this quote and became immediately depressed—not because this was the way of things back then or because it is the way of things now or because it is not the way of things now.   I became depressed because a quote such as this revealed to me the futility of much of this pedagogical theorizing.  Not to worry: I have not waxed so angst-ridden that I see no sense in the articles we have read, but I have been discouraged by the transparent certainty that nothing’s perfect.  I did not think that we would find the perfect pedagogy this semester, but I suppose there is always hope that one educational philosophy can clearly stand leaps and bounds above another.  But the world is all shades of gray, and I suspect that those shades can rarely be discerned from one another.  Let me explain.

 

So many of the articles and books that we have read this semester have advocated the use of English to dispel the consumerism that dictates the typical American lifestyle.  If my memory serves me (and it probably doesn’t), we represent something like 4% of the world’s population and consume 25% of the world’s material goods.  A discrepancy such as that is reprehensible for sure and must be remedied.  I have adopted the use of textuality over Literature, mostly because I have considered such a change to be paramount in divesting students of their consumer-mindedness: a close analysis of the potential for subjectivity and objectivity in various media and forms of discourse seemed to be an excellent way of dispelling blind acceptance of everything a student might be offered.  This would be the way to craft an independent and critically-minded citizen who could help rectify the discrepancy in the above statistics.

 

Then I read the quotation by Sheldon Jackson.  And, for a longer moment than Yancey would find acceptable, I asked the question, Wouldn’t this solve all of our problems?   You see, so many of the authors this semester have been advocating a break from our consumerist upbringing by critically analyzing our role within the economic environment in which we live.  That is, undoubtedly, a necessary and valuable skill.  But, when all is said and done, won’t we still be dependent upon businesses and corporations and factories and a national economy that’s holding a noose around our neck?  Wouldn’t it have been a wonderful feeling over the course of last few months if the weakening economy had caused us no pause for doubt or worry?  Sheldon Jackson may not be advocating that we critically analyze our consumerism, but he is giving us necessary tools to shirk the noose from off our necks.  Now, I am not advocating Sheldon Jackson’s pedagogy completely: he is giving us tools to shirk consumerism, sure, but he also is not providing the intellectual stimuli to critically analyze consumerism; a healthy combination of both seems necessary.  I’m also not advocating that we sell our tie-dye and VW vans, pool our money, and start a commune so that we can get away from capitalism.  But it seems to me that America is at a disadvantage because in its very righteous and necessary endeavor to intellectualize everyone, we have deprived many—including me!—of the basic skills of everyday life that allow us to live independent of the marketplace.  I don’t know carpentering, wood-working, or shoe-making.  Ikea and Nike are each holding a thread of my noose.

 

But that doesn’t solve the problem either.  Once educational institutions introduce these skills into the curriculum, people become outraged that either pedagogical rigor is being sacrificed or—most importantly—we are providing vocational and technical skills merely so that students can operate effectively in the marketplace.  This latter reason, of course, revives the belief that we are harvesting further generations of consumers.  We are back to square one.  The solution must be that we endeavor to truly realize the myth of the well-rounded student.  However, it seems that parents who espouse this notion can only perceive “well-roundedness” insofar as it mingles intellectualism with the arts: technical skills and trades are beneath these people and do not contribute to the complete human being.  My very small school has two art teachers, two music teachers, and one shop teacher.  But, I am willing to bet that the art classes and music classes I took have compelled me to purchase more paintings and CDs while my shop class has prevented me from ignorantly buying something or hiring someone to make or fix an item that I was capable of dealing with myself.  I do not mean to condemn art or music: I am just as guilty as those parents, for I enrolled in several more art and music courses than shop courses.  But I just ponder the situation we are in, the direction we must go, and see no resolution to a conundrum that we as humans have created for ourselves. 

Turning them away

“The Future of English Studies Made Personal” – the article by Drye – really resonated with me – more so than any other article or chapter that we’ve read in this class. I find myself struggling on a daily basis to employ lessons that fit nicely into the standards to students who just don’t care. I spend hours thinking up creative, fun, and useful lessons that fall short when the hit my classroom – on paper, I am teacher of the year; in person, I leave much to be desired sometimes. My students are currently busy hating Shakespeare via Hamlet. They don’t understand the language he’s speaking even though it’s merely an antiquated version of their own. They hate that he writes in “dumb poetry” and despise that he doesn’t just say what he means – “why’s he have to ramble so much?” I end the day banging my head against the desk trying to invent new was for them to get it. I teach seniors, fortunately, so there’s no test looming ominously over my classroom, but that sometimes makes it even harder to motivate them.

While I was reading this article, I realized that I am ultimately doing more harm than good. I try to justify what I do by saying that at least they’re reading in my classroom and at least they’re going to walk away having experienced some Shakespeare, albeit forcefully. But, what I am really doing is creating a room full of students who will never want to read again. Drye included a comment from her student about writing that I found to be harrowing: “Mrs. Drye, why is it when I write about something I really care about and spend a lot of time on, I get a lower grade than on these other essays? I don’t even know why I’m getting better grades!” (285). I have had this student in my own classroom – the student who writes beautifully, who has amazing voice, suffer through a 5paragraph essay and ultimately fail at it. Why do we do this students?

Later, Drye goes on to quote Scholes when he notes that teachers are “turn[ing] the poor student off and driv[ing] many of the others to find the answers in Cliffs Notes, whether online or in books, instead of reading the work and trying to discover what it may have to say to them as human beings” (295). Students in my college prep classes know all the answers – when I start a conversation on Hamlet they speak to me about appearance vs. reality, the guise of insanity, ghosts speaking Latin… all things they found on Sparknotes because they are more concerned with being right and getting a good grade, than experiencing Shakespeare for the beauty of his language and the timeless quality of his work. They will never see how they relate to Hamlet as a human being because Sparknotes doesn’t have a section on that (yet). How can we reverse decades worth of testing? The effect of testing on students and on English classrooms everywhere has already left its mark – we no longer read in the classroom for fun, for appreciation… we learn to seek the right answer.

Tinney: Mostly Relevant

I definitely had mixed feelings about the Tinney article. I absolutely loved his enthusiasm and his emphasis on the importance of stories. As a teacher who is obviously passionate about his students and desires to help them develop as strong human beings, he highlights the importance of literature and makes it relevant to the student. However, his solution may be a bit of a long shot. I just can’t see high school students wanting to share their inner most secrets and feelings. The power of wanting to fit in is just too strong for adolescents to make themselves that vulnerable. I think if English teachers would try to make the English classroom a “place of vulnerability and intimacy,” they have a hard struggle ahead of them. Even if the teacher would be willing to work toward this goal, many of the students would probably scoff at the idea.

That isn’t to say that Tinney’s article isn’t relevant in some cases. He does have some good ideas, especially about being so open with students. His exercises in defining English are clever, because it helps students to understand that English isn’t some rigid discipline to be feared, but rather, a conversation that they can contribute to. I think involving the students in defining English and creating a class mission statement helps get them more involved and therefore more invested in what they are learning.

If:

The power in our society rests with the source of definition.

Then students who define their own English class have power over their education and themselves.

Of course, I am not an English teacher, but I can understand why some of the article could be seen as frustrating. Tinney is an idealist, but many of the ways he works toward making his ideas reality seem pretty effective, as long as an English teacher would be given that much freedom over his/her classes, of course.

Expressions of my Eternal Pessimism

In an effort to combine the two articles our group read (the first two), I felt the best way to do so was by coming up with some sort of lacking element in the theories or ideas and then discuss that point.  I’m not sure if it is good or bad that I’m stuck on the element of “boundaries” within teaching, but both of these articles discuss the ever-present blurring of the teacher and student relationship line.

I’m all for the pursuit of “stories” being more than just aesthetically pleasing literary pursuits, as stated in Tinney’s article, but I think attempting to establish some works as life lessons or examples of how to (or not to) live opens a door to criticize what is valid to be used as such.  I found a lack of boundaries set up in this theory as it essentially leaves a student with the ability to interpret stories as they see fit.  To play devil’s advocate further, at what point does inferring knowledge from an untrained eye becomes useless?  I loosely agree that “storytelling is teaching” but there needs to be some way of interpreting stories or guidance towards that interpretation (145).  Without guidance, a “moral” might go unnoticed or a hero might go unrecognized.

Perhaps I find it hard to have faith in students coming up with a relevant personal agenda.  Also, there is another fine line between learning and using English as a therapeutic outlet which was briefly discussed in the article.  Sadly, I find myself looking at the situation like my father might (in no uncertain terms)…when does it stray from learning and into touchy, feely, hug me crap?

Similarly, in the article Promoting a Relevant Classroom Literacy, the effort to educate with the “inquiry-based learning” that the two authors try to explore blurs with education for sociopolitical reasons.  Teachers, again, play the minor role of guide through the process used to educate but this, like the previous article, fails to display where the boundaries between classical teaching and simple guidance are.

In their purest forms, both theories or strategies of teaching are relevant but I feel that they require more specific terms by which to teach/guide.  I come up with a plethora of rhetorical questions in response to the articles…far too many to list here.  There appear to be too many gaps in order to make these ideas functional in our education system.  As the latter article mentioned, the project within the East Cobb Middle School system simply took too much time.  They were unable to complete what they intended, almost missing the vital last step of their process.

I am woman, hear me roar!

Women in Fox’s class find a voice—this is the most significant thing about this whole article.  The fact that these women who never seemed to have one in their pre-academic lives can now write and share and learn and teach is so awesome!  (Sorry, I am excited…)  I think the reason these women have come out of this on top is because of Fox and her class (and I am sure other classes as well).  The lack of input they had previously, in their lives before college, compared to the power they now have is inspirational.  That voice, that power is why they will fight and do whatever they have to do to get their education.  Once they have tasted it, they can never go back.  Perhaps that voice is the most powerful tool we as teachers have…We can give the voiceless a voice.