An Assignment Inspired by our Basic Writing Discussion

The basic writing pedagogy seems to be loosely held together by scholars who theorize why it is difficult for some people to write. Some think it is a lack of, or underuse, of cognitive abilities while others think it has more to do with a lack of attention to grammatical rules. After learning about a few more theories in our class meeting last Tuesday, I believe our discussion merely confirmed the fact that writing is a difficult, complicated process that requires students to perform multiple skills and achieve multiple goals at once.

While we discussed the qualities of a basic writer, I had a mini-epiphany about my AP composition students. Thus far, I have treated these students as the “cream of the crop” of high school writers rather than as basic writers in a college course. While this realization may seem minor, I believe it is a paradigmatic shift in the way I’ve thought about teaching writing to these students.

The next day, I was going to give back my students’ 1984 essay tests, in which the majority of them did not exactly excel on. Most of the students did not develop their ideas enough to sufficiently answer the question, some still veered off into plot-summary land where they feel comfortable reporting what happened in the novel rather than arguing a point/position, and only a handful of students organized their responses sufficiently. Rather than talk about what they needed to do next time on their tests (since that rarely seems to be effective in changing their writing habits), I decided to give them class time to go through their essay and make an outline that describes what the essay does (rather than what the essay says). For example:

Body Paragraph 3
1. stated relation to development of argument, made a claim of progression [Orwell develops this uncertainty and disorientation of the reader by interrupting the main narrative through the motif of dreams and memories]
2. stated CAUSE of cause-and-effect relationship of motif in relation to structure of plot and MADE DISTINCTION btw. dreams and memories[Orwell uses the memories to send the reader back in time to Winston’s childhood and pre-BB days, but his dreams are enigmatic when reading the novel for the first time. The reader must guess whether the dream is about the past, the future, a figment of Winston’s imagination, or part of his psyche]
3. stated EFFECT on reader[reader’s sense of time and reality is as uncertain as Winston’s]
4. provide evidence [discuss issue of the reality of Winston’s “false” memory]
5. stated EFFECT on plot structure [Motif yields a cyclical plot structure rather than a conventional linear structure]

After the students finished their outlines, they received an outline of my response to the same essay question. For my outline, students were instructed to take a pink highlighter to color in the steps taken that help keep the paper cohesive, unified, and organized. Then, students were to take a yellow highlighter to color in the steps taken that help prove the point of the paper (evidence). Next, students used a pen to draw a line from the ideas that “spill over” from one paragraph into the next. Most students were able to see a pattern develop as to where the organization sentences are in a paragraph and where the evidence typically lies. After they finish this process, they then examined their own essays, and again used the pink highlighter, yellow highlighter, and pen to perform the same exercise. Students were then asked to write a paragraph in which they compare and contrast the frequency and placement of “organizational sentences” and “evidence sentences” in their outlines and my outline. The last step of this process was to have students set three writing goals: one primary and two secondary. These writing goals will be used to assess their next writing assignment (which they handed in today).

As the students performed this exercise in class, I was delightfully surprised to not hear any groans. Students seemed to appreciate having the time to “figure out” what their current writing habits are so that they can keep the good habits and get rid of the weak habits. Students were instructed to be honest with themselves and report what they actually did rather than what they hoped they would’ve done. I told students if they found themselves rambling for three sentences, then they should include it in their outline, so they can see when in an essay they tend to ramble.

While I initially designed this exercise thinking of my students as basic writers who need some direct instruction in organizing and writing papers (in a non-five paragraph essay kind of way), I found that this exercise requires students to perform analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and meta-cognition, all tasks that are considered high-end critical-thinking skills. If students perform these tasks well, would this suggest that perhaps basic writing is not a cognitive problem, but rather something else?

I was torn about the idea of using their own writing goals as the start of their personal rubric for grading their writing. This method will probably make grading much more difficult and possibly more susceptible to parental criticism. However, I hope to find that by letting students set their own goals for writing, it will help them break down the complicated process of writing into smaller, more manageable goals and help them see themselves as writers.

I’ll let you guys know how it goes after I’m done grading this next set of essays!

Shaughnessy, you and your basic writing scholar friends twist my brain

“On the Academic Margins: Basic Writing Pedagogy” by Deborah Mutnick

Mutnick’s article on remedial courses/remedial writing instruction is interesting. She moves effectively through the start of basic writing instruction to the considerations instructors and administrators need to think about present day. While her article highlighted key players and their contributions, I felt left with more questions than answers from this survey and history.

First and foremost, in all the readings we’ve read for class, including this one, I don’t think that basic writing has ever been defined. As a teacher, I would like to know if my composition classroom falls into the basic writing category Mutnick discusses. The lack of a definition leaves teachers, who are new to this pedagogy, on the outside. While I’m sure this omission was not on purpose, I wonder if this is how basic writing students feel as they enter into academics. Additionally, I wished Mutnick had defined Open Admissions students. While I have an idea of who they are, a definition would have been helpful.

Mutnick sets up the essay’s journey through basic writing by first discussing Mina Shaughnessy, who is a leading scholar in this pedagogy. Shaughnessy’s points are thought provoking to consider. I found Shaughnessy’s comment on the decline of literacy of the affluent most interesting (Mutnick 184). I never considered that the decline of literacy in the upper echelons of society could cause literacy to become a privilege rather than an entitlement. Firstly, if literacy is to be an entitlement, why are there still large masses that are illiterate? Secondly, is literacy for the affluent still on the decline? In today’s society, literacy (as far as reading maybe even writing) may be viewed as declining, but literacy in other areas (media/visual—which is a newer definition of literacy) is probably on the rise. But is this (traditional literacy) decline only affecting the affluent? And how does the decline in the more affluent populations affect the “traditionally illiterate”? Does it? Furthermore, how does the rise in newer literacies affect literacy overall? Shaughnessy may have written her pieces years ago, but in a new light, new time; I believe they become relevant again.

Continuing with Shaughnessy, Mutnick discusses her article Errors and Expectations. This discussion also raised a few questions for me. Based on her (Shaughnessy) experience at CUNY, she developed a theory that “errors made by basic writers are a key to their development as writer” (Mutnick 186). My question is, does Shaughnessy mean that if the error was a certain type of error then the writing was at a certain point as a writer? Or diagnosing the error patterns would be the key for the writer to move past those errors? I think only further reading might help answer these questions. Another point from Shaughnessy was that,
Errors represent the writer’s attempt to systematize language, to approximate the standard written code in the absence of adequate instruction and practice. The teacher’s responsibility, therefore, is to understand the logic of the writer’s errors in order to untangle the syntactic and grammatical knots make in the effort to write correctly. (Mutnick 186)
While I understand the basic premise of this point, I am again left with a question. If a teacher looks at the errors, to understand the logic of the writer, is she looking at context? If the context is being addressed, is the teacher still looking for errors? Should she be? Perhaps I do not understand Shaughnessy’s point all that well.

As Mutnick progresses with her article, I found a few more points that raised questions for me. Why would Bartholomae and Petrosky assume that academia is “an ideologically neutral zone”? (Mutnick 191). Is this assumption based off a view of idealism and academics? Another question arises from Brodkey’s statement “To teach is to authorize the subjects of educational discourse” (qtd. in Mutnick 193). In this case, does Brodkey’s authorize mean prescribe or assign? If yes, does this limit a basic writer in any way, if a teacher is to follow this notion? Then again, perhaps the “authorization” empowers basic writers to explore educational discourse and transcend a student’s background.

Mutnick’s essay yielded plenty of food for thought. While I’m not sure if my questions can be answered via our class discussion, I’m sure that they will help me think about (further) composition and the pedagogies that shape it. [You know pedogogies just made me think of the work hoagies.]

Style vs Standardization

Deborah Mutnick explains, “In Errors and Expectation, anticipating composition’s use of methods of literary criticism to read student writing, Shaughnessy analyzes thousands of CUNY placement exams, categorized under the chapter heads ‘Handwriting and Punctuation,’ ‘Syntax,’ ‘Common Errors,’ ‘Spelling,’ and ‘Vocabulary.’  On the basis of her experience at CUNY, she believed that the kinds of errors made by basic writers are key to their development as writers."  Ever since I can remember, I’ve struggled with English grammar.  This is probably because attempting to write correctly, or attempting to write without mechanical errors, makes me nervous during the writing process.  In the past, I never considered the writing process as a thought process – a process that gives students the freedom to write whatever they please during the beginning stages.  On the contrary, the writing process never gave me a feeling of intellectual liberation; it was simply one of the most daunting experiences of my life.  Instead of thinking about what I was saying, I was obsessed with trivial things like, “Is this comma in the right place, should I be using passive voice here, or have I used the right preposition?”  Writing papers, expressing my views, and documenting my thoughts was all a terrible nuisance.  Focusing on all these trivial errors, of course, deterred the thought process, potential substance, and individual voice I could bring to my papers.  To this day, I don’t enjoy writing as much as I enjoy reading and discovering new ideas.

I adamantly believe that if I were taught writing as a method of expression in a particular language instead of as a prerequisite for standardization in the academic world, I would have enjoyed writing.  Instead of teaching the mechanics of “standard” English, why not teach students the nature of the language, demonstrating, for instance, that passive voice is an inversion of a verb and noun phrase in a sentence; that writers choose this method of syntax for particular purposes, which should not be characterized as correct or incorrect; and that writers make these choices to develop style.

When did some composition teachers eliminate free choice from the writing process?  I wonder if students are making fewer choices today and are doing more of what I religiously did: searching for ways to conform to a standard grammatical formula.  Mutnick references, “The key conclusion he [Hartwell] draws is that error is not a linguistic problem but a ‘problem of metacognition and metalinguistic awareness.’  In other words, written language functions as both statement and linguistic artifact, demanding of the reader an ‘awareness of language as language.”

 

Response to “On the Academic Magins: Basic Writing Pedagogy”

America, as the story goes, is the land of opportunity for all peoples, and in today’s high-skilled world, postsecondary education has become the go-to gateway for that truism. Of course, with opportunity comes the potential failure. Survival of the fittest. Not everyone is going to make the basketball team or live off their own business, and the higher we go in education, the more this fact becomes apparent. The real issue comes in when we ask ourselves if this proposition is on even ground for everyone in college. Because though every classmate deals with the same requirements, none of them came from equal financial, cultural, or educational backgrounds, and though ignored by some, I feel this is the issue that basic writing pedagogy takes on. During my relatively limited experience as a tutor and educator, finding a way to “catch up” basic writers have been my most disheartening experiences in the field. They often want to work so hard to be the academic writer, and I don’t know what issues to address first, when to step back from their writing process, and when to cut the strings entirely. Mina Shaughnessy, the god mother of this pedagogy, asks how much society is willing to pay to salvage itself. To this I say we must pay as much as it takes to even the playing field in money, but the real question to me comes when I wonder how far should we as teachers go to achieve this, especially when the difference cultural inflections come into writing.

Despite some cultural issues I had with the essay, I admired what this pedagogy stood for at its core: Treating the outsider as a writer with different experience and experiences, and not as a remedial case. Remedial is a dirty word in this essay, and I can’t blame them for that. The more I learn about these pedagogies, the more my find that writing is a psychological battle as much as anything else. By default, students in a basic writing classroom don’t consider themselves good writers. Rather than grammar drills, though, it’s more important to get them into the rhetorical aspects of writing, especially in filling the deficiencies of analysis and synthesis. They need to feel like they are part of the academic life, and they need to feel like they are an active participant of the Burkean parlor.

I’ve recently begun teaching Image Analysis in Scott Weeden’s W131 class, and I’ve been learning and re-learning the dialectical segment of this pedagogy a good bit. While I encouraged discussion of selected ads (that they got to choose from on my PowerPoint), I would find myself going into a directive-mode of speaking more times than I liked. I learned to back off more in the second class that day, but I still know I could have done more to involve the class in the work. A good example of this was when I told the class what we’d be doing for class the following week. A better way of going about it was to ask them what we’d being doing for Tuesday, and then clear up any holes they have. It mirrors the teacher’s responsibility to understand the writer’s grammar logic, but it’s the same for any part of the class. Get a discussion going, and then ask how it could relate to the assignment. Let the realization come to the students and their writing will come out stronger every time.

This pedagogy also addresses one of my biggest challenges with basic writing students: Revising papers written in the voice of a student’s dialect. During the Indiana Teachers of Writing Conference, I attended the Different Voices in the Writing Classroom workshop. There were some guiding principles for keeping language diversity in the classroom, such as accepting all languages as valuable and meaningful, and inviting students’ home languages into the classroom. In smaller groups we reviewed papers written by such students. The teacher who was working with him in the writing center said she didn’t know what to do with him. He was from Jamaica, but had spent some time in America as child. Unfortunately, he went back home just when he was adjusting to the American public school system, and didn’t come back until he was an adult. His essay, “My First Writing as a Child” was wonderful and tragic. If it was taken line-by-line and put into poetry, it would have worked itself into a rhythmic conversation. But it was an essay, and he was writing how he talked: Flighty yet descriptive, cheery yet unorganized. There were no lead-ins, no topic sentences, bad spelling, bad grammar, and no grounding of the audience. It was beautiful on its own merits, but as an academic essay it was almost beyond repair.

The instance calls back what Mary Epes discovered about basic writers: They are unable to perceive errors on the page. Unfortunately, there were no writing specialists available to help the Jamaican writer find the logic behind his errors, much less spend time understanding the academic format and voicing in papers. There were people in my group that said besides surface cleaning of grammar, the paper was fine, and we had no right to infringe on his manner of speaking. This bothered me greatly, as I saw writing effectively as writing that reached out to many people. This meant writing in the manner most people would understand and respect, which this paper had not reached yet, especially if the audience for this paper was for his professor. I also added in the group to what would occur when he wrote a cover letter or business letter to an employer. It was a discussion that gave me more questions than answers on balancing culture with academia’s expectations, and it didn’t give me much time to write in my notes. However, I did write one line that still sums up my feelings about the experience: Expressing yourself only goes so far.

However, the workshop also showed me that there were ways to involve students’ home lives into their writing while not letting go of assignment requirements. One of Scott Weeden’s students wrote a paper about questioning faith in God in the voice of his grandfather, then in the academic voice, and then an analysis of both. The first part is stream-of-speaking dialogue of the grandfather with punctuation and paragraphing, and I could really tell the writer was trying to channel his grandfather’s Southern mannerisms and sayings. In the analysis he wrote about how he asked his mother for help in describing what kind of person the grandfather was, as well as him realizing how much society judges us on our vocabulary. It strikes a fine compromise of culture/college language, and I’d like to incorporate it into my own classroom one day.

But on this issues of cultural linguistics in writing, I found myself siding with David Bartholomae more than anyone else. That may seem odd, since I mentioned earlier some people ignore political and cultural aspects of student writers and Bartholmae seems to throw in with that lot. But the difference is that Bartholomae and his colleagues isn’t trying to transport students from their cultures’ linguistic rules -- they’re just making them more comfortable as academic writers. I took umbrage with Tom Fox’s view that this was enforcing a neoconservative view of literacy; literacy is a craft as much as an art, and like any craft, one must conform to the rules and skills before they can stand out in their chosen field.

I readily admit I am part of the “dominant culture” of college -- a white, middle-class male, and that gives me privileges in life that I often don’t see. But what would happen if the college had a new dominant culture to it? What kind of curriculum and lessons of rhetoric would change? It’s hard to look into the future, but I would venture to say the core goals of the disciplines would be the same, but the methods may change, just as if another culture took over an automobile plant both in the assembly line and in management. In the end, everyone in the factory is still making cars.

Basic writers, if they come from a minority dialect, will probably have to change the way they write to reach a higher level of discourse. And that’s okay. I often told my tutees and students that there is a writing voice and a talking voice, and the former is often more formal because we’re not always sure who’s going to read it, but also because of the social expectations. I tell them how in my town, people would say “you’uns” (a variation of “ya’ll”), but I wouldn’t put that word in my paper, as it could exclude audiences not from my region. But basic writers can be academic people and still have their culture intact. Scott Weeden’s example essay and the other assignments in the essay show this again and again; our culture is our rhetorical resource and our special angle of vision, but for a cogent university dialogue, we must reach at least a middle ground in everyone’s academic lexicon.

I realize this view may come off as a little hardline, but this essay does make me want to consider the views and experiences of people “outside the margins” more than ever. I’d really like to read some comments from the people on this blog to widen my perspective on this issue of different cultures in basic writing, even if they are just personal stories. No matter what, I think we can all agree that we need to get rid of the stigma of the remedial class in the student’s eyes and turn it into a place of empowerment for everyone in attendance.

WAC and Writing Centers

Many interesting posts to go along with a lively presentation by Kim and Keva. Let's start with WAC or WID or WTL (writing to learn)--whatever acronym suits you. Jake's memory of not having much writing in other content areas and Davinia's memory of having lots of it are both accurate. Some K-12 schools and some universities have made writing in all areas a major goal and done lots of good professional development to help teachers enact writing as a way to learn and a way to communicate learning. You will find, however, that implementation is uneven. I think pre-service teacher education needs to emphasize writing in all disciplines, and the mentoring of new teachers should do the same. Every K-12 school and every university should have WRITING and READING across all areas as a key goal and should assess their progress in these areas continually. (That's not to say that speaking, performing, art, and other ways of learning should not also be emphasized. The sad fact is, most classes engage students in such a limited range of activities that it's a wonder anyone learns anything in school.)

The National Writing Project, by the way, mentioned in the WAC article, is indeed one of the best ways for teachers and schools to learn more about writing. That's because NWP emphasizes that teachers themselves must write (and be active learners), and NWP does professional development the right way: lots of hands-on learning, teachers teaching teachers, best practices demonstrated, not just presented, and making PD (and learning) FUN! Perhaps that's where some writing-across-the-curriculum efforts fall short. Writing in formulaic, limited ways that simply reinforces students' dislike of writing is about as bad as multiple-choice and true-false tests.

Now, to Writing Centers. Those who have worked in Writing Centers testify to their glory. (Thus you see Jackie, Keva, Dane, Davinia, and Paula speaking from first-hand experience, and noting the diversity of ways that writing centers and peer tutoring centers work, and even questioning some Writing Center principles as we move into new frontiers of learning and literacy.) I too worked in the Writing Center, in my case as a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I loved that work! For one thing, it was better than an additional class as a TA--no papers to grade, no classes to prepare. But that's a side benefit. The work itself is so enriching. To work with students of all levels, from first-year to graduate school, and on writing in all disciplines and genres, taught me so much about the range of writing in a university. I had to learn how to ask good questions: what is the assignment? what is your purpose as a writer? who are your readers? where are you in the process? what are you struggling with now? Also, I learned to take good notes for a writer--perhaps outlining the writer's revision plan, or jotting down the writer's spoken brainstorming for new ideas or for a thesis. There is no way to be purely Socratic, to never offer a suggestion or give an "answer," but it is a fine line to dance on. "Hand me that draft, give me an hour, and I'll return a nicely organized, well-edited paper that should at least get you a B+." That's not how it works. No fix-it shop, indeed. But sometimes to help someone become a better writer, you have to demonstrate a move.

Some of you have read Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary, in which he talks about a college professor who demonstrated for him well-constructed, thoughtful sentences. We can learn by imitation. So it's not good to do the writing for a student, but occasionally an example, a possibility, can be helpful. It might be wise at first to offer an example on a different topic than the student's paper. That way, you are truly teaching, not doing the work for the student.

So go for it, people! Talk to Tere Molinder Hogue about taking a Writing Center tutoring course and if it works well for you, you may end up working in our UWC. And keep learning about WAC so that you may be able to help faculty in all disciplines learn about the joys of writing as a way of learning. Seriously: there are good opportunities out there, K-university, for smart people who can teach writing, direct writing centers, and/or do professional development in the area of writing. And don't forget the National Writing Project along the way.

Writing Center Pedagogy: A Pragmatic Process Theory

Ah, Writing Center Pedagogy – this is where I’ve come to feel most at home this semester, owing to my participation in the Writing Center Seminar. As Hobson points out and Keva reiterated in her presentation, there are likely as many methods of enacting Writing Center Pedagogy as there are Writing Centers throughout the country, and it is rare for professors whose students make use of this resource to understand either its activities or purposes. They often believe it is a “fix-it shop,” a place where students can get help to “clean up” their grammar and mechanics, but this is in reality generally one of its lowest priorities. In fact, within its literature, these concerns are often defined as “lower-order concerns” or LOCs. What most Writing Centers endeavor to do is to help students with the organization and development of their ideas, termed “higher-order concerns” (HOCs).

James Moffett puts forth a process-oriented enactment of writing center pedagogy in the chapter entitled “Learning to Write by Writing” in his 1968 Teaching the Universe of Discourse where he also explicates the importance of students interacting with other students: one “may write off the comments of a teacher … but when his fellow human beings misread him, he has to accommodate the feedback” (195). His theory follows that of language acquisition, based on the same principles of feedback and trial-and-error that is our most natural mode of learning. “Ideally,” he says, a student’s “writing would be read and discussed by the audience, who would also be the coaches. Their response would be candid and specific. Adjustments in language, form, and content would come as the writer’s response to his audience’s response” (193).

But where does the teacher fit into this pedagogy? Doesn’t having students review each others’ papers invite incorrect revision? Like Keva said in her presentation, the teacher should guide students not to correct each others’ papers, but respond to them. Students are more than qualified to point out lack of clarity and frequently can identify problem areas but not know how to fix them. This is where the expert comes in. What is most valuable about this method is that students seek out the teacher’s knowledge out of need; it comes as a solicited response to a direct, personally motivated question. Moffett explains: “the teacher … helps students to interpret their initially vague responses and to translate them into the technical features of the paper that gives rise to them…. This amounts to sharpening response while keeping it paramount” (196). By aligning in-class activities with both natural feedback and trial-and-error processes, writing center pedagogy can be a highly pragmatic method to enact otherwise nebulous process theory.

Living Out Writing to Learn

That title sounds more promising than this post will likely be. To be honest, I left Tuesday night class without a strong sense of anything to write about. Even as I sit here now, alternatively taking bites of mushroom pizza and trying to push this sentence forward, I've got nothing.

So I'm here, writing to learn. I'm putting myself in a situation where I need to meander through my thoughts and, hopefully, stumble upon something worth saying about either writing across the curriculum or writing centers.

Actually, it kind of weirds me out that I have so little inspiration after this week. Why? Because I LOVE writing centers. I was a writing consultant for 2 1/2 years in ugrad and am about to start tutoring again in a faculty role for IUPUI this coming semester. Perhaps I wasn't provoked to deep thought by our discussion (or Hobson's discussion for that matter) because I already KNOW all of this stuff. I'm versed in the basics of writing center pedagogy. In fact, I'm more interested in discussing the tricker, wigglier bits of WC pedagogy, like what does a center do if it's interested in utilizing more technology but still wants to mantain its purist, Socratic tutorial methods? And can we talk about coping mechanisms for when a questions-please methodology falls on its face? Not all students can say something productive in response to a leading question. They just CAN'T. Especially basic writers. They don't have the vocabulary. They don't have the experience. They'll never be able to tell you what's up in a sentence where grammar and syntax are screwy--they might recognize it's confusing, but they, again, don't have the vocabulary or the innate understanding to tell you WHY it's wrong. I think many kids just don't read enough, and thus haven't been able to absorb "naturally" more complex structures. Gosh, the grammar/syntax that non-reading kids are exposed to regularly is probably coming out of the mouths of others who don't know what's going on either....

Reflecting on above...I see I have stumbled and seized upon an oft-debated (within myself) issue: if one believes that not all students are capable of articulating what might be going wrong with their writing, what is a tutor to do? What is the tutor's role, and proximity, to the tutorial? I researched this a bit last semester (Spring 08) for W509, concluding that, based on what I had read, I was dissatisfied with academic considerations on how tutors are to cope with the evolving writing center. I like the hands-off approach as much as the next guy--it more readily supports the idea that tutorials are for making better writers, not better papers--but something has to give. I'm NOT going to play "guess what I'm thinking" about what's wrong with this paragraph. How does a tutor's role change in the face of...using online tutorial means (OWL, for example)...working with a basic or EAP writer...etc. We all tutor toward the idea that there is an ultimate "correctness" to be achieved...how does that idea stand up in the face of embracing multiculturalism and the idea of Englishes--more than one acceptable way of writing?

Maybe I'm so out of the loop that my "wonders" are irrelevant. I admit, my last tutorial was in May 2005. I'm anxious to get back to the WC and see what's going on. And I'll keep using the tools of WAC--writing to learn--to think about it.

YOU have been specially selected...

Dear Marginalized Citizen,
You (yes, YOU!) have been specially selected to receive a free gift from the ACME Social Barriers Company. Our Super Duper Writer's Block, weighing approximately one ton, was constructed using only the finest products from the local quarry, mixed with a smattering of marble to give it that extra shine, and lovingly bonded with the most durable cement on the market. (No assembly required!) This is just our humble way of saying Congratulations! for your tenacious inability to overcome your struggles for "inclusion... and equal opportunity." (p. 183)

Here at ACME, your business is our business; we've watched your dreams unfold and completely disintegrate since childhood! Wow!

While we have your attention, we'd like to tell you about this month's special. For the price of simply allowing society to continue to label you as a "low achiever"(192), you get a beautiful glass ceiling (in clear, beveled or tinted). These durable ceilings are completely ambition-proof, and come with a lifetime guarantee. Pick yours up today and get a free bottle of Windex !

Thanks for your patronage,
ACME Social Barriers
"Keeping folks on the fringes for over 20 years..."

****

To: ACME Social Barriers

Dear Sir or Madam:
I arrived home from my basic writing class at college to find your delivery of one (1) very large writer's block which was sitting in the middle of my living room. While I appreciate the... thought... (?)... which went into this item, I am afraid I have no interest in it.

I will readily admit that there was a time not too long ago when I certainly would have appreciated the implications of such an item. Having had teachers in my early years who saw my writing errors only as indications of suboptimal intelligence, I became highly discouraged. For awhile, I just gave up. So then I got labeled not only as unintelligent, but as lazy.

However, thanks to the work of folks like Mina Shaughnessy, and teachers who take time to understand me (and not just my work), I no longer feel that I qualify for your gift. Sure, there will be times when I will undoubtedly have difficulties with my writing. But doesn't everyone? At least now I know why, and I know it's not just me. Shaughnessy insisted that people like me -- what you might call "basic writers" -- have the same potential as anyone else. I'm educable! (185) Also, I discovered that the way I was previously taught could be a factor in my struggles now as a writer. Sondra Perl did a study back in '79 where she found that "overattention to editing undermined the ability of unskilled college writers to compose fluently." My current instructors have seen that the particular errors in my writing reveal that I am cognitively sound, thoughtful and intelligent. (186) I have been enjoying my basic writing class. Here, we read and write with enhanced attention to meaning and purpose. We actually discuss and analyze texts. (191).

I'll admit it's been tough going to school. I not only have to acclimate myself to the culture of the university, but I have to undergo a shift in my vernacular, and I've had to leave some of my friends behind from my old neighborhood. (192) Still, all things considered, I'm doing just fine.

Please send someone out at your earliest convenience to pick up your Writer's Block, and remove me from your mailing list. I am no longer a marginalized citizen, but will sign off as...

A Basic Writing Success Story

Writing Across the Professions

"WAC workshop pedagogy should model both write-to-learn and write-to-communicate pedagogies." (McLeod). Herein lies the key point of writing. Perhaps we can best sum it up with the argument that writing is about making connections. The concept of implementing writing into all academic disciplines invites the student to absorb its importance as a longterm resource in the career of his choosing. And of course, the simple act of writing provides for a greater focus on, and absorption of, the material that is to be learned. Another exceptional benefit to this approach is the enhancement of critical thinking skills. The best way to create excellent employees is to instill confidence and competence in their approach to communication. Applications to a variety of disciplines could even lead to a more thoughtful adult -- one who takes time to process what he is saying empathically -- through the eyes and ears of the receiver, since he himself has been a receiver of his communication by the sheer act of writing it down.

In my job, I have the task of writing and compiling three manuals containing key information about the various computer systems which support the Department of Radiation Oncology at IUSM. This means working with people across the spectrum of skills and professions. It is the rule, rather than the exception, that we will be asked in our lives to deal with topics and people we don't fully understand. And we'll need to be able to circumvent numerous challenges to accomplish a task. We do a disservice to students by allowing them to slip through a class without having to document their semester's work on paper. If nothing else is gleaned from writing across the curriculum, students can at least grasp the notion of how important it is to learn this. At best, they will achieve the confidence to take on greater tasks in their adulthood.

Writing Centers have it right. Classrooms have it wrong?

“To think about writing center pedagogy as a monolith ignores the cultural situatedness of particular centers, the extent to which each center is defined by local context (institutional, philosophical, educational, physical, communal” (169).

Writing Centers have it right. One-on-one instruction is by far the most effective way to improve writers, their attitudes toward writing, and the writing they produce. Tutorial style teaching allows teachers to pinpoint students’ weaknesses, reinforce strengths, and tailor their teaching style to what works for each particular student. I think most teachers can agree that students learn in different ways and respond positively and negatively to certain kinds of feedback. Working one-on-one with a student allows teachers to cater to these differences.

While a classroom teacher can take on some of the aspects of a writing center, I do not think the classroom can ever truly take on the full benefits and “atmosphere” of a writing center because the writing center is free of one of the major pressures of a classroom: grades. When working with overachievers, I’ve noticed that many of them do not like to ask for help. Teachers can be overly nice, overly reassuring, and nonchalantly invite a student to come talk to them in their office about writing; but for the most part, these students have learned that they must impress their teachers, and this pressure they feel seems to increase as they get older. In my experience, my ninth grade honors students are much more likely to come in to ask for help than my junior AP students are. While I understand there may be a number of factors behind this general trend, I cannot help but think that part of this is the pressure to “perform” for their teachers. Juniors are overly-aware of college admissions, recommendations, and appearances. To impress their teachers (in hopes of a good recommendation), students want to appear to “have it together,” even if they are struggling in their writing. While this is true for some high-achieving students, it is not true for all. Like every other generalization, there are exceptional students who understand that asking for help will only improve their writing and, in the long run, their recommendation.

Students can forget, or at least temporarily ignore, these stresses in a Writing Center, allowing them to view their writing in a different context, a different space, a different “cultural situatedness” of the pressures of a classroom.

Was WAC Ever Alive?

When I was in high school there was all of this talk about this great idea the teachers were talking about, writing across the curriculum. There was a problem though, all they did was talk about it, and none of them actually initialized it. That was all the way back in 1994...before Elvis hit it big!
I know that this essay was written in 1998, but I assumed that it would be about a greater advancement of this process. Instead, it seems as though it never took root in the first place. WAC is not just an idea. It is not an ideology or theory about the style, method or approach in which we as individuals feel is the best way to go about teaching writing to students.
Was it wrong for me to make the assumption that the right thing to do would have just eventually taken hold and been implemented at least slowly? Fourteen years later it is still a good idea. It's pulse has even been questioned. I don't see why this has not happened. Especially the form of a non-graded "assignment."
I know what you are thinking, "Shut up, you are not a teacher and you don't know how hard it would be to get Math teachers on the bandwagon, you always wear a stupid white shirt...etc." It just blows my mind that it has not become a normal part of the K-12 education system. It is only writing, and even if graded writing, I wish that my teachers would have made me do more of it. I am the product of T/F and multiple choice tests, and I even had a few as and undergrad at IUPUI in freshmen Lit classes. I will throw stones in my glass house, I like breakin' stuff.
If we cannot convince the "educators" that encouraging students to do more writing, which will only help THEM in the long run, and do the teacher no harm by having no more grading then I have the only other possible solution. Promote more bathroom graffiti. Some of the most profound insights I have ever seen have been on the walls of bathrooms, sometimes even public bathrooms. If ungraded, important and otherwise harmless tactics to get them write haven't worked by now, or at least caught on, start scrutinizing what they are writing already.
My oldest child starts kindergarten next year, what to do, what to do? Well, I guess we will do our writing at home. Well, that isn't so bad I guess, at least I can mess her writing up as well as mine!

A Feminist Walks into a Bar...

In "The Politics of Speaking," a section from Susan Jarratt's chapter,"Feminist Pedagogy," we are told about an epiphany the author experienced during her sociolinguistic research. She realized that she herself was guilty of minimizing the roles and opportunities to engage for her female students when compared to what she afforded her male students. Although she argues that this substantiates an imperative to be a more gender-sensitive instructor (p. 119), I would argue that it could equally substantiate a need for separate classrooms for the genders.

My personal experience with single-gender education is limited to four years in an all-girls' public high school. While it was by no means perfect, it was preferable, at least at that time, and for me personally. Three of my brothers attended the all-boys' counterpart just up the street. We compared notes on what was offered at one school versus the other. One key factor distinguished our schools, however: the discourse among the students.

Being that this was the 70s, feminism and its implications were unavoidable. This was an era marked by a dichotomized energy: a hyper-radical, oversensitive, oversimplified and overdramatized women's liberation movement countered by a more genuine, educated and intelligent push for equal rights. Rage motivated the former; common sense, the latter. What we expected as women during this time of both change and dissention could not be contained in one ideology, since the extent and nature of feminism was very much driven by individual experiences, adherence to tradition, and levels of tolerance. But what was missing in a serious way (pun intended) was our sense of humor. We simply had none. Or perhaps more accurate, those of us that did, had not given full voice to it, nor felt the audience on our hallowed turf would be appreciative.

And in those moments of clarity about my own humor-filled existence living among a bunch of boys at home, I wished I could have attended their school. There were the hijinks, the quick-witted thinkers, and a drama-free sarcasm with no lingering grudges. There was the opportunity to learn how to laugh at oneself, and to master spontaneity -- crucial elements to grappling with real world, high-pressure situations. There were the stories... like the Library Incident:

My brother and his friends, being a tad too boisterous during group study, were scolded by the librarian, (a woman who I imagine had the aforementioned deficiency in humor), and subsequently advised that "This Entire Table Is To Leave The Library Right Now!!".

"This entire table?" asked the boys.

"YES!!! RIGHT NOW!"

"OK" they shrugged. They then proceeded to get up from their seats and uniformly carry the table out of the room.

I can fully appreciate the lingering "masculinity" that is problematic in our language, even in women's writing (122-123). But blogs have a way of making me want to play devil's advocate, I suppose. The drive to impart a more nurturing approach to teaching, and to fashion our rhetoric more equitably are both commendable aspirations in the employment of feminist pedagogy. But there is still room for authoritative, assertive discourse, with a splash of edgy humor, that draws on that which is masculine -- and which is equally essential -- within us.

From Personal Experience

Journal writing has enabled me to understand my writing as a process of learning. I look back at some of my journal entries and realize that perhaps no one but me will ever be able to understand what I wrote. My journals does not read like a narratives but read more like the comments written in a lecture classroom. I often don't write in complete sentences; I explicate my thoughts with an abundance of grammatical, syntactic, and spelling errors; and the structure of the information is barely hanging on by a slim thread.

The beauty of writing this way is tantamount to exhibiting my creative freedom. When I write in what I refer to as my "journals," I don't write for any particular audience. The only critic of my writing is me. I'm not a terribly harsh critic of this sort of writing because I know I have written it without the consideration of an audience. I cannot stress enough how important I think it is for students to write according to such a process. It helps me solidify and clarify my ideas through a process of understanding. I find my journal entries teaching me something I would have never come across had I not freely expressed it. Moreover, this prevents my daunting experiences with writer's block because I can write without hesitation or any sort of apprehension about what my superiors will think.

I remember writing journal entries and free writing frequently when I was in secondary and post secondary school, but the practice began to wane as I climbed the academic ladder. The more important it became to apply this method of learning, the less I found myself using it in a classroom setting. I understand that an organic chemistry or physics course has a vigorous curriculum and must follow a precise timetable to expose students to the necessary information they need to understand the discipline; however, I wonder whether this kind of learning truly helps a student. The process of reflection, forethought, and critical analyses is just as important in a science classroom as it is in a liberal arts classroom. This may seem obvious to some people but if it is evident fact of writing, then why aren't the methods of WAC pedagogy being applied more frequently in the classroom?

Writing Center Pedagogy Response

When started my first day of being a writing center tutor in Edinboro University, I was a fish in a new pond. A very new pond. In Edinboro, our own writing center had been defunct for three years due to poor administration, and it had restarted under a new professor with provisional funding. I knew I wanted to help people with their papers -- show them that anyone can be a good writer, etc. -- but I wasn’t sure of all of my responsibilities. That uncertainty was answered in my first two appointments. The first was a freshman student who merely wanted surface-level proofreading, and I did so gladly. It was over in less than twenty minutes. My next walk-in was a forty year old ex-hell’s angel member that had gone back to college to get his degree. He sat down in front of me and said he hadn’t written anything longer than a grocery list in over twenty years. He wanted me to explain to him what exactly an essay was, and how he can make “good ones.” After a brief pause, I introduced to the three main parts of an essay, and spent the entire hour with him on what each of them needs. Those two sessions defined for me what a writing center was without ever looking into a procedural manual (we didn’t have one at the time). We polished, we help draft, and everything in between.

The wide birth of responsibilities and codes each writing center makes them one of the most organic and flexible tutoring services available for students. While our credos normally line up perfectly -- make better writers, just not better writing -- it’s amazing how much each center can differ on its language and culture, as mentioned in the essay. When I first came to IUPUI, I was surprised to learn that I couldn’t call my self a “writing consultant” (a title I took pride in, distinguishing me from tutors of other subjects), but a “tutor.” The writers were no longer my “clients,” they were my “tutees.” My “appointments” were now “sessions.” For me, my old language brought up images of professionalism for the student; they weren’t just being tutored, they were a writers having a meeting over their work. IUPUI, while having a much more organized heirachy, resources, and scheduling system, wished for their language to have a more relaxed, collaborative atmosphere.

Eric Hobson discusses how as well as giving individualized instruction, most writing centers get saddled with across-the-board problems in writing. We work with undergrads, graduates, and faculty. We help people with their chemistry proposals and their job résumés. We help people from Chicago and people from Thailand. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. “Bring it on,” is the answer you’ll get from virtually all writing centers. What I noticed from the essay is that though writing centers are the go-to panacea for issues most classes can’t give more time and resources to, not much is said about proper support structures for unique problems these groups may have. For instance, in my old college, I would work with graduate students from Korea, but I would struggle with explaining to them what the word “the” was and how it could be used in every instance. IUPUI keeps students such of these out of the reach of Mavens (new tutors) and relegate them to faculty or English as a Second Language (ESL) veterans, but I don’t think this solves the issue entirely. As colleges across America become more diverse nationally and internationally, I would like to see more funding, or at least training, for specialty tutors to work with ESL students and specific disciplines. Many hiring practices in writing centers reflect this level of thinking, but I’d also like to see more training options available for the future.

Also, as mentioned in both this essay and the previous WAC one, writing centers are a key component to teaching writing across the disciplines, but I believe effective communication between the departments is key here. Every writing center I know has some form of telling a professor that their student visited the center. It keeps the professor up-to-date on their progress, and it creates more accountability for the student’s work. What I’d like to see in the future is to have writing centers reach out even more to professors of other disciplines, and there are a myriad of ways to do this. By embracing more WAC thinking, writing centers could hold annual workshops to discuss common problems in different departments, and how the writing center could adapt to their expected formats in academic writing. Next semester the IUPUI UWC is going to hold an open house for the departments for this very reason. If getting representatives from all the departments is too much of an issue, a simple letter or survey could bring similar results.

To keep up with expected writing styles across the curriculum, it’s also not uncommon for writing centers to bring in other majors to work with students. The essay mentions how writing centers work very well with secondary education teachers, but in Edinboro our tutoring staff also consisted of marketing, chemistry, philosophy, and history majors. With their specialties posted above the public schedule, people could match their subject with the strongest tutor. If a department feels neglected by the local writing center, volunteering a graduate student or a faculty member could add to the experience and culture of the center.

While this essay helped me formulate a wish list of sorts for what I’d like to see in more writing centers, I can’t say the technology section particularly interested me. For me, the core of a good tutoring session is very un-technological. We sit together at a table with a hard copy of the essay, and we hammer away at the writer’s complaints until the time is up. I have worked on papers on computers before -- some students even prefer it -- but I find it’s inefficient for me. Many of my co-workers agree that it’s hard to see the big picture on a computer screen, and I encourage my tutees to just print it out.

Technology’s real home in the writing center seems to be as a support function. Purdue’s OWL system is famous, and IUPUI’s own UWC website helps students get quick citing references and rules for common grammar and punctuation problems. These worksheets have been great time savers in the past for me, and I’d like to see this library grow.

Eric Hobson’s essay did more than just bring me to a greater awareness of writing center purposes and issues. It also made me want to become a greater part of the academic community of the writing center. I’d like to become a member of the NWCA, as well as read more articles from the Writing Center Resource Manual. As I progress and find my niches in the Rhetoric and Composition field, I know that the writing center has shaped me into the teacher I am today. I hope to continue this recursive definition in the years to come.

“A rose by any other name…”

According to Jarratt, feminist pedagogy arose out of the “women’s movement, the civil right’s movement and before that the anti-war movement” (113). It shares pedagogical ideas with several other composition pedagogies such as process, rhetoric, cultural, and critical. Now, I realize that several of the composition theories that we’ve studied have had common elements, but this seems to go beyond the norm. So much so, that I wonder how it really defines itself as a separate pedagogy. I mean, remove the label, and what do you have…a bit of this, a little of that. Even those who buy into this pedagogy seem to have more questions than answers. “Feminist pedagogy…is better represented as a set of questions than a list of practices” (124, 125).

Jarratt talks about the feminization of composition instructors. In other words females teach writing but it’s the males who get to wax poetic with literary criticism. “ A crucial aspect of this feminization is the association of composition teacher with a mythologized mother, endowed with qualities of ‘self-sacrifice, dedication, caring, and enormous capacities for untheorized attention to detail’ but also symbolizing ‘authority, precision, and …taste,’ prompting expectations of censure and disapproval (118). In other words, the female comp teacher is the nurturing and caring educator of writing. Some women feel this does nothing but reinforce gender stereotypes while others embrace it as “building a feminist pedagogy on those maternal qualities”(118). My personal solution to this is to be the nurturing and caring teacher of writing who is equally capable of literary criticism and critical thinking.

Of course, whenever anyone talks about female inequalities we see the troops polarize into the radical, embittered, power-hungry and the ones who…aren’t. Rush Limbaugh calls them “feminazis”. The question becomes one of language. Proponents of feminist pedagogy feel that “asking students to examine closely the language they use in discussing social issues makes them more attentive to language in general and gives them practice in analyzing cultural stereotypes and clichés” (125). But is this a separate pedagogy and aren’t we buying into stereotype we want to dismiss by calling it “feminist?”

Shakespeare said that “a rose by any other name, would smell as sweet” but is calling this hodge-podge of characteristics ripped from other established composition pedagogies sprinkled liberally with a dose of gender stereotypes a sweet smelling flower? I’m just not sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the power of women. I’ve had a lot of experience being one. I spent a lot of years being that “super mom”-- the one who did it ALL. I stayed home with my kids, and then started a cleaning business where the schedule bothered no one but me and I could take the youngest along. I went on every field trip, served in every school organization, was the show choir mom, directed the plays when no one else would, sewed the costumes, baked the cookies, not to mention the duties of my own home. And when I decided to go back to school it was MY friends—my girl friends—who couldn’t fathom why I would want to do such a thing. They thought I was nuts and were perpetually pissed at me for not being available for their gardening tours, shopping trips, and endless gossip sessions. They have yet to forgive me for entering into the world of academia.

But my kids no longer needed me 24/7, and I was tired of being the cleaning lady (although I would love to have my own cleaning lady these days). While I have always been strong willed and opinionated (I know that comes as a surprise to all of you), I didn’t really find my voice until I found my way back to college. Is it a feminist voice? Maybe...at times..but mainly it is the voice of one who has experienced life through my own lens not only as a woman, but as a mom, wife, sister, daughter, granddaughter, grandmother, writer, reader, artist, student, and teacher.

Some Lingering Thoughts About Feminist Pedagogy

I've been thinking quite a bit about last week's class. I think it was a powerful example of the difference between simply reading about a theory and experiencing firsthand the theory as it plays out. When I read through last week's chapter about feminist pedagogy, I kept thinking that it didn't seem like a separate pedagogy. Rather, that it seemed to be part of other pedagogies which strive to provide a more comprehensive, democratic atmosphere.

But after last week, I've found myself wondering if I've been too oblivious to gender and the role it plays in the classroom. That's not to say that I haven't given it any thought, it's just that I didn't think I viewed the classroom through the lens of gender. Or do I?

After last week's class, I kept thinking about an experience I had a few weeks ago. I was helping my wife with the Irvington Farmers' Market. A woman and man (who were clearly together as a couple) came up to purchase their produce. The woman pulled the money out of her pocket and handed it to me. When I made the change from their purchase, I handed it back to the man. I didn't really think about it; I just did it. I caught myself because I hate it when people do that when my wife and I are out. I apologized, and the woman just laughed it off, but I think that was a small demonstration of how deeply engrained our patriarchical society really is.

"Community-Service Pedagogy" Response

Community-Service Pedagogy

How do you make students care about writing in the classroom? You know, besides grades. One way of doing it is by telling them the real world applications of writing. A better way may be actually putting them out in the real world so they can see that fact for themselves. That is the main idea I’ve gain from “Community-Service Pedagogy,” or as the author Laura Julier prefers to call it, “service-learning.” Of course, since this field is “relatively untheorized,” other ideas and definitions on the subject are battling it out daily in the College English journal and on English LISTSERVs. As for myself, I rather appreciated the hands-on approach this pedagogy seems to instill in teachers and students, but find a few of the debates in this subject unnecessary.

In one of my social science groups, we had a discussion on what American citizens may be lacking in today’s culture. A general consensus was that many people (especially the current 20-something generation) did not respect the general idea of a greater community, nor contain the willingness to maintain it. The generation isn’t blood thirsty or consumed by self-interest, but past his or her family and friends, the average citizen could care less about helping out their neighborhood or nation. I’ve felt this insulation as well in my college years -- I just wanted to do my work and be left alone -- and just now and I’m realizing the democratic value of being a participating citizen, not just a tax paying one. For me, service-learning pedagogy would hit on what I believe many freshmen are missing out on: A wider viewpoint on the world outside their dorms.

Since having a working knowledge of composition and rhetoric are considered cornerstone characteristics of a democratic citizen, I can definitely see why service-learning seems like such a panacea to so many educators. But I also agree with Zlotkowski’s opinion that the pedagogy needs to be defined much more strictly in it’s disciplinary context. Keeping it in just in the English field (which I believe would have less departmental headaches for now), we need to be sure right along with the students what the writing goals are for their community projects. I feel the ultimate form of a “feel-good pedagogy” would come from a student doing twenty hours of work in a soup kitchen and then writing about how it made him feel good about helping his community. There’s no critical thinking about that sort of work; it’s charity work followed by writing about that the feelings associated with charity work. For this pedagogy to work out, at its baseline it needs a heightened awareness in the student’s progression. In order to describe this further, I’ll first need to divide this pedagogy.

One of the arguments that I felt was… well, redundant was the weighing of pros and cons toward either having students write about their community service, or having the writing actually be the community service. The essay seems to look at the English freshmen courses as this one English class that everyone takes, and we all need to decide what needs to be crammed in and what needs to be pushed off to the side. But that’s not true at all. There are many English classes in every college, such as Elementary Composition, Research, Business, and Technical Writing classes, and each class’s goals and format needs to have service-learning pedagogy match them. Many of Julier’s community service examples seemed to have a basis in business or technical writing, like making STD brochures and typing public announcements for the girl scouts. My question was “Why didn’t they just do these projects in a business or technical writing class?” Many of the students and even Julier herself seemed to be perplexed by the technological needs of many of the projects, but I feel like a technical writing class would not only have assisted the students in these projects, but also given them a direct connection to that particular class’s goals, and perhaps even help create a valuable portfolio.

Certainly, any composition class can create a larger understanding of civic virtue and of the communities around the student, but I believe that if a teacher wants a student to reflect on the significance of this realization, then it is best done in an Elementary Composition class, or one that focuses on essay workshops. In this classroom, a student could take on more non-writing jobs, and chronicle the experience by journal. Perhaps at the end of the semester the student could complete an essay analyzing class disparities he noticed in a narrative format, or do a PowerPoint presentation about working for the Humane Society. The assignment should stay student-centered, and be flexible enough to allow the student to change themes or topics in the final format.

As obvious as it is, we must always ask ourselves what we want students to get out these field assignments. If want to instill civic justice, we need to paint a wider picture of what that means to students. Teaching recursively through selected texts on social justice could definitely act as a tool to encourage wider reflection in students. I would also want to hand out reflection sheets to students periodically. Fluff answers aside, I’d like to if they would continue community service in the future, and how important they felt these acts were to being a functioning citizen (I’d be interested in how many benefits could they name. How many would be based on them, and how many on the community at large?).

I also really like the idea of making the student an authority on a subject, which I feel service-learning excels at. One of the things I think freshmen comp classes need to instill in students is that their opinions matter, and they can speak in more than just summaries to an audience. As beneficial as they can be, critical readings of texts won’t help a student much if they simply don’t connect to the author or her message. Letting them select their own community service project (within reason and class protocol) could them “own” their subject, rather than be another opinion on a text they had to read anyway.

Overall, I see service-learning pedagogy to be a pedagogy with a lot of potential to create generative content in students, but I think its setup could make it one of the most intricate pedagogies of them all. This pedagogy isn’t something that can be melded to other routines of the classroom; it requires long-term attention and support from the department, the teacher, and the community around the college. I had numerous problems that I wanted answered, but the essay couldn’t provide any good examples or solutions to them. How will this pedagogy work with students from varying backgrounds and income levels? If these service programs are part of the curriculum, should transportation be provided for them? What about part-time commuters, or those with full-time jobs and families? Will there be enough variety in community work that the student won’t feel pigeon-holed into a particular field of work, forced to join an organization that goes against his/her beliefs? I’m also concerned with the type of work these students will get at these organizations. They would have to be monitored moderately well so the students are not just overworked interns, but real team members who are trying to push their zone of proximity. Once again, I’m not against the idea of this pedagogy, but it feels like it’s the pedagogy that could go south the fastest if not carefully managed by a team of English professors in constant communication with the service sites and students.

Service-learning pedagogy is a teaching process that still needs to prove itself to established academia, but can still be admired for its earnest and democratic intentions. It asks that pertinent, core question on page 140: “What is the purpose of a writing course?,” which I think I’ve gone a bit distant from these past months. After all these pedagogies and theories, what should students walk away with when the last class is finished? Past the critical analysis and communication skills (which cross over into countless areas of life), I believe a student has to walk away with the belief that their writing skills have a direct pragmatic use for them, either in their job or as a citizen. Right now, the best I’ve done in that area is a small speech about how good writing makes life generally easier on the first day of class. What service-learning pedagogy has taught me is that there is so much more I can do, as long as I take the proper planning, and be ready for the risks.

Response to Feminist Pedagogy

"Feminist Pedagogy" Response

Like the critical pedagogy essay before it, I had reservations about feminist pedagogy before even getting through the first page. I’m comfortable enough to say this had little to do with a bias against feminism itself, but by the “positioning” I felt a composition teacher would take on in this role. From my observations in life, in my family, and in the women I’ve dated, I’ve come to define a feminist is someone who analyzes the world through a lens of gender-awareness in our media, society, business, etc., with the idea of striving for equal rights for the sexes. While this is a worthwhile pursuit, I wondered how it could be equitable in a composition class, a place where I believed should remain a blank slate on stark perspectives. Just as critical pedagogy worked on the presumption of oppression of the public and using writing as a form of liberation, feminism generally works on the premise of a patriarchal-run society and values and uses writing to inspect and fight against these things. What if every student does not believe these things? And just as it was noted in both essays, statements such as these, regardless of veracity, can often create a backlash in the classroom, especially with the social connotations feminism brings up in our society. Someone will always get angry in a good composition class, but when the writing classroom gets politicized and/or genderized, I have know the benefits before I tap into such a pedagogy.

The idea that women and men write differently, I admit, is one I often try to ignore. There were always the sayings that women write prettier and keep diaries -- they are more expressive -- and that men write to solve problems -- they are achievement-oriented -- were there even in my grade school days. I always figured these archetypes would be balanced out in time, but the studies done on pages 122-123 seem to take these observations I had and exemplified them. These differences even reminded me of an study my old rhetoric professor did. He analyzed course catalogs from women’s private schools and compared them to those of mainstream colleges. He found that on average, the course catalogs were much more descriptive of the classes available; they expounded not only what the class was about and its goals, but how students’ lives could be enriched by them.

What really caught my eye in the “Writing (and Reading) . . . Differently” section was how gendered writing was assigned and reviewed. In trying to teach students to write “outside their boxes,” teachers forget they get caught up in their own paradigms of good writing. I really connected to Peterson’s grading of male narratives. Just like she could gain disgust at the beer commercial canoe trips, I would be hard on women’s writing that I felt was too flighty, too full of metaphors. I’d ask for a more “substantial” paper, something with some spine to it, some “ompf,” I’d say with a closed fist. I always wanted more them to bring up more counter arguments so they could counter them right back with hard evidence, not just bring up. But after reading this essay, I’ve begun to think that’s not the best case. I do like personal anecdotes in the beginnings of essays, but maybe I can accept them more as evidence in the future. I’m also the sort of teacher that wants students to create an argumentative essay almost right off the bat, but the essay’s given me plenty of evidence to consider exploratory essays.

As helpful as it can be to recognize a woman’s voice on paper and in the classroom, I found the critiques on logic as a masculine form of writing to be very disturbing. Feminist scholars look at the art of argument to be a masculine genre, and antagonistic and violent as well? Can they be really serious about not using these tools in critical writing? I understand that logic as we know it today was created by white men hundreds of years ago, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily favors them. The rules of geometry and calculus were laid out by men years ago as well, but no one would ever say these equation rules are sexist. For me, logos is exactly that -- sexless. And whether we like it or not, this is a world of conflicting beliefs and desires, and if we want to be taken seriously, we must understand what makes persuasive communication and argue our viewpoint effectively. Just bringing up personal experiences won’t cut it in most scenarios. I find it hard to believe that feminists such as Annas want women to write political essays to break out into public forums, but find that “masculine” logic (what is masculine logic, and how would it differ from feminine one?) and linear reasoning stifle the woman writer’s voice. They seem to see feminist writing as a form of consolidation between two forces, but proper logos-based writing does that as well. Logos doesn’t look for “who’s right” but finds the quality of reasoning and evidence for both points.

And as harsh as I am on this relatively small section on the essay, I must also recognize that I’m deeply entrenched in this line of thought. I was continuingly asking “What else is there, if not logic?” while reading this section, and I honestly couldn’t find an alternative. They mentioned that masculine reasoning in writing doesn’t allow for women’s expressive writing and making sense of the world, but that didn’t flesh out the answer as much as I would have liked. Perhaps feminists are advocating a more open-style of writing, where the thesis is more implicit. I would definitely like to read more of Catherine Lamb’s work to gain a greater understanding of feminist/Rogerian forms of mediation.

As well as questions, the essay has given me a few writing topics as well. I’m going to be teaching Image Analysis in two weeks, and I think looking at media with a gendered-lens fits very well with the chapter. One application idea I had was looking for “strong women” on television. What makes them strong in student eyes, how are they portrayed in relating to men, etc. This could work across many genres in television and bring up many questions in students. Why is it in sitcom-style shows, the man of the house is always the idiot, and the woman has to play the “straight man” (but almost always is beautiful)? How come in many sci-fi or high drama shows, women dealing with conflict means dealing with rape or pregnancy? I’m not sure whether to include male characters or not in this idea, as the traditional idea of a “strong man” is fairly concrete in our culture.

Besides writing topics, Feminist Pedagogy has given me my chosen research topic for this class. I got the idea while reading about how many feminist teachers try to keep the classroom work collaborative and student-student centered. Feminist pedagogy has different opinions of power structures on the class, often compromising on the idea of the teacher as coach, but not authoritarian. What really got my attention was the “Politics of Speaking” section. In thinking up ideas on how to get women to speak up more in class, I remember that women (and in general, men as well) would be much more animated in group discussions. Another issue I was grappling with at the time were revisions I did with students on their theses and main ideas on Summary/Strong Response papers. Too often their ideas would meander or their thesis would not be strong enough, regardless of gender. When they brought in their drafts to peer reviews, these issues would not be brought up, perhaps because they see the draft with an of authority.

The idea I came up with was this: Instead of enforcing the “masculine” autonomous writer right away, why not let brainstorming be a more collaborative ideal. My plan is to let students write notes on their main points and ideas for their assignments, get into groups of three, and have each person talk for ten minutes. The other group members may stay silent or ask questions and comments. The idea here is that speaking about their project will make their work more substantial to them, but also more malleable, as it’s easier to change one’s mind in discussion than to do so in writing. This may or may not be the “multivocal, relational writing process” discuss on page 124, but I’m still looking forward to seeing how it can strengthen beginning drafts of my student papers.

In the end, it’s hard to be against something that seems united in only the awareness that there’s distinct differences and expectations in gender in our society, and questions how we should go about it our composition studies. While I can understand why feminist pedagogy could be a minefield for some, I’m looking forward to applying some of its ideas in assignments of analysis and politics.