“The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal. We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that way - and we act according to the way we conceive of things” (Lakoff and Johnson, 5).
1. Question: How can the search for and creation of alternative metaphors for argument be applied to the WRIT 101 classroom?
Metaphor: “The term metaphor comes from the Greek words meta, meaning “beyond” or “above”... and pherein, meaning “to carry.” A metaphor carries... another meaning beyond its literal one” (Keith and Lundberg, 68).
2. First, why is searching for alternative metaphors for argumentation important?
- As Lakoff and Johnson, above, and Tannen, conclude, the language we use shapes the way we think, and the way we think shapes the way we act.
- The argument culture tends towards polarizations and dualities, which do not present the full range of possibilities or view points.
- Criticism and attack, built into the metaphor of argument as war, become seen as the best means of critical thought.
3. Alternatives to argument as war.
- Argument as building, a metaphor already present in our cultural language, identified by Lakoff and Johnson. We construct arguments. We need a strong foundation. Sometimes arguments collapse, etc. This is a less harmful way of looking at argument, though it doesn't impart any notion of collaboration or movement away from dualities.
- Argument as ecology, as suggested by James Klumpp. “An argumentative ecology is an interaction of arguers and arguments sited in and producing a community of coordinated, reasoned action. Etymologically, "ecology" is the study of a "home." Argumentative ecologies are homes for argument. As a mode of study, argumentative ecology promotes study of argument as interconnected and evolving patterns of reason giving and coordination that structure human understanding and action. The study entails both the substance and the structure of arguing in particular human communities” (Klumpp184)
- Argument as balance, as is suggested in Chinese philosophy, as identified by Tannen in a chapter on other cultures' understandings of argument. Chinese philosophy sees “a diverse universe in precarious balance that is maintained by talk. This translates into methods of investigation that focus more on integrating ideas and exploring relations among them than on opposing ideas and fighting over them” (258).
- Argument as smoking a hookah, as suggested by Beth Baker. Drawing on my cultural references for an image, an idea is passed around the circle, inhaled, or mused over by each participant, who is allotted time to contribute or exhale, which perfumes the air, making the general atmosphere more pleasant. This draws on collaboration and listening.
4. Practical applications of alternative metaphors and moving away from the culture of argument:
1. Deborah Tannen suggests something as simple as presenting concepts not in dualities, presented not in opposition to each other, but in threes, so that each concept is given its own weight individually, rather than in comparison to the other.
2. Play the “Believing Game,” with drafts of student work, as recommended by Peter Elbow via Tannen. “Elbow recommends learning to approach new ideas, and ideas different from your own, in a different spirit - what he calls a “believing game.”... Elbow is not recommending that we stop doubting altogether. He is telling us to stop doubting exclusively. We need a systematic and respected way to detect and expose strengths, just as we have a systematic and respected way of detecting faults” (Tannen, 273).
3. As a part of the Op-Ed unit, students read excerpts of Tannen's The Argument Culture. As homework, identify and bring in to share with class examples of culture which reflect the argument as war metaphor.
4. Students read work which utilizes alternative forms of argumentation, then construct their own metaphors for argument, and practice building arguments using their own metaphors. Nicholas Kristof wrote an Op-Ed for the NYTimes called “Test Your Savvy on Religion,” which utilizes a quiz in order to demonstrate common mis-perceptions about religion, which operates by using readers' own knowledge or ignorance to convince them that their stereotypes about others based on religious beliefs are unfounded.
5. Other uses of metaphor in the classroom: Metaphors, as long as they are well crafted and explored in the classroom, can offer new ways of understanding assignments and concepts, in addition to argument. For example, many of my students had trouble understanding how to weave the personal and the academic elements together for the PAA, how much weight to give to each in the paper. I came across a metaphor used by Patricia Dunn, in her book Talking Sketching Moving: Multiple Literacies in the Teaching of Writing. Students were to think of themselves in the driver's seat, and they should put the academics in the backseat, or better yet, the trunk. The student drives the car, they decide the direction. If they get lost, then and only then do they stop the car, go and check in with the academics in the trunk.
Resources
Patricia Dunn, Talking Sketching Moving: Multiple Literacies in the Teaching of Writing
Nicholas Kristof, “Test Your Savvy on Religion,” NYTimes
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words
Monday, December 13, 2010
Incorporating Ecocomposition into our WRIT 101 Classrooms: Grace's I-search Handout
- Core aspects that may be incorporated into WRIT 101 curriculum:
· connect students to the community, to the public sphere, and to active citizenry
- direct the writing of the Personal Academic Argument or “Greening UM” op-ed toward a specific audience and encourage students to submit it for publication
· provide opportunities for experiential learning
- may resemble service learning linked with regular discussions about the students-traveler’s role in the world in a wider context
- may be an outside writing project for a local non-profit organization
· foster deeper understanding of and create additional emphasis on ecology
- regularly discuss students’ relationship with place, natural, and manmade environments
- discuss ecological or environmental concepts in relation to each assignment
- facilitate thorough bioregional research during Life Place unit
Key texts:
Dobrin, Sidney I and Christian R. Weisser, ed. Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches. New York: State University of New York Press, 2001. Print.
Dobrin, Sidney I and Christian R. Weisser. Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. Print.
Notable professors/authors:
Cooper, Marilyn M.
Dobrin, Sidney I.
Drew, Julie
Hothem, Thomas
Ingram, Annie Merrill.
Johnson-Sheehan, Richard
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie
Owens, Derek.
Weisser, Christian R.
Celebrating and Validating Rural Literacies in the Writing Classroom
Celebrating and Validating:
Rural Literacies In the Writing Classroom
“A human community, if it is to last long, must exert a sort of a centripetal force, holding local soil and local memory in place.” – Wendell Berry, The Work of Local Culture
A. Questions for consideration:
1.) What are you own preconceived notions of rural people?
2.) Have you encountered and/or absorbed stereotypes of rural literacies?
3.) Do you try validate, support and including the vast range of our student’s identities and backgrounds in the classroom atmosphere and in their writing?
B. Main Ideas:
* Western State; Western University, Students and Communities: 75 percent of The University of Montana’s student population is in-state students, with 38 percent of those students coming from rural areas. In sum, it is fair to say UM has a high population of rural students and backgrounds.
* Agricultural History of Montana as a state – 49 % of Montana landscape is agricultural production and 33% of total agricultural production comes from livestock and cattle - Agriculture is Montana’s biggest export.
* Importance of a place-based education, to celebrate writing with and by the local culture and landscape
* In some instructional pedagogical approaches and attitudes, there is an anti-rural sentiment towards rural students and a process of what Heldke calls, the “stupidification” in popular culture of rural peoples pointing to the gradual marginalization of rural literacies.
What this means in the Writing Class:
1.) Encouragement of Student Literacies:
WHY? Coming directly from the public schooling system, many students are hailing from spending anywhere from 6-12 years in a political system that is rampant with power relations; NCLB, federal funding based on numerical merit of students. In the Freshman writing class, it’s our job to slowly dismantle their approach and behavior towards a writing class. Ex. Not writing for a grade, exploring genres, taking risks, etc..
HOW? Slow dismantling the numerical-based grading, in place of encouragement & validation.
2.) Commitment to Diversity and Differences in Writing / 3.) Helping Rural Students Feel more vested in Academia
WHY? In some respects, it’s the job a writing class to encourage students to engage, discover and validate their own set of knowledge through writing. If the writing class provides them the space to do so, than it may be fair to assume rural students will feel more vested throughout their time in academia.
HOW? An overall commitment to encouraging students to write about who they are, where they come from!
4.) Exploration of Self in the Writing Classroom through a Place-Based approach:
WHY? “Place conscious education, thus is schooling that focuses on the necessary relations – cultural, natural, agricultural, that shape a given place and its human communities. By entering education in a local civic issues, history, biology, economics, literature, and so forth, learners will be guided to imagine the world as interdependent, filled with a variety of locally interdependent places, and to develop a richer sense of citizenship and civic action” (Brooke, 6).
HOW? The writing class has a unique opportunity to present, create, develop and enact various activities that are centered on place and personal experience. The more freshman composition instructors can practice place-based activities and education; perhaps our students will feel a stronger sense of commitment to academia, as they see themselves and their landscapes as important aspects in the writing classroom.
Resources:
Brooke, Robert. Rural Voices: Place-conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing. New York: Teachers College, 2003. Print.
Donehower, Kim, Charlotte Hogg, and Eileen E. Schell. Rural Literacies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2007. Print.
Greene, Stuart. Literacy as a Civil Right: Reclaiming Social Justice in Literacy Teaching and Learning. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Print.
Heldke, Lisa M. (Lisa Maree). "Farming Made Her Stupid." Hypatia 21.3 (2006): 151-65. Print.
Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Reynolds, Nedra. Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print.
Berry, Wendell. The Work of Local Culture. North Point, 1988. Print.
Rural Literacies In the Writing Classroom
“A human community, if it is to last long, must exert a sort of a centripetal force, holding local soil and local memory in place.” – Wendell Berry, The Work of Local Culture
A. Questions for consideration:
1.) What are you own preconceived notions of rural people?
2.) Have you encountered and/or absorbed stereotypes of rural literacies?
3.) Do you try validate, support and including the vast range of our student’s identities and backgrounds in the classroom atmosphere and in their writing?
B. Main Ideas:
* Western State; Western University, Students and Communities: 75 percent of The University of Montana’s student population is in-state students, with 38 percent of those students coming from rural areas. In sum, it is fair to say UM has a high population of rural students and backgrounds.
* Agricultural History of Montana as a state – 49 % of Montana landscape is agricultural production and 33% of total agricultural production comes from livestock and cattle - Agriculture is Montana’s biggest export.
* Importance of a place-based education, to celebrate writing with and by the local culture and landscape
* In some instructional pedagogical approaches and attitudes, there is an anti-rural sentiment towards rural students and a process of what Heldke calls, the “stupidification” in popular culture of rural peoples pointing to the gradual marginalization of rural literacies.
What this means in the Writing Class:
1.) Encouragement of Student Literacies:
WHY? Coming directly from the public schooling system, many students are hailing from spending anywhere from 6-12 years in a political system that is rampant with power relations; NCLB, federal funding based on numerical merit of students. In the Freshman writing class, it’s our job to slowly dismantle their approach and behavior towards a writing class. Ex. Not writing for a grade, exploring genres, taking risks, etc..
HOW? Slow dismantling the numerical-based grading, in place of encouragement & validation.
2.) Commitment to Diversity and Differences in Writing / 3.) Helping Rural Students Feel more vested in Academia
WHY? In some respects, it’s the job a writing class to encourage students to engage, discover and validate their own set of knowledge through writing. If the writing class provides them the space to do so, than it may be fair to assume rural students will feel more vested throughout their time in academia.
HOW? An overall commitment to encouraging students to write about who they are, where they come from!
4.) Exploration of Self in the Writing Classroom through a Place-Based approach:
WHY? “Place conscious education, thus is schooling that focuses on the necessary relations – cultural, natural, agricultural, that shape a given place and its human communities. By entering education in a local civic issues, history, biology, economics, literature, and so forth, learners will be guided to imagine the world as interdependent, filled with a variety of locally interdependent places, and to develop a richer sense of citizenship and civic action” (Brooke, 6).
HOW? The writing class has a unique opportunity to present, create, develop and enact various activities that are centered on place and personal experience. The more freshman composition instructors can practice place-based activities and education; perhaps our students will feel a stronger sense of commitment to academia, as they see themselves and their landscapes as important aspects in the writing classroom.
Resources:
Brooke, Robert. Rural Voices: Place-conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing. New York: Teachers College, 2003. Print.
Donehower, Kim, Charlotte Hogg, and Eileen E. Schell. Rural Literacies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2007. Print.
Greene, Stuart. Literacy as a Civil Right: Reclaiming Social Justice in Literacy Teaching and Learning. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Print.
Heldke, Lisa M. (Lisa Maree). "Farming Made Her Stupid." Hypatia 21.3 (2006): 151-65. Print.
Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Reynolds, Nedra. Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print.
Berry, Wendell. The Work of Local Culture. North Point, 1988. Print.
Brittany's I-Search handout
Productive Cross-Pollination:
Pedagogical Connections between Creative Writing and Composition
Wendy Bishop: “We need to get serious about creating new, fused pedagogies, ones that include rhetoric, composition, creative writing, and literature as partners in instruction” (“Suddenly Sexy” 273). Sounds good. But WHY? and HOW?
Why #1: Cultivating critical thinking
- Reading and analyzing texts
- Applying techniques of craft to own work
- "High road transfer”—recognizing how creative writing process/techniques can apply to other rhetorical situations
Why #2: Encouraging collaboration
- Produce a pair-written text
- Students begin to see their “composition class community” as “a place where writing is welcomed, fluid, and able to be scrutinized in creative as well as critical ways” (Hochman 3)
Why #3: Subverting institutional hierarchy, thus empowering student
- Wendy Bishop: “The lessons here are obviously political ones; fundamentals precede art and art writing is for the elite (endlessly, the white, literate, at least middle-class kind), and composition writing is for those who need nothing more than basic literary” (Colors 187).
- Makes artistry less elite; validates students’ voices
- Opens class up for interrogation of power structures & boundaries
How [Outside Resources]:
- Will Hochman’s paired fiction writing
- M. Thomas Gammarino’s “portraits”
- Charles Fox’s “processive prompts”
- Email me to borrow Fox’s book!
How [My prompts]:
- Life Place Reading Journal
- Missoula Collage Poem
- Op-Ed commercial
- Email me for any of these prompts!
My tips:
- Make prompt organic
-Tie directly to rhetorical goals of unit
-Use as necessary drafting stage
- Be specific
- Make them reflect on the process
Works Cited [and suggested sources]:
- Bishop, Wendy and Hans Ostrom. Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.
- Bishop, Wendy. “Suddenly Sexy: Creative Writing Rear-Ends Composition.” College English 65.3. Jan. 2003: 257-75.
- Fox, Charles. Creative Control: Creative Writing Prompts for the Composition Class. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2009.
- Gammarino, M. Thomas. “Class Barriers: Creative Writing in Freshman Composition.” Currents in Teaching and Learning 1.2 (Spring 2009): 19-27. Web. 27 Oct. 2010.
- Hochman, Will. “Using Paired Fiction Writing: Transactional Creativity and Community Building in the Composition Class.” Daedelus. 1997-98. 27 October 2002.
Jayme's Handout: Persuasive Writing
This handout is meant to serve as a quick and easy reminder of the key points of my presentation. If you wish to learn more about storytelling in nonfiction writing, please see the "Further Reading" reference.
Writing More Persuasively
Jayme Feary
How can writers write more persuasively about social issues?
Remember: People learn mainly through stories.
(Stories are often more believable than facts.)
Narrative Journalism Techniques:
- Storytelling
- Scenes
- Narrative Arc
- Conflict & Resolution
- Facts and Summary
Further Reading
Call, Wendy and Kramer, Mark. Telling True Stories. New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Print.
Called to Conferences (Lauren's I-Search Handout)
Primary Challenges of Instructor-Student Conferences
o Instructors are students’ evaluators and can never escape students’ reactions to that.
o Students and instructors face a collision of expectations about conferences’ realistic results.
o Students and instructors have different understandings of writing terminology used in conferences, and students rarely ask instructors to clarify or define unfamiliar terms.
o Conferences are a site of “presentational talk.” According to Erving Goffman’s theory of social behavior, all actors in a conference choose what to reveal and conceal about themselves based on what they perceive to be their expected roles.
o Students fear instructor questions that are perceived to have right/wrong answers.
Primary Opportunities of Instructor-Student Conferences
o Conferences allow us to get to know our students, to value them as students-as-travelers.
o When students talk first, we learn how savvy as writers they really are.
o Students in pairs often feel more comfortable than students in one-on-one instructor conferences.
Pair Conference Strengthening Strategies for Your WRIT 101 Class
…before conferences
o Lead an in-class discussion to help students develop realistic expectations for what a 20- or 30-minute pair conference can—and cannot—realistically accomplish.
o Offer a conference-related fastwrite prompt with follow-up small-group and large-group discussion: “In the ideal pair conference, the teacher would…; I, the writer, would…; my peer would…. The outcomes of the ideal pair conference on my draft would be…”
o Allow students to read and/or discuss each other’s complete essays before conferences by arriving to conferences 20 minutes early, emailing drafts to each other, or sharing via Google Docs. This pre-conference student collaboration could be mandatory or voluntary.
… during conferences
o Donald Murray’s “response theory of teaching”: The student is the first responder to her own writing; the instructor responds to her response. Very simply, the student talks first. Murray writes, “Shut up—it isn’t easy.”
o Help students identify one or two significant changes to make as the result of the conference: this helps everyone feel that the conference has been productive and helpful.
o As questions are necessary, ask open-ended, essay-specific questions that do not have right/wrong answers, e.g., “Which part of the essay was hardest to write? Why do you think that was?”. Provide open-ended observations, e.g., “I’m not sure I’m understanding the purpose of this paragraph…”
o Avoid prescriptive feedback like, “You should…” Use questions and observations to serve as a catalyst for further inquiry. As my student Lael wrote, “the ideal pair conference would…give me too many ideas.”
o Instructors are students’ evaluators and can never escape students’ reactions to that.
o Students and instructors face a collision of expectations about conferences’ realistic results.
o Students and instructors have different understandings of writing terminology used in conferences, and students rarely ask instructors to clarify or define unfamiliar terms.
o Conferences are a site of “presentational talk.” According to Erving Goffman’s theory of social behavior, all actors in a conference choose what to reveal and conceal about themselves based on what they perceive to be their expected roles.
o Students fear instructor questions that are perceived to have right/wrong answers.
Primary Opportunities of Instructor-Student Conferences
o Conferences allow us to get to know our students, to value them as students-as-travelers.
o When students talk first, we learn how savvy as writers they really are.
o Students in pairs often feel more comfortable than students in one-on-one instructor conferences.
Pair Conference Strengthening Strategies for Your WRIT 101 Class
…before conferences
o Lead an in-class discussion to help students develop realistic expectations for what a 20- or 30-minute pair conference can—and cannot—realistically accomplish.
o Offer a conference-related fastwrite prompt with follow-up small-group and large-group discussion: “In the ideal pair conference, the teacher would…; I, the writer, would…; my peer would…. The outcomes of the ideal pair conference on my draft would be…”
o Allow students to read and/or discuss each other’s complete essays before conferences by arriving to conferences 20 minutes early, emailing drafts to each other, or sharing via Google Docs. This pre-conference student collaboration could be mandatory or voluntary.
… during conferences
o Donald Murray’s “response theory of teaching”: The student is the first responder to her own writing; the instructor responds to her response. Very simply, the student talks first. Murray writes, “Shut up—it isn’t easy.”
o Help students identify one or two significant changes to make as the result of the conference: this helps everyone feel that the conference has been productive and helpful.
o As questions are necessary, ask open-ended, essay-specific questions that do not have right/wrong answers, e.g., “Which part of the essay was hardest to write? Why do you think that was?”. Provide open-ended observations, e.g., “I’m not sure I’m understanding the purpose of this paragraph…”
o Avoid prescriptive feedback like, “You should…” Use questions and observations to serve as a catalyst for further inquiry. As my student Lael wrote, “the ideal pair conference would…give me too many ideas.”
Jimmy's Handout
Jimmy Kendall
12/13/2010
WRIT 540
· My presentation today in class will cover a singular aspect about the rhetorical merits of Native American texts that can be used to help our student’s rhetorical approaches.
I.TOPIC
· How the rhetorical merits of Native American texts can help our student’s rhetorical approaches.
II. Purpose
· Native American texts can provide students with powerful rhetorical styles that our students can emulate in an effort to improve their writing.
· As students at times have a tenacity to think that generalizations can act as “truths,” or that their perspectives are universally shared, they fall prey to appeals of bifurcation and logical fallacies that render their papers one dimensional and limited in scope.
· Where Native texts come into play is how they can help students foster what is called an “awareness narrative,” which asks students write in a way that has them “reveal their beliefs, inquire into problems, and articulate where they stand” (Swiencicki 347). In other words, students write towards a topic or theme that has a transformative social context, and therefore must think critically about their perspectives in the wake of others.
III. Use in the Classroom
· When students write in an awareness narrative, they write for a wider audience, and are typically writing about a topic that covers some aspect of race, society, culture, or politics. Therefore, they have consequences to what they write.
· This is a valuable practice students can finesse for writing into genres like the PAA, Op-ed, and life place. If fosters critical thinking, academic writing, and creative empowerment in the idea that their personal perspectives come into conversation with a larger social context.
IV. Putting it to use: Sherman Alexie’s “On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City”
· In you handouts, all of you have a copy of a poem by Sherman Alexie that does a good job of exploring what an awareness narrative looks like.
· Read it over it and imagine how you would have your students emulate this kind of writing in an effort to discuss experiences with some of the issues Alexie touches on (race, culture, history, etc…), and how that writing speaks about “the way the world operates and about how we can and should operate within it” (Brent).
V. What this achieves
· In using Native American texts like this in the classroom, we can hopefully have our students:
- Think, read, and write more critically
- Be aware of the larger social contexts when they write
- Be mindful of other perspectives to avoid appeals to bifurcation and logical fallacies
- Be open to difference and disparate view points
- Write in a manner that is both academic and creative
Laurel's Presentation: Service-Learning in Composition
SERVICE-LEARNING IN COMPOSITION
WHAT IS SERVICE-LEARNING?
Service-learning (also known as civic engagement or community-based learning) is a pedagogical tool that engages students with their community. Service-learning is not volunteer work or an internship – it differs in that students apply what they are learning in the academic classroom to “real world” issues.
KEY ELEMENTS OF SERVICE-LEARNING:
Meaningful, mutually beneficial community service
Instruction (academic scaffolding)
Reflection (metacognitive understanding)
WHY ENGAGE IN SERVICE-LEARNING?
There are many reasons to incorporate service-learning into your course.
- Service-learning is an active and effective way for universities to share their unique gifts with their community
- Service-learning helps students become the critical and compassionate citizens that our democracy needs
- Through service-learning, students learn how to apply their academic knowledge to “real world” issues
- With the support and encouragement of the classroom, students are challenged to look deeply into an issue with a variety of perspectives
- There are many pressing problems in the world and students have a lot to contribute
3 TYPES OF SERVICE-LEARNING IN COMPOSITION CLASSROOMS:
(based on Nora Bacon and Thomas Deans’ article “Writing as Students, Writing as Citizens: Service-Learning in First-Year Composition Courses.”)
Writing about the community: Students partake in volunteerism and then write about the experience. This could take the form of reflective essays, research assignments or reporting. Often community partners are not involved in the writing process and don’t see the results.
Writing for the community: Students work with community partners to produce a piece of writing to be used by that organization. This type of writing includes newsletters, blog entries, reports, op-eds or short research projects. Sometimes students become involved in larger writing projects, like grant applications, but these genres often necessitate a specialized knowledge that students don’t have and can’t develop in a semester.
Writing with the community: Students collaborate with community partners to co-create a piece of writing to be used by that organization. This type of writing can vary and often works best with year-long courses.
THINGS TO PONDER IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING SERVICE-LEARNING
(based on ideas from “Standards and Indicators for Effective Service-learning Practice” by the National Youth Leadership Council)
Learning:
- What are your learning goals? How does service-learning align with your curriculum?
- How will you help students transfer knowledge and skills to and from different discourse communities (academia and community)?
- How will you teach rhetorical writing with this new diverse audience (community partner, community in general, peers and instructor)?
Service:
- How will you make sure that the service activity is interesting, engaging and relevant for students?
- How will you ensure that the community partner is benefiting from the service?
- What exactly are you asking of your community partner?
Students:
- In what ways will you ensure student and community accountability?
- How can you encourage deep thinking into the nature of service and the problems that your community partners are addressing?
- In what ways can you use reflection to help students make meaning of their experience?
- What lessons, discussions or assignments will encourage students to think about social issue from a variety of viewpoints?
- How can you encourage students to think of themselves as citizens?
RESOURCES:
The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
Adler-Kassner, Linda, Robert Crooks, and Ann Watters, eds. Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service-learning in Composition. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1997. Print.
Deans, Thomas, Barbara Roswell and Adrian Wurr, eds. Writing and Community Engagement: a Critical Sourcebook. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. Print.
Noel's I Search Presentation
WHERE TEACHING TOOLS INTERSECT:
READING AND WRITING IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM
FOUNDATIONS FOR A READING-COMPOSITION HEURISTIC
READING AND WRITING IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM
FOUNDATIONS FOR A READING-COMPOSITION HEURISTIC
1) First Day of Class or Unit
a) Establish expectations for reading, writing and discussion activities in course
i) Readings will demonstrate various ways students can write in genre of particular unit, introduce students to new types of writing, and ask students to consider issues outside of their own experience (multicultural, feminist, race and class dynamics)
ii) Writing/homework assignments will ask students to consider what purposeful decisions author is making in his/her writing, familiarize students with issues of style, and offer students opportunity to experiment with things that other authors are doing in their own writing (take risks risk-free)
iii) Discussions will offer students opportunity to present critical ideas about text and opinions in safe space and will occur in small groups and instructor- and student-led large groups; bridges gap between individual and collective learning
b) If applicable, hand out activity guidelines (see Discussion Guidelines for example)
2) Suggested Guidelines for Choosing Readings
a) Select from both current genre that students are working in and from outside that genre
i) For example, pair a personal essay with a poem that has a personal narrative, an op=ed with satire, etc.
b) Select readings in same genre that demonstrate different ways genre can be written
i) Specifically in form – personal essays, for instance, can be written like traditional essays or journal entries
c) Select readings that challenge genre definition
i) Lyric essays (see Seneca Review) and prose poems (see Sentence or Great American Prose Poems) ask students to consider the lines between essay and poem or poem and fiction
d) Select multiculturally and politically dynamic readings, marginalized voices: welcome difficult discussions
i) Readings that tackle race, class and gender issues (Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs is a good example of feminist-race studies writing that remains accessible to first-year students)
ii) Readings that stand in political opposition to each other
3) Suggested Homework Assignments to Engage Reading with Writing
a) Short writing exercises directly corresponding to readings
i) Question 1: Ask students to identify key style moves in assigned text (frame as author’s purposeful decisions). Question 2: Ask students to write a short piece on a similar theme that engages observed style moves.
b) Variation of Laura Micciche’s commonplace book
c) Autobiographical criticism – short paper or presentation
i) Students pick writer that has had direct impact on their life and analyze/present author through lens of personal experience (i.e. I was introduced to Wilfred Owen, WWI poet, around the start of the Iraq war; his compassionate war poetry helped form/support my political opinions)
d) Student-led reading discussions
i) See Discussion Guidelines
Suggested Reading
Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration and The Reader, the Text, the Poem
Major texts in reading theory. The first presents Rosenblatt’s “transactional” theory of reading and the instructor’s vital role in reader response; the second elaborates on transactional theory and reader interpretation of text.
Juliana Spahr, Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity
Essays exploring poets and poetry that exhibit collective and connective models for reading.
Voices from the Middle 12.3 (2005)
Commemorating Louise Rosenblatt, providing an overview of her work, and discussing her impact on the composition studies community.
Creating an Engaged Community: Building Praxis in the Sustainability-Focused Composition Classroom
1. Need
David Orr, “The modern curriculum teaches little about citizenship and responsibilities and a great deal about individualism and rights. The ecological emergency, however, can be resolved only if people come to hold a bigger idea of what it means to be a citizen. […] The ecological emergency is about the failure to comprehend our citizenship in the biotic community” (Earth in Mind, 32)
Existing Curriculum:
Personal Academic Argument --> Op-Ed --> Life-Place Essay
Possibilities for Further Praxis:
Place-Based Essay --> Civic Essay/Service-Learning Project --> Future- Scenario/ Local-Sustainability Research Project
2. Methods
“Place” as an entry into the discussion of sustainability.
Why—builds on familiar themes, pre-existent knowledge,builds investment in writing, develops personal essay skills
How—use place as a way to create a supportive, engaged classroom community.Reading place essays out loud, bringing photos, comparing similarities/differences, focusing on developing a specific and critical awareness of place.
Encouraging praxis through civic engagement (service-learning)
Why—moves students into a position of power within the community as agents of change, develops the ability to reflect and write for a public audience
How—connect with the Office for Civic Engagement, have students research local organizations and choose, offer options/flexibility, have alternative assignment ready (environmental justice essay, civic opinion paper, etc.)
Creating a sense of agency/urgency through researching sustainable futures
Why—empowers students as agents of community change, develops critical research skills, imparts critical knowledge of environmental crises and sustainable choices
How—build on knowledge from service-learning project by asking students to look at local sustainability efforts, require bioregional research, require students to consider what an “eutopia” (to borrow from Derek Owens) would look/function like.
Resources
Owens, Derek. Composition and Sustainability: Teaching for a Threatened Generation. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2001.
“Sustainability Curriculum Framework.” Second Nature.
http://www.secondnature.org
Weisser, Christian and Sidney Dobrin, Ed. Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches. New York: SUNY Press, 2001.
Conclusions
These methods build upon the existing syllabus in a way that encourages further praxis.
Encouraging praxis is our primary means for extending composition beyond the classroom and encouraging the life-long empowerment of our students as agents of change.
David Orr, “The modern curriculum teaches little about citizenship and responsibilities and a great deal about individualism and rights. The ecological emergency, however, can be resolved only if people come to hold a bigger idea of what it means to be a citizen. […] The ecological emergency is about the failure to comprehend our citizenship in the biotic community” (Earth in Mind, 32)
Existing Curriculum:
Personal Academic Argument --> Op-Ed --> Life-Place Essay
Possibilities for Further Praxis:
Place-Based Essay --> Civic Essay/Service-Learning Project --> Future- Scenario/ Local-Sustainability Research Project
2. Methods
“Place” as an entry into the discussion of sustainability.
Why—builds on familiar themes, pre-existent knowledge,builds investment in writing, develops personal essay skills
How—use place as a way to create a supportive, engaged classroom community.Reading place essays out loud, bringing photos, comparing similarities/differences, focusing on developing a specific and critical awareness of place.
Encouraging praxis through civic engagement (service-learning)
Why—moves students into a position of power within the community as agents of change, develops the ability to reflect and write for a public audience
How—connect with the Office for Civic Engagement, have students research local organizations and choose, offer options/flexibility, have alternative assignment ready (environmental justice essay, civic opinion paper, etc.)
Creating a sense of agency/urgency through researching sustainable futures
Why—empowers students as agents of community change, develops critical research skills, imparts critical knowledge of environmental crises and sustainable choices
How—build on knowledge from service-learning project by asking students to look at local sustainability efforts, require bioregional research, require students to consider what an “eutopia” (to borrow from Derek Owens) would look/function like.
Resources
Owens, Derek. Composition and Sustainability: Teaching for a Threatened Generation. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2001.
“Sustainability Curriculum Framework.” Second Nature.
http://www.secondnature.org
Weisser, Christian and Sidney Dobrin, Ed. Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches. New York: SUNY Press, 2001.
Conclusions
These methods build upon the existing syllabus in a way that encourages further praxis.
Encouraging praxis is our primary means for extending composition beyond the classroom and encouraging the life-long empowerment of our students as agents of change.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
A Presentation by Michelle Brown
Peer Reviews:
An Outline of Major Themes and Ideas to Address
Methods
Framing the Activity
While facilitating freshman peer review activities it is crucial to first create a foundation from which students will expand upon. This can be done in several ways:
1. Establish the room as a community and stress the importance of collaboration
2. Explain critical reading skills and how to use it during peer reviews
3. Discuss rhetorical thinking
Choose Your Questions Carefully
If you use specific questions to guide students during peer review sessions pick questions that resist yes or no answers. Think of questions that require a careful reading of the text. A way to emphasis community involvement is to craft some or all of the questions as a class. If you choose to write all of your own questions and are concerned about the clarity of the questions try answering them yourself before using them in your class. These are a few examples of the type of questions you could use:
1. Look at both the introduction and conclusion. Write down the question or issue addressed in the introduction and the statement made in the conclusion. Are they addressing the same thing? Explain why or why not?
2. What is your understanding of the author’s “life-place”? Explain why you can or can’t answer this question.
3. How vivid is the storytelling? Do the details given allow you to picture what the author is seeing? Why or why not?
.
Picking the Activities
While conducting research about the peer review process I came across several methods other instructors have found effective. Your choices may include, but are not limited to, the following suggestions:
1. Peer review partners, either assigned or not
2. Anonymous reviews where names are taken off of drafts
3. Group reviews where everyone passes drafts to one side (repeated multiple times)
The Variables
It is important to remember that our classes are unique ecosystems and one method or approach is not universal. Our classes have different dynamics regarding race, gender, class, and backgrounds. This is why variety and flexibility are the two main elements of successful peer review activities.
Living in a Communal Web: Making stronger connections to our readings.
Joel Beatty WRIT 540: Teaching Presentation
Context:
Throughout this class many of my peers and I have asked the question: “How can we get more out of the readings we bring into the class to help us enhance writing?”
This simple whole group activity is an attempt to enhance the understanding of one of the supplemental readings that I brought to class for the Life Place Essay, Leslie Marmom Silko’s “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective.”
Using the opening poem from Silko’s novel Ceremony, I will try to demonstrate some of the main points she makes in “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective” and model them through the medium of a creative drama exercise, in the hopes of making a stronger text to reader connection with the participants of the exercise.
Context:
Throughout this class many of my peers and I have asked the question: “How can we get more out of the readings we bring into the class to help us enhance writing?”
This simple whole group activity is an attempt to enhance the understanding of one of the supplemental readings that I brought to class for the Life Place Essay, Leslie Marmom Silko’s “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective.”
Using the opening poem from Silko’s novel Ceremony, I will try to demonstrate some of the main points she makes in “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective” and model them through the medium of a creative drama exercise, in the hopes of making a stronger text to reader connection with the participants of the exercise.
Main Points From: Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo [New Mexico])
“Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective”
Link to Full Version: http://www.unm.edu/~joglesby/Silko%20Essay.pdf
* Pueblo Indian storytelling resembles a spider's web with many threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing one another. The listener must trust that meaning will be made.
*She tells Laguna Pueblo creation story: Thought Woman (Tse'itsi'nako) by thinking of her sisters and together with her sisters, thought of everything that is. In this way, the world was created.
*For Pueblo and other Native people, language is story.
*Words have stories attached to them. So narrative is story within story, the idea that one story is only the beginning of many stories and the sense that stories never truly end.
*Storytelling always includes the audience, the listeners; the storyteller's role is to draw the story out of the listeners. The storytelling continues from generation to generation.
*We know who we are because of our Creation story in this place.
One moves from one's identity as a tribal person into clan identity (Antelope, Badger), and then as a member of an extended family.
*Family accounts include positive and negative stories. It is important to keep track of all these stories: by knowing the stories that originate in other families, one is able to deal with terrible sorts of things that might happen within one's own family. If others have endured, so can we.
Stories bring us together; they keep family and clan together. You learn not to isolate yourself when bad things happen: one does not recover by oneself.
*Pueblo people have never been removed from their land. Our stories cannot be separated from their geographical locations, from actual physical places on the land. There is a story connected with every place, every object in the landscape.
*Language has a boundless capacity through storytelling to bring us together, despite great distances between cultures, despite great distances in time.
Taken from University Of Idaho Lecture Series: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/engl484jj/Lectures.htm
Web Building Activity:
To be preformed after the first reading of “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective”
Materials: Ball of String and Copy of intro poem from “Ceremony”
1. Form the Class into a standing circle with open space between students.
2. Read the 1st and 2nd stanza of the opening poem From Ceremony
3. Instructor will ask the question “What kind of communities do you belong to?” and pass ball of string to the person across the circle in order to answer. As each person in the circle answers they pass the string to another person in the circle holding on to a piece of the string as they toss the main portion.
4. Question two. After everyone has answered the first question the instructor asks another question. “What kinds of occasions do you tell stories?” Again each member hold on to a piece of the string as they toss the ball across the circle. By this time the “web” should be starting to form.
5. Question three. “What kinds of stories could you tell as a teacher?” Repeat.
6. After several passes the circle should have a fully formed web. As a group ask them to set the web on the floor.
7. The instructor reads the next two stanzas of the Intro poem to Ceremony.
8. Thank the circle for sharing themselves and creating a community of shared knowledge. Ask them to “Please keep these connections to each other in mind as we read write and tell stories.”
* Pueblo Indian storytelling resembles a spider's web with many threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing one another. The listener must trust that meaning will be made.
*She tells Laguna Pueblo creation story: Thought Woman (Tse'itsi'nako) by thinking of her sisters and together with her sisters, thought of everything that is. In this way, the world was created.
*For Pueblo and other Native people, language is story.
*Words have stories attached to them. So narrative is story within story, the idea that one story is only the beginning of many stories and the sense that stories never truly end.
*Storytelling always includes the audience, the listeners; the storyteller's role is to draw the story out of the listeners. The storytelling continues from generation to generation.
*We know who we are because of our Creation story in this place.
One moves from one's identity as a tribal person into clan identity (Antelope, Badger), and then as a member of an extended family.
*Family accounts include positive and negative stories. It is important to keep track of all these stories: by knowing the stories that originate in other families, one is able to deal with terrible sorts of things that might happen within one's own family. If others have endured, so can we.
Stories bring us together; they keep family and clan together. You learn not to isolate yourself when bad things happen: one does not recover by oneself.
*Pueblo people have never been removed from their land. Our stories cannot be separated from their geographical locations, from actual physical places on the land. There is a story connected with every place, every object in the landscape.
*Language has a boundless capacity through storytelling to bring us together, despite great distances between cultures, despite great distances in time.
Taken from University Of Idaho Lecture Series: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/engl484jj/Lectures.htm
From Ceremony
1. Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman,
is sitting in her room
and whatever she thinks about
appears.
2. She thought of her sisters,
Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i,
and together they created the Universe
this world
and the four worlds below.
3. Thought-Woman, the spider,
named things and
as she named them
they appeared
4. She is sitting in her room
thinking of a story now .
I’m telling you the story
she is thinking.
Sunrise.
Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
Web Building Activity:
To be preformed after the first reading of “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective”
Materials: Ball of String and Copy of intro poem from “Ceremony”
1. Form the Class into a standing circle with open space between students.
2. Read the 1st and 2nd stanza of the opening poem From Ceremony
3. Instructor will ask the question “What kind of communities do you belong to?” and pass ball of string to the person across the circle in order to answer. As each person in the circle answers they pass the string to another person in the circle holding on to a piece of the string as they toss the main portion.
4. Question two. After everyone has answered the first question the instructor asks another question. “What kinds of occasions do you tell stories?” Again each member hold on to a piece of the string as they toss the ball across the circle. By this time the “web” should be starting to form.
5. Question three. “What kinds of stories could you tell as a teacher?” Repeat.
6. After several passes the circle should have a fully formed web. As a group ask them to set the web on the floor.
7. The instructor reads the next two stanzas of the Intro poem to Ceremony.
8. Thank the circle for sharing themselves and creating a community of shared knowledge. Ask them to “Please keep these connections to each other in mind as we read write and tell stories.”
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