Even Teachers Need to Learn Their ABC's

The best way for me to describe how a teacher needs to behave when it comes bettering themselves, would be to compare it to a horse with blinders. I think when someone has been teaching for a long time, they will get stuck in their ways and will, in essence, have blinders on which keep them from seeing how society has been progressing. 

In reading the article about diversity, it is interesting to note that diversity has now expanded past outward appearance and includes the inner workings of an individual. We need to be aware of how society evolves and changes. This means that we need to adapt our teaching style to what is occurring to be considered inclusive.

In California, teachers have been required to go and obtain an ESL/TESOL certificate because it has become evident that the classroom now has a majority of students that do not have English as their first language. This is one example of what teachers are doing to re-teach themselves.

Basically, we need to continue our learning process as well as furthering the learning process of our students.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

The end. Is there such a thing? As the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end." But after my bout with this semester's 1301 students I don't know if I would necessarily label this experience as "good." Long, arduous and a monstrous learning experience...YES! 

We have talked before about how writing is never done. There can always be another avenue to explore within your topic or a question to refute. To have an end to composition, to me, would mean complete and perfect understanding of all the aspects of writing. I, for one, don't think that there is anyone that has ever fit that criteria. The closest that one could get to the "end of composition" would be the ability to place the writing into the category of "unfinished, but almost done." This is kind of odd I know, but it is how I grasp the idea of the end of composition.

Service Learning...was the bane of my existence in undergrad...until Evil came along.

 

By the time I reached my last three semesters in my undergraduate work, about 90% of my classes contained a service learning component. I came to despise service learning until I had my senior seminar. The title of the seminar was "The Problem of Evil." Sound tempting doesn't it (pun intended). For our paper what we had to do was find a problem within society and present a solution. The catch was that our service learning had to encompass either the problem or the solution. For instance, I chose to examine needle exchange programs. I worked with a needle exchange program, since there were about thirty within a 30 miles radius, for the durations of about 5 two hours visits. We were exposed first hand to the problem and how to confront it. Other people worked in domestic violence shelters, a cancer ward, and even an arboretum (he was troubled with deforestation). By the end, we walked away with a more complete and comprehensive view of not only our problem, but the world. 

Now, how does this connect back to classes here, specifically 5060 and our CI and DI positions? I actually have a proposition. To incorporate service learning into 5060 seminar, what we could do would be to have class on Tuesday (or whatever day would work) and the other day would be spent with an instructor in the classroom. It would be similar to the master teacher idea, but a bit different. You would stay with the same instructor for the duration of the semester and observe, teach, help, or whatever you worked out with your instructor. There would be guidelines, such as you had to teach some many lessons or plan out lesson plans for the instructor. This would give everyone hands on experience without disrupting the CI/DI distinction. Just a thought.

Plan "B"

As to the question of what a FYC teacher to come to class knowing...I believe it is two fold. One, the teacher should come to class knowing the entirety of the semester and what the overall purpose is in the class. This will help when they are planning lessons for each day because then they can try and connect each lesson to lead up to the students having an overall and completely knowledge of the course materials. Two, I believe the FYC teacher should come to class knowing the exact specifics of the lesson plan for that day. The paper lesson plan should be a back-up plan incase the students get the teacher off track with questions and they need to remember where they were at. 

The student should come to class prepared for that class. PERIOD. That is the biggest issue that I see with students today. They come to class without reading, or fully doing an assignment. They expect the teacher to hold their hand through the process of experiencing a college course. Um...I'm sorry, no. Not gonna happen. You are adults and you will be treated as such. 

To be prepared for plan b, essentially means to me to be prepared for working at the bottom level of the middle range. You are not adapting to the "laziest" student in the class, but you are not zooming ahead without regards for your student. Plan B is the ability to relay the material in multiple ways and at multiple depths.

The performance of teaching

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players: They have their exits and their entrances... " ~ Shakespeare

I believe that Shakespeare hit this one out of the park, except let me amend the saying a bit: "Every classroom is a stage, and all the instructors are merely players: They have their exits and their entrances..." ~ Me. 

This is my philosophy of teaching. Walk with me down this road of enchantment if you will. As a teacher you are part of an ensemble. Beginning back in kindergarten, a student is presented with a wide array of "actors." Each and every year, the student sees a different performance, but what is special about this type of a performance is that the student has the opportunity to learn and gain experience. Over the course of a student's academic career, he/she comes across several different archetypes of actors. You have the "Good, the bad, and the ugly" to quote the title of Sergio Leone's beloved western. 

The "UGLY." You see the performance for the first time and you wonder if there is any way that you can trade you season tickets for another performance without hurting your dear ol' mum's feelings. (You know she is always going to ask you EVERYDAY how it was.) Unfortunately, the majority of the time, you must sit through each and every performance. Nothing is done right by this "actor." Timing is off. Cannot understand the words he/she is saying. These are the actors that make you hate this genre of performances.

The "BAD." Throughout all the performances that you see, you realize that the actor never fully steps into the role that he/she was assigned. Whether it is lack of organization or lack of experience, you can always take things away from the performance, but not every time. This can seem like a waste of time and energy to the audience.

The "GOOD." You ever go and see a movie or a play and you feel that you are actually in that world because of the way the actor(s) perform and even interact with the audience? You leave feeling as though you have stepped into another world where every thing makes sense. 

Now, at this point you may be wondering what acting and performance has to do with a teaching philosophy. It is simply this: each and every day a teacher performs for her class. She gives it her all every time because she wants the student (audience) to fall in love with the world that she is portraying. This world can be literature, poetry, fiction, even teaching. Here's the kicker; just like an actor, the teacher may never hear or see the reaction of the audience. She will never know if she made an impression on the student because once the students leaves the class at the end of the semester, the teacher is no longer involved in that student's story anymore. Yes, you are able to see progress at the end of the semester, but how does this actually effect them in the long run? The actor will go off stage, many times, before he/she can see the audience's reaction. This is way each and every performance must be the best. This is the only way the "actor" can influence the minds of the "audience."

Hope you enjoyed walking the path of analogy with me.

TTOPIC...should die...I mean...I got to go...

As pretty much everyone has discussed in the past few weeks, we are all frustrated with the way the system works with FYC. For me the main problem is the quotas. The "25 per week" load gives the graders a optimistic view that once those are completed everything will be graded. Oh how wrong that is. You might have gotten our quota done, but their is a truck load of ungraded assignments that are awaiting to sign your death warrant...too harsh...ok, I apologize to the innocent briefs.

What I would like to see happen is accountability set up within the system itself. Because having only 25 per week as a quota is not cutting it, if there could be a way to determine the amount of briefs each person would need to grade in order to get each set of briefs completely done, then that is what the quota should be. Outside of that quota that is where you responsibility stops. This may sound harsh and potentially unfair to the students because what if they get stuck with a grader who is behind with grading. Well, I have been told that I should look at myself as being a "student first" then a grader. I cannot do that with a clear conscience if I know that there are 500 briefs in my groups queue.  Having specific individual quotas could potentially creating a personal accountability with each grader. If they do not grade their amount, then THEY will have to make up for it and not the group. 

Venting session...done.

Round of applause for Bruffee...clap clap clap clap clap

Collaborative learning...the first thing that comes to mind is GROUP PROJECT. I must say that I despise  group projects. OH!...every time we had to do one in my undergrad course I wanted to scream. I hated the fact that my grade rested upon the shoulders of the slouched, barely awake, never contributes anything to class, "student" who happened to reside next to me the ENTIRE semester. Why, God? Why? It just felt so unnatural. This is not how we are supposed to learn. We are supposed to learn by lecture and papers and test...not by collaborating on a project that determines 70% of your final grade. For awhile I thought I was alone in my tormented thoughts. But...I found similar thoughts within the gems I like to refer to as English majors. None of us ever liked it when we were given a project. The farthest I got to liking a "group project" were the discussions that I experienced in my seminar classes. But guess what...?!!!

[insert drum roll]

Bruffee says that that is normal for those that are in humanistic study!!! There is light at the end of the tunnel. There has slowly been a pull to more and more collaborative learning within the classroom and I find that I am getting more and more accustomed to it. But I was just so pleased to know that someone actually recognized this fact!

Step by step. Day by day. Fresh start over, different everyday...

My writing process differs from assignment to assignment. My writing process for this blog can be summed up in two words: spontaneous writing. I never really think about what to write. I just write. I like this form of writing because it just flows directly out of my head and I don't have to worry about the content because I know that it all connects...even if it is an abstract connection. 

For writing a paper, whether it is a term paper of even a simple analysis, I have a completely different writing process. There are so many "prerequisites" that apply to my writing as a process. Here's some of my rules:

• have to write on college ruled paper
• Easy Touch pen and a mechanical pencil
• music (instrumental only)
• comfy clothes
• I will write usually in the afternoon/evening
• research everything first; sit with complied notes
• have rough outline...extremely rough, written out
• Must have a really well worded introduction (hardest part for me)
• must write on actual paper first before typing in Word
• Apartment has to be clean
• Alone

My pre-write generally consists of research and then highlighting the similarities, if any, between my sources and start from there. But prior to that I have to develop my thesis. I have gotten more and more picky about how specific my thesis has to be. Bulleted notes often accompany my pre-writes. 

The actual writing can take place in about a 24 hour period. Depending on the length of the paper and the amount of my research it could be more or less. My actual writing also contains the process of me typing the written words onto the page. I also consider this part of my re-write because I change the wording and correct my mechanics as I type my paper. I listen to how the writing sounds as I type it out. I know that I lack in the area of re-writes. I don't do it enough and I focus mainly on the content rather than the grammar, which is the opposite of what most people do, I think. 

Process in the classroom is CRUCIAL. Being a writer does not happen in a day. It takes practice. Years of practice in fact. I believe that in the classroom you can begin to form a habit within the student to where they will always see any type of writing as a process. I think it is highly important to tell them that writing is a process and not just lead them blindly down the road of "writing process."

I'm singing...I'm in a store and I'm SINGING...

For some reason the film Elf came to mind when I started to think about voice. The scene where Buddy the Elf is in the department store with Jovie. He starts singing just because he likes to sing and he is trying to show Jovie that if you love to sing you shouldn't worry about what other people think. To me, in some weird, ultra-psychotic, parallel universe, this connected to the idea and thoughts behind voice and made complete sense...go figure...?

I see voice as the point where a writer is comfortable with the way he/she automatically puts thoughts into words. This won't happen when a student is still learning the basis outline of writing. Instead I think it happens once a foundation of what writing is and what writing can accomplish that this next stage can occur. Liking the way the writing sounds in your head can help the way it comes out on paper. You find a way of expressing yourself that is normal and not forced. And here is the great aspect about it...you can use that very "voice" and mold and shape it into the different styles of writing. Whether it is an academic paper, an application, or an email to a close friend, your voice can shift and be a viable tool to you, but only if you are comfortable enough to play around with it. I think that is why I am such a huge fan of journals and free writes and exercises that play with the creativity of the mind. A foundation does NEED to be present though. Rules need to have been explained and theories mentioned, at least. I don't think one can just stumble upon his/her authentic voice. I think that it comes with practice and with knowledge of the way language works.

Projectile Thoughts...

Frustrated. I suppose that is the only word to describe the way I feel about the freshman writing system here at Tech. As a student in 5060 where we are trying to learn how to teach writing and discover what writing actually is so that we are prepared for the infamous 1301/02 courses, I feel somewhat cheated. First of all, I am (well appalled is too strong of a word...how about discouraged) discouraged by the fact that all the freshman writing courses are being taught by MA/Ph.D  students. STUDENTS! People who have not received their full degrees yet! Does that seem strange to anyone else? Knowing this it is no wonder that there have been questions as to how well the freshman learn writing on through their senior year. I understand that teaching in a classroom is the only way to gain experience. But why have an inexperienced student teach freshman writing techniques when the graduate student themselves are attempting to perfect that very process? When a student is obtaining their credentials for secondary education they are required to student teach. They are assigned a master teacher and are slowly acclimated to the classroom and to teaching by themselves. Why not do it this way in a college setting? You not only get the experience but you also have the guidance of a master teacher, well in this case professor, who can help sharpen your skills and your presentation. This leads me to another point...why aren't any tenured professors teaching freshman writing? At the university where I received my BA, ALL the freshman writing courses were taught by tenured and associate professors. This gives the freshman almost guaranteed success. (Yes, I did say almost because not every professor will produce a class of student who write flawlessly...I understand that). Another aspect of the freshman writing course at my undergraduate university was that the professor would teach on a specific subject; a subject that they had profound knowledge in and had a passion for. They would then provide writing assignments for the students situated around the subject or field of study. If it is done this way at Tech, there would be no need for it to be so structured and closed off. The students could still learn about paraphrasing and summary but in a less tedious way. The professor could then encompass multiple learning styles and schools of writing throughout the semester. Is it really cost efficient, not only financially but also in regards to the student learning capabilities, to operate a system in such a way that Tech does? 

Thoughts?

Questions?

Concerns?

Bashings?

To teach or not to teach...

I am almost upset with the fact that we place first year writing under the English discipline. I would almost rather it be labeled something along the lines of General Education 100. Please, keep in mind that I said "almost" in the above sentence. I do understand that this course fits into English because the mode in which it is taught, but to have it strictly be taught by English professors/TA's and kept within in the English department, does a disservice. But, that is not the question so I will move on. 

First year writing should be taught for the simple reason that it NEEDS to be taught. With the amount of freshman that enter into a four year university, one cannot possibly believe that they will all be on the same level of writing efficiency. As their professors/graders, we have no clue as to what they were taught in high school about writing, grammar, analysis, etc. To have EVERY student take this class, it gives the students a level playing field because they are all taught the basics of writing and critical thinking. Yes, some students may be beyond the basic level, but that is when you can challenge them to hone the skills and produce high level papers even if they are in an introductory class. 

To say that a freshman writing course is not needed within a university would be similar to me saying I don't need air...ok, a little much I know, but you get the point. FYC gives the tools to continue writing in any discipline. It gives the students that opportunity to structure a lab write up, to analyze a work of art, to form a proposal and the list can go on and on. Just because the class is listed as an English course does not mean that we are only teaching them how to write for an English seminar. Communication in any discipline contains the written word. If, as a student, you don't know the fundamentals of writing then any type of communication you try to start will be disregarded. Exemplary writing skills can give you credibility in who you are as a scholar. Not offering freshman writing would be doing a disservice to the students as a whole.

My three important concepts of composition have developed out of what I want in my own writing. Understanding. Organization/Presentation. Voice.

Let's start with Voice. The majority of freshman that walk into a freshman comp classroom have never been asked to write...they have been told to. They are told to write a 5 paragraph essay describing the symbolism of Orwell's 1984. By dictating when and how to write, most students become robots of writing. A routine. Finish a book, write a paper. Read a poem, analyze its structure. What I find critical in composition is the ability to find and strengthen your own voice as a writer. This develops primarily through free writes, journal writing and creative writing assignments. Finding one's own voice can be challenging and frightening at first. The complete lack of supervision and guidance, can create a literal writer's block for many students. This, I believe, helps students to see that writing does not always have to be an entity that is forced upon you. It can be used to express oneself. But it is this unobstructed way of teaching that will help them develop a voice, and hopefully, with practice, and strong voice filled with authority. Once the student has found his/her own voice, you as an instructor can teach them how to channel their voice into different types of writing. 

To create that authority a student in a composition class needs to have the understanding and the knowledge of the subject at hand. A piece can be beautifully written with and inviting voice and flawless mechanics, but if it doesn't pertain to the subject, or worse, is incorrect, than that writer has lost credibility with the audience. Teaching students the importance of research and questions can help improve the student's writing. Writing with authority means giving substantial, and correct, evidence to your audience demonstrating your well researched knowledge.

Lastly, but definitely not the least important is organization/presentation. I believe these go hand in hand because when a paper or a piece of writing is not organized the presentation of that work is faulty. Back up your argument with unshakable evidence. Create a flow within your paper that takes the reader smoothly from one idea to the next. Teach the students that organization does include drafts, revision, and knowledge of mechanics. Without these the flow of the paper is interrupted by mistakes that would not be present if the writer and fully prepared the work.

There are many other aspects that are important in composition and I am sure that I will shift my thoughts throughout the years to match my students' needs, but these are relevant throughout the writing process and will help students become successful writers. 

All the intro stuff...

Well, lets see what would you guys want to know about me...

Rachel's Factoids:

• From California
• 21 years old
• In the MA program for English Literature (would like to specialize in Victorian Lit: Gothic novels)
• Received my BA from Azusa Pacific University in '07
• Lived in Camden, NJ for the past two summers working with Urban Promise
• I can make a bicycle horn noise with my mouth...[insert shrug and a grin]
• I proudly admit that I am a Tolkien fan, born and raised.

Other than that, feel free to come and talk with me...I love meeting people!