Welcome!
Welcome to the collective class blog for English 8010, Theory and Practice of Composition! I look forward to reading your responses and ruminations as we move forward through the semester, from the short chilly days of January to the warm and lingering days of May. If that's a metaphor for the course, I wonder what it means?
posted by Donna | 7:26 PM
5 Comments:
I teach a dual-enrolled composition course at the high school where I work, and I taught comp for two years in grad school. I've spent some time thinking about this question. One of the first things I want to do is to help students see themselves as writers. A lot of them don't realize that they can write. They write for tests, but they don't spend much time writing to learn or writing to think. Especially early on, I want them to learn how to generate ideas quickly and easily and to identify their own process as writers.
Writing is so personal to students, so it is easy to scare them off and intimidate them. I do want to ease their fears about writing. I really do want to be a coach or facilitator. I want to cheer them on to a point, but I also want to push them so that they can see the potential in what they can write. I'm really one of their first critical audiences with the purpose of helping them to improve their writing and not just grading it and being done with the assignment.
I feel pretty cliche here, but I do feel that building a community in the class is really important. By that I mean, in a writing classroom everyone should know each other. Everyone should have to read each other's writing, know each other by name, and talk. Russell many times misinterprets me on this point--I don't want to get in a debate about this, but I want to mention this--I have to, especially in the early days, build a safe writing environment. Not "comfortable," Russell, but safe (there is a big difference). I do that by offering them a variety of audiences and responses. Everything we do is not evaluative. I just think you can strangle a writer by immediately criticizing his or her writing on the very first day. I've had that done to myself in a freshman comp class, and I think the purpose of comp is that we are trying to help the students join the writing community--writing for themselves, writing for academia, writing for thinking. I think the purpose of comp is that we are trying to help them improve. Way over 250 words. Thank you for listening. :)
What a good metaphor. It's a little chilly in the classroom right now. When we learn more about each other and our subject matter, we'll warm to each other and our topic. Go us. :-)
I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone better. I think we can really be good resources/coaches/guides for each other, not only in this class, but also next semester when we teach our FYC courses.
This book [Allyn and Bacon]is really helpful. All of those quotes at the beginning of Chapter 2 are just like my own personal experience with freshman composition. And those are the stories that I tell my students. I don't want them to have the same experience as I did. I think in high school we have them write about literature, but we may not teach them to really wrangle with the text. Composition--especially academic writing--is about solving problems.
I guess the contrast that I notice is that high school writing many times is not about solving problems; it is merely about regurgitating content. I even hate the term "research paper" because it connotes topics such as volcanoes, frogs, and lucid dreaming. These papers they get assigned in science where they just plagiarize the encyclopedia. There is no thesis, no argument, no thinking, just information.
Inquiry learning is not a mystery. It is nothing new, but it may not always be considered. If you want to talk about Foucault or Friere, they might say that many teachers fear opening the door to inquiry because it is something that they [necrophilist?] cannot control. And I know those teachers. I also think Friere is correct. These can be good people who don't even realize that they are strangling the creativity and thinking out of their students.
Perry's hierarchy of intellectual development is very interesting. I think I will present this to my classes. I see this thinking all of the time. The dualists: right/wrong, black/white. When I read about the multiplists, it reminds me of students who might read Foucault for the first time or read about deconstruction and immediately think that there is no answer. A common reaction from students to grades is the "you just don't like what I wrote." I heard that recently from a father whose daughter only turned in one paper in 16 weeks. But what we live for as composition teachers is that students who becomes a relativist. Who jumps in and struggles and comes out of the class a changed writer. That's what I love about composition. Sometimes that realization that composition has helped them as writers does not come until later--maybe even years.
I love the analogy that writing is wading in and working your way back out because that is really what I love about writing. Interestingly enough, chapter two reflects what I do in my own classes in the beginning weeks. Most students have never had the opportunity to write like this. I think it is because many of them have never had a class where they focused solely on writing. Unfortunately, many literature classes where they could be writing become more like quiz-taking classes.
It would be a good idea to play the believing and doubting game with Friere's Ch. 2. I think she may have that on the syllabus already.
Chapter 6 is an important chapter. I think time needs to be taken to teach students how to interact with a text. They are definitely passive readers. That has to be changed quickly in college. I really got a lot out of these two chapters, but as I read I couldn't help but wonder how many students in Donna's class are actually reading this. Many students aren't readers. Now, in order to combat the non-reading, you could very easily turn a composition class into a quiz-taking class where you begin the class every day with a quiz over the reading. I don't think that's a good idea. They need to be writing--even more than you could possibly grade--rather than wasting valuable time by taking a quiz every day.
Actually, I'm going to use some points in this chapter with the English II class I'm teaching now. We were just last week talking about the differences between summary and response. I need to be more explicit about how to do this. I also plan on using these strategies with my comp class. One important thing to remember is if you really want them to interact with a text, they need to be able to write on the text. So, make copies to give to them if you can or make sure they print the article and bring it to class.
Usually group posting proceeds as follows:
Each person who is supposed to post a response to readings (this week it's group A) does a "Create New Post" (log in to Comp Teaching and click on it).
Then, other people can "comment" on what specific people say more easily.
I just thought of another way to explain it...
If you're responding to the readings, "Create a New Post."
If you're responding to what someone has said in a post, "Comment."
Hey Jeremy, good way to use the metaphor. I think what happened to you is unfortunate. I think it's a reminder to us now as future instructors to make sure we don't prejudge situations or students too quickly. You went for a counseling session, but I don't think that's what you got.
p.s. I got an F on my first quiz in Comp I. I didn't understand the syllabus and so I didn't do the required reading for that day. Big mistake. I still remember the color of the stalls in the girl's bathroom. Blue like the "publish your comment" button blue. Fitting. Blue and blubbering go together.
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