Please visit my new blog entitled "A Rose In Winter" to view my final project. Here is the link:
If the link doesn't work, just type this address:
http://katpalmer12.blogspot.com/
Awesome class! Good luck to everyone!
Friday, April 29, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Beliefs About Writing and Learning-Revisited
Time to reflect and revisit ideas presented this semester and juxtapose them next to beliefs I had at the beginning of the semester. As a current teacher of writing -- in a high school composition class of senior Advanced Placement level students -- most of which are brighter and more motivated than those I would face in a standard freshmen composition class at the college level -- my standards for what it means to be a teacher of composition cannot really be altered much in terms of the high standards I expect of my students. I have always viewed writing with an open mind in terms of what can be done with it and have also resented the restrictions I have had in the past and present in terms of the methods I am allowed and not allowed to use in which to teach writing. So, this course has opened my eyes to what is now being considered in college level composition courses new ways in which to teach writing as new media influences the ways in which students compose. It has also inspired me to think of teaching composition in terms of viewing the act of writing as an act of composing. With that in mind, I will briefly revisit the original questions posed to us at the beginning of the semester.
1. Some people struggle with writing because they are not comfortable with the particular materiality of the writing process in which they are required to write. Some people would thrive better in a situation that allowed for them to compose in a media and format that is most comfortable for them and frees up the most potential for creative thinking.
2. I still believe some are more talented at writing than others and always will be. For someone like me to believe otherwise is to denigrate a talent that I myself possess. However, I do believe, with practice, writing, like any other skill, can be improved greatly. And hidden talents can be freed-up by alternative and varied methods of written composition.
3. I still go with my original answer. Writers need feedback and an audience for their work in order to improve. Maybe this can now be accomplished with our on-line writing communities and audiences, too.
4. I still enjoy picturing Hemingway at his old black Underwood in Paris. But, I realize that is an antiquated picture easily replaced by the lone blogger in a Starbuck's, shutting out the external world as he composes a new world on the screen.
5. I don't need to re-reflect on writing images in my head. At my age, there are too many. Writing and the teaching of writing has been a part of my life for a long time.
6. Technology is a fair weather friend and we must recognize its power and its shortcomings. Any skill that can be learned is technical in its way (like the writing process). Technology -- wonderful and exciting as it is -- should be used wisely as we should never become so dependent on it that we forget how to think and do things without it. And I don't say that with any kind of moral judgment or moral panic. I just think that even in Socrates time, when Plato and his buddies were scared that writing and reading would replace oral storytelling and teaching, the best remedy to that fear should have been to embrace the new but not forget the old. And lo and behold, hundreds of years later, we can still communicate, teach, tell stories, with only our mouth and our memories. Make new friends but keep the old.
7. My answer to 7 has not changed much except to add that technology has definitely changed the writing process. For me and everyone else. I know that I now never draft anything out in long hand on yellow legal pads anymore like I used to. First drafts disappear completely unless I think to electronically save each draft. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't save drafts. My brain works too fast for my handwriting skills -- my typing skills keep up better. I haven't quite mastered the art of thumb typing though, so my text messaging composition skills are lacking. Technology has definitely changed the writing process for the better for all writers. We just need to remember to safeguard our work against file corruption!
8. My answer hasn't changed much. Writing is social and private, but with the advent of the internet and text communication devices, it has become much more social than ever before and definitely an outlet for those who believe even their most private thoughts should be on display for anyone to see. Fun for the exhibitionist and voyeur in all of us!
9. If we can combat illiteracy using new media technologies I am all for it. I still believe much of the work and initiative needs to be taken by those who are considered illiterate. You can lead a horse to water and all that . . .
10. I am excited by the new possibilities for writing and rhetoric in the digital age. Like I said -- it's a good thing -- but we still need to remember some of the good methods of old and incorporate them with new. I am also excited about the possibility of teaching outside of the high school environment as hopefully at the college level, if the texts we have read are any indication of what is really happening out there, instructors of composition will be able to embrace new media technologies and teach composition in alternative and exciting ways that will be beneficial to students at all levels and backgrounds.
I have much to think about and learn. As a teacher, I have been, and always will be, the perpetual student.
1. Some people struggle with writing because they are not comfortable with the particular materiality of the writing process in which they are required to write. Some people would thrive better in a situation that allowed for them to compose in a media and format that is most comfortable for them and frees up the most potential for creative thinking.
2. I still believe some are more talented at writing than others and always will be. For someone like me to believe otherwise is to denigrate a talent that I myself possess. However, I do believe, with practice, writing, like any other skill, can be improved greatly. And hidden talents can be freed-up by alternative and varied methods of written composition.
3. I still go with my original answer. Writers need feedback and an audience for their work in order to improve. Maybe this can now be accomplished with our on-line writing communities and audiences, too.
4. I still enjoy picturing Hemingway at his old black Underwood in Paris. But, I realize that is an antiquated picture easily replaced by the lone blogger in a Starbuck's, shutting out the external world as he composes a new world on the screen.
5. I don't need to re-reflect on writing images in my head. At my age, there are too many. Writing and the teaching of writing has been a part of my life for a long time.
6. Technology is a fair weather friend and we must recognize its power and its shortcomings. Any skill that can be learned is technical in its way (like the writing process). Technology -- wonderful and exciting as it is -- should be used wisely as we should never become so dependent on it that we forget how to think and do things without it. And I don't say that with any kind of moral judgment or moral panic. I just think that even in Socrates time, when Plato and his buddies were scared that writing and reading would replace oral storytelling and teaching, the best remedy to that fear should have been to embrace the new but not forget the old. And lo and behold, hundreds of years later, we can still communicate, teach, tell stories, with only our mouth and our memories. Make new friends but keep the old.
7. My answer to 7 has not changed much except to add that technology has definitely changed the writing process. For me and everyone else. I know that I now never draft anything out in long hand on yellow legal pads anymore like I used to. First drafts disappear completely unless I think to electronically save each draft. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't save drafts. My brain works too fast for my handwriting skills -- my typing skills keep up better. I haven't quite mastered the art of thumb typing though, so my text messaging composition skills are lacking. Technology has definitely changed the writing process for the better for all writers. We just need to remember to safeguard our work against file corruption!
8. My answer hasn't changed much. Writing is social and private, but with the advent of the internet and text communication devices, it has become much more social than ever before and definitely an outlet for those who believe even their most private thoughts should be on display for anyone to see. Fun for the exhibitionist and voyeur in all of us!
9. If we can combat illiteracy using new media technologies I am all for it. I still believe much of the work and initiative needs to be taken by those who are considered illiterate. You can lead a horse to water and all that . . .
10. I am excited by the new possibilities for writing and rhetoric in the digital age. Like I said -- it's a good thing -- but we still need to remember some of the good methods of old and incorporate them with new. I am also excited about the possibility of teaching outside of the high school environment as hopefully at the college level, if the texts we have read are any indication of what is really happening out there, instructors of composition will be able to embrace new media technologies and teach composition in alternative and exciting ways that will be beneficial to students at all levels and backgrounds.
I have much to think about and learn. As a teacher, I have been, and always will be, the perpetual student.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Author as Collector
After presenting the chapter "Box Logic" to our class, it got me thinking of the idea of author as collector. If composing is indeed a collection of ideas, who is to say how these ideas can or "should" be organized. (That reminds me, I have a very self-reflective friend, forever questing to improve himself, who is attempting to eliminate the word "should" from his personal vocabulary. The power of language, indeed!) But, back to organizing ideas. Poets have had a handle on this much longer. Why can't ideas be organized in ways that do not always make sense to a linear perspective? The writer does not even have to have total control of how the ideas are organized. The reader can also have an active role. All of this intrigues me as a writer and as a teacher of writing.
As an aspiring novelist, I know eventually I would like to experiment with alternate ways in which to organize a story. In class, I brought up Mary Robison's novel "Why Did I Ever" as an example. In it Robison reflects her main character "Money's" ADD by embracing the result of her own battle with writer's block. To combat it, Robison set about writing a series of ideas and character sketches on notecards which instead of turning into a "traditional" novel, she collected them, put them in an order that made "sense" to the story, and thus the novel was born. At first glance, one might think that this was taking the easy way out of creating a conventional novel plot structure, but as one critic notes, "Don't be fooled by the short sequences and the fast pace of Mary Robison's wry and tragic novel into thinking that this is a 'light' or an 'easy' book. Quite the contrary; each section, however brief, is finely crafted and perfectly in tune. The pathos that runs through the story -- and we get it in increasing doses as the novel unfolds -- is as heartbreaking as the humor is laugh out loud funny." To read excerpts or find this novel, see this link.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Did-Ever-Mary-Robison/dp/1582432554/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303572335&sr=1-1
Geoffrey Sirc's ideas intrigue me and inspire me to think of ways in which I can reach the creative and compositional sensibilities of my students by allowing them to be archivists and curators as well as architects of their ideas. As Sirc states: "So composition as craving: teaching students to feel desire and lack . . .I want students, for example, to be as obsessed about rap, as interested in creating their boxed homages to it as Cornell was about Fanny Cerrito. It's important, I think, to have students work with lived texts of desire . . . in order to develop a passional aesthetic like Cornell's and Benjamin's" (117).
In other words, I wish for my students as writers what I wish for myself. To not let form or structure hinder the voice and passion of their writing -- no matter what kind of writing it is. And to allow themselves to "collect" and "find" ideas that inspire them. As a teacher, and most intriguingly, as a writer, I hope to incorporate the objet trouve -- or "found object" into my writing assignments and my writing -- which as an idea is not new. Sirc quotes Apollonaire in 1912: "Prospectus, catalogues, posters, advertisements of all sorts which contain the poetry of our age: The collage technique, that art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image, is the most important innovation in the art of this century . . ." (118). As the aforementioned media was also new to that century, one cannot help but imagine what kinds of creations we as writers today can create using not only those types of media created 100 years ago that are still important today, but incorporating them with the new media of today. The possibilities are endless.
As an aspiring novelist, I know eventually I would like to experiment with alternate ways in which to organize a story. In class, I brought up Mary Robison's novel "Why Did I Ever" as an example. In it Robison reflects her main character "Money's" ADD by embracing the result of her own battle with writer's block. To combat it, Robison set about writing a series of ideas and character sketches on notecards which instead of turning into a "traditional" novel, she collected them, put them in an order that made "sense" to the story, and thus the novel was born. At first glance, one might think that this was taking the easy way out of creating a conventional novel plot structure, but as one critic notes, "Don't be fooled by the short sequences and the fast pace of Mary Robison's wry and tragic novel into thinking that this is a 'light' or an 'easy' book. Quite the contrary; each section, however brief, is finely crafted and perfectly in tune. The pathos that runs through the story -- and we get it in increasing doses as the novel unfolds -- is as heartbreaking as the humor is laugh out loud funny." To read excerpts or find this novel, see this link.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Did-Ever-Mary-Robison/dp/1582432554/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303572335&sr=1-1
Geoffrey Sirc's ideas intrigue me and inspire me to think of ways in which I can reach the creative and compositional sensibilities of my students by allowing them to be archivists and curators as well as architects of their ideas. As Sirc states: "So composition as craving: teaching students to feel desire and lack . . .I want students, for example, to be as obsessed about rap, as interested in creating their boxed homages to it as Cornell was about Fanny Cerrito. It's important, I think, to have students work with lived texts of desire . . . in order to develop a passional aesthetic like Cornell's and Benjamin's" (117).
In other words, I wish for my students as writers what I wish for myself. To not let form or structure hinder the voice and passion of their writing -- no matter what kind of writing it is. And to allow themselves to "collect" and "find" ideas that inspire them. As a teacher, and most intriguingly, as a writer, I hope to incorporate the objet trouve -- or "found object" into my writing assignments and my writing -- which as an idea is not new. Sirc quotes Apollonaire in 1912: "Prospectus, catalogues, posters, advertisements of all sorts which contain the poetry of our age: The collage technique, that art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image, is the most important innovation in the art of this century . . ." (118). As the aforementioned media was also new to that century, one cannot help but imagine what kinds of creations we as writers today can create using not only those types of media created 100 years ago that are still important today, but incorporating them with the new media of today. The possibilities are endless.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Students Who Teach Us
Note: Sorry again that I'm behind on the blogs. Hoping to catch up in a chunk this week while on spring break from my teaching job. Been thinking a lot about all of this material -- just haven't had a chance to get it all down. So, here goes.
I found the chapter on "Students Who Teach Us" to be alternately inspiring and infuriating. As a teacher, most of what I was "taught" by reading this chapter is the confirmation of an idea I have been harboring for a long time. Not every student -- not even every intelligent, talented student -- needs to be bound for a traditional academic college or university. What ever happenend to acknowledging that some people have talent for things other than what a traditional college education can bring them? If "David's" story teaches us nothing else, it is that a student like him has the talent and ambition to "make it" and become successful using the talent he is most interested in honing -- in his case -- web design. What would have been so wrong with steering a student like him to a school like, for instance, DeVry Technical University? I don't know much about a school like that, but I am hoping a traditional freshman comp. English class would not be part of the curriculum to succeed there. Why can't students go on to hone professional skills without someone attempting to make academics or academic writers out of them if they are just not interested in honing those types of skills? Shouldn't a person choose the kind of education that suits them best once they get out of the public school rat race? I've heard even from a few students at the "college prep" school where I teach that some of them wonder why they are being pushed to go to college when they really don't want to go. Why is it that we, as composition teachers, have to become all things to all students? Shouldn't there be classes geared toward different kinds of literacy and communication depending on the kind of field or interest that students have and want to participate in?
Cynthia L. Selfe points out that "to make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full range of literacies -- emerging, competing, and fading -- English composition teachers have got to be willing to expand their own understanding of composing beyond conventional bounds of the alphabetic. And we have to do so quickly or risk having composition studies become increasingly irrelevant" (54). While I can appreciate her point and her urgency, I also wonder how much we as composition teachers have to accept that written language is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Is it? Or are we just expanding our boundaries of "composition" to include other forms of communication. While I agree that non-alphabetic communication is compelling and more relevant to some students, I do feel that until that time that the written word and conventional forms of composition disappear all together (which is hopefully never), it is still the job of the composition teacher to teach students to think well on the page using the written word. We can and should expand our knowledge and acknowledge that some students have more talent in other forms of communication, but that is where "differentiated" instruction comes into play. If we teach to all forms of communicators -- the visual, the verbal, the tactile, and anything in between -- hopefully we can cover all bases and all learn from each other.
Which again begs the question: What is so wrong with taking what you "need" from education and leaving the rest? As Selfe states through David's case, that he does not "subscribe -- at least in the same way his teachers do -- to the print literacy values and practices that many faculty at his university still hold up as standards; he has found them, frankly, of limited relevance in his life, in his attempts to get an education and to enter a sphere of economic success and personal fulfillment . . .And, I suspect that if forced to choose between the traditional authority associated with a college degree -- based on the standards of and allegiance to -- print literacy -- and an opportunity to make a living as a Web designer . . . there would be little to sway him toward the degree" (54). Why does he need to make a choice? If he can gain "economic success and personal fulfillment" without the college degree, why does he need it? Is it society's guilty conscience that says he does? Why can't he attend a technical university instead that doesn't care if he can write a literary analysis or other traditionally academic paper? Or, is it that traditional universities, for fear of becoming obsolete or being accused of being "elitist" now feel that a college degree should be reinvented to acommodate a less academic kind of student? Is our point of embracing new literacies truly to keep up with the times or to acommodate students who are too distracted by the times to keep up with traditional methods of academic curriculum? Either way, the writing is on the wall. Students are different now than they ever were before and new forms of literacy do need to be embraced in the classroom. But, in embracing the new, we will hopefully continue to teach what is good about the old, or risk alienating students who still thrive by communicating with "traditional" forms of the written word. The key might be in finding the right balance to accomodate all.
I found the chapter on "Students Who Teach Us" to be alternately inspiring and infuriating. As a teacher, most of what I was "taught" by reading this chapter is the confirmation of an idea I have been harboring for a long time. Not every student -- not even every intelligent, talented student -- needs to be bound for a traditional academic college or university. What ever happenend to acknowledging that some people have talent for things other than what a traditional college education can bring them? If "David's" story teaches us nothing else, it is that a student like him has the talent and ambition to "make it" and become successful using the talent he is most interested in honing -- in his case -- web design. What would have been so wrong with steering a student like him to a school like, for instance, DeVry Technical University? I don't know much about a school like that, but I am hoping a traditional freshman comp. English class would not be part of the curriculum to succeed there. Why can't students go on to hone professional skills without someone attempting to make academics or academic writers out of them if they are just not interested in honing those types of skills? Shouldn't a person choose the kind of education that suits them best once they get out of the public school rat race? I've heard even from a few students at the "college prep" school where I teach that some of them wonder why they are being pushed to go to college when they really don't want to go. Why is it that we, as composition teachers, have to become all things to all students? Shouldn't there be classes geared toward different kinds of literacy and communication depending on the kind of field or interest that students have and want to participate in?
Cynthia L. Selfe points out that "to make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full range of literacies -- emerging, competing, and fading -- English composition teachers have got to be willing to expand their own understanding of composing beyond conventional bounds of the alphabetic. And we have to do so quickly or risk having composition studies become increasingly irrelevant" (54). While I can appreciate her point and her urgency, I also wonder how much we as composition teachers have to accept that written language is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Is it? Or are we just expanding our boundaries of "composition" to include other forms of communication. While I agree that non-alphabetic communication is compelling and more relevant to some students, I do feel that until that time that the written word and conventional forms of composition disappear all together (which is hopefully never), it is still the job of the composition teacher to teach students to think well on the page using the written word. We can and should expand our knowledge and acknowledge that some students have more talent in other forms of communication, but that is where "differentiated" instruction comes into play. If we teach to all forms of communicators -- the visual, the verbal, the tactile, and anything in between -- hopefully we can cover all bases and all learn from each other.
Which again begs the question: What is so wrong with taking what you "need" from education and leaving the rest? As Selfe states through David's case, that he does not "subscribe -- at least in the same way his teachers do -- to the print literacy values and practices that many faculty at his university still hold up as standards; he has found them, frankly, of limited relevance in his life, in his attempts to get an education and to enter a sphere of economic success and personal fulfillment . . .And, I suspect that if forced to choose between the traditional authority associated with a college degree -- based on the standards of and allegiance to -- print literacy -- and an opportunity to make a living as a Web designer . . . there would be little to sway him toward the degree" (54). Why does he need to make a choice? If he can gain "economic success and personal fulfillment" without the college degree, why does he need it? Is it society's guilty conscience that says he does? Why can't he attend a technical university instead that doesn't care if he can write a literary analysis or other traditionally academic paper? Or, is it that traditional universities, for fear of becoming obsolete or being accused of being "elitist" now feel that a college degree should be reinvented to acommodate a less academic kind of student? Is our point of embracing new literacies truly to keep up with the times or to acommodate students who are too distracted by the times to keep up with traditional methods of academic curriculum? Either way, the writing is on the wall. Students are different now than they ever were before and new forms of literacy do need to be embraced in the classroom. But, in embracing the new, we will hopefully continue to teach what is good about the old, or risk alienating students who still thrive by communicating with "traditional" forms of the written word. The key might be in finding the right balance to accomodate all.
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