FYWP

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about how I bring my "self" into the classroom, and how my teaching persona reflects or refracts my personality and interests outside the classroom. And I'm going to try to come up with a more substantive post about that soon. But in the meantime, here's an example of how I bring my goofy side along when I teach (hopefully, in this case, with a purpose).

The first genre my students write in WR121 is the memoir. Since the focus of my class is developing environmental literacy alongside genre literacy (and all the other literacies we engage in WR121), the memoir assignment asks students to write about a "natural literacy event." We start with the "literacy events" chapter in The Call to Write, and a discussion of how literacy events reveal more complex relationships and meanings than might be apparent from a cursory reading of the content. That idea leads, through a couple of readings by Emerson, Thoreau, David Sedaris, and others, to the idea of a "natural literacy event" as a moment or experience that calls attention to the hidden complexities of our relationship to place -- cultural, historical, ecological, and personal dimensions that we aren't always paying attention to as we move through space.

Here's an amusing (unless you're the client) example of why clear, careful writing matters in the public sphere:

A federal judge irked at grammatical and typographical errors in a motion for dismissal has blasted the Florida lawyer who filed it and ordered him to copy his client on the criticism.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell denied the motion to dismiss without prejudice, saying that it was "riddled with unprofessional grammatical and typographical errors that nearly render the entire motion incomprehensible." The judge also attached a copy of the motion that drew his ire, complete with red markings pointing out the errors. Above the Law has the story.

@ ABA Journal

According to The Daily Beast, Emerson is the most dangerous college in the US -- but only because of the statistical methods employed in the research. I discussed this report in both my WR101 and WR121 classes yesterday, for different reasons.

In WR101, we incorporated it into our ongoing discussion of Harris and "coming to terms," using it as a real world example of why being generous and honest about sources is so important. In WR121, it provided an example of research in the public sphere, and why being upfront about methodology (which the article is) is crucial for allowing your audience to accurately assess your findings. Whether we agree with the findings of this report or not, it gives us the tools we need to assess both the results and how those results were reached, so in that regard it's pretty responsible.

Of course, that doesn't answer the questions of whether it's responsible to publish a report that even your own article admits is somewhat misrepresentative, and whether it serves any interest other than driving up your audience and creating unnecessary anxieties.

As you introduce Harris' idea of "coming to terms" to your classes, I'll point toward a couple of links from last year that may help (they've worked well in my classroom, anyway).

1. Videos of rhetoric in action - These are a few interviews that demonstrate a variety of argumentative techniques. In particular, the Rod Blagojovich interview is great for coming to terms as the class tries to identify his project, look for key points where he advances that project, and assess the limits/pitfalls of that approach. Plus, the question of being "generous," in Harris' words, to such a villainized figure can spark great discussion.
2. Exuberance and deficiency - This post is about a description of how we converse with texts according to Jose Ortega y Gasset. The idea of "exuberance and deficiency" seems to resonate with students, and when I explain that this is a concept I'm sharing with them after I found it in a book by an author who found it in another book by someone who found it somewhere else, Harris' idea of academic writing being a conversation gets clearer. It's also allowed further discussion of why proper citation and accurate representation of a source is crucial as we get further from that source.

Many of us have begun WR101 with assignments asking students to think about the present and future of writing. So you may find this paean to the handwritten letter a provocative example for discussion. Also, Nicholson Baker's essay about testing the Kindle could be useful, too.

From the New York Times, Climate As Art shares the results of "a contest 'to see who can come up with fresh, captivating, accurate ways' to use various art forms to describe climate trends and their significance." Apart from being just plain fascinating, the contest entries offer a great range of examples of how the same issue can be addressed multiple modes, rhetorics, and genres.

Researchers at Ball State University have posted a survey for instructors of first year writing. They are particularly interested in multimodal assignments like those used in WR101 and WR121:

These 20 survey questions will take you approximately 10 to 15 minutes to complete. This study investigates the ways graduate teaching assistants and instructors teach multimodal assignments in First-Year Composition (FYC) courses. It also investigates current practices for teacher training in the field of rhetoric and composition, practices that help or hinder graduate assistants and instructors teaching multimodal assignments in FYC courses.

(via Kairos)

From The Atlantic, a terrific essay from Tim O'Brien about writing fiction and about what constitutes a story worth telling -- in particular, how to avoid being boring. I think O'Brien's argument also offers a lot to essay writers -- students or professional. There are a number of prescient passages worth quoting, but I'll try this one:

Another element of a well-imagined story, in my view, is a sense of gravitas or thematic weight. Inventing a nifty, extraordinary set of behaviors for our characters is not enough. A fiction writer is also challenged to find import in those behaviors. In the Cheerios example, at least a small, dry germ of gravitas can be found in the line "I was now but half a man." Without a turn such as that, and without the additional work of extending that bit of language into a larger dramatic whole, the anecdote amounts to little more than a clever but trivial riff on "halfness." Cleverness, in the end, is a sorry (though common) substitute for thematic weight.

This image by Spencer Platt of New York City on 9/11/09 and commentary from BAGnews could provoke a number of discussions, about historical images (useful with Tompkins, Neidich, and other texts in Reading Culture), or about whether 9/11 defines a generation (for readings of Hochschild, etc.). (Image via riley dog.)

If you're teaching a unit focused on style and fashion in WR101 -- or generations, too, I suspect -- these links may offer helpful examples. Plus, talking about "hipsters" is a pretty reliable way to get a room of Emerson students worked up in conversation and debate.

1. No More Hipster Scum!, a photo that speaks for itself (or does it?)
2. Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other 'Hipster', from The Onion
3. Hipsters Die Another Death at n+1 Panel: 'People Called Hipsters Just Happened to Be Young, and, More Often Than Not, Funny-Looking'
4. Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization at Adbusters
5. In Defense of Hipsters, in response to the Adbusters article
6. Also In Defense of Hipsters
7. And another In Defense of Hipsters

The challenge with these examples will be to move students away from relying on stereotypes and anecdotes, and to get them thinking more deeply about how creates definitions of groups, what is at stake in those definitions, and who holds power in those relationships. And speaking of power relationships, the older I get -- and the farther I am from any possibility of being hip myself -- the easier it is to play the "ignorant old timer" in these conversations, and give my students a chance to be native informants as they tell me who hipsters are. That can also be a good way to generate conversational energy (at your own expense, unfortunately).

Here's an unfortunate (though useful!) example of why context matters and how it can change: a page from an outdated children's book, and a conversation about what the intentions of the author may have been and whether or not those intentions matter. What's more interesting to me than the image itself, I think, is the unanswered question of whether or not this was originally meant to be satirical -- and the fact that NOT knowing is so crucial to interpreting the image.

A few links around digital teaching and writing, and the production of networked knowledge:

1. Innovative Practices for Challenging Times at Academic Commons
2. Bill Wolff's syllabus for Writing for Electronic Communities at Rowan University
3. Inventory of Social Media at UBC
4. Common Knowledge: Communal news in a fragmented world at Columbia Journalism Review

Job listings for next year will be appearing soon, so here are a few job-hunting links specific to community college positions:

1. Writing a Cover Letter for a Community College Job
2. Interviews at Community Colleges
3. What You'll Be Asked

And if you're interested in pursuing a CC position (or just learning more about higher ed), Confessions of a Community College Dean is an invaluable resource.

If you use Conor Boyland's essay "" in your WR101 class, this column by Maureen Dowd may pair with it nicely as another example of generalization and rhetoric rather than research and nuance (not to mention insults toward Boston). I think it's particularly valuable because Boyland's argument is the product of a young writer, so seeing Dowd -- an established professional -- rely on the same method demonstrates to our students how prevalent those problematic techniques are. Also, there are already a couple of critiques of Dowd's argument available to start the conversation, at Foreign Policy and Infocult.

On NPR this morning, a report about the end of Reading Rainbow offers this explanation for the show's demise:

Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading -- like phonics and spelling.

Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read -- but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.

"Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading -- [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."

Our students are obviously beyond their Reading Rainbow days, but I expect they did watch it (as did some of their instructors, I'd bet, though not those of us with as much salt as pepper in our beards). But that point above applies to what we do in our writing classrooms as much as it does to childhood reading: Are we teaching our students just how to write, giving them mastery of grammar and mechanics, or are we teaching them why to write. We already know what the skeptics think, but what about the rest of you? Do you intentionally address this twin concerns in your classroom, or do you focus more heavily on one than the other?

Don't miss Student writing is getting worse- or wait, it's getting better!, a fresh take on a familiar argument:

Ladies and gentlemen: It is time for the main event, the forever battle over students getting worse and worse as time goes on. Let's get ready to

RRRRUUUUUUMMMMMMBBBBBBBLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!!!

Just because, Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview by Robert Lanham.

Writing and rhetoric permeate games and game communities, and as a recent Pew study found, the civic engagement of gamers is greater than that of non-gamers, with higher instances of players considering moral and ethical issues as well as social responsibility -- and in many cases, communicating with others about these issues. Engaged writing is also connected to the way gamers learn the complicated strategies, tactics, and rhetorics within game worlds, while games are increasingly used as tools to teach writing.

Rhetoric/Composition/Play will be an edited collection designed for scholars new to computer/video games as well as those who are more expertly versed. The book will consist of academic essays that assess, theorize, and contextualize computer/video games vis-a-vis composition-rhetoric. We invite 900-1200-word proposals for this proposed collection...

Deadline for proposals is 15 January 2010

Since it isn't an election year, I will probably be using fewer examples of political rhetoric than I did last year (or not -- it's tough to beat the realm of politics for rich examples). But here's a sample assignment aimed at analyzing the rhetoric of campaigning, and a helpful interview with Layne Craig, the instructor who used the assignment.