Some Comments Regarding the Spring 2015 Term

I know that I am late in getting this put together, for which I can only apologize.

This term, I am teaching three sections of ENGL 3323: Technical Writing at Oklahoma State University: 006, 009, and 011. Materials for them are currently in preparation, although they will largely follow last semester's patterns. Note that "largely" does not mean "exactly," so students need to check again for updates. Among the adjustments that will be made is the inclusion of representative examples of student work. The examples are not perfect, certainly, but they will demonstrate what A-level work in the course can look like.

Already, one change has been obligatory. The syllabus I had sent to my colleague for distribution on the first day has been amended. My office hours for the term are now

• MWF 0930-1020, 
• MWF 1130-1220, and
• By appointment

I had been waiting for confirmation of another regular meeting to make the final assignment. Please do note that I am exceedingly unlikely to be able to make appointments on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as I have prior standing commitments on those days, and appointments after my teaching day is done (at approximately 1520) are also unlikely. I am, however, happy to come in early, and the OSU Writing Center is an excellent resource (go early and often).

On a personal note, I look forward to working with the 57 students currently enrolled in my classes. Most of those in my classes last term were enjoyable to have, and I hope to repeat the experience.

A Note about Social Media Connections

It happens every so often that students currently enrolled in classes I am teaching ask to connect with me on social media. I am flattered by the requests, but I cannot accept them from students who are currently in my charge. It creates too much of a potential conflict of interest.

I am happy to accept such requests once the semester is done, of course, and I will not remove the connection if a student enrolls with me for subsequent terms, but we need to get through a class together before I can in good conscience make that kind of connection.

A Survey

Students in my Fall 2014 classes, if you would be so kind as to visit this site and fill out the survey there, I would be greatly obliged.

Blog Use Survey

Students, if you would be so kind as to fill out the following survey so that I can improve my course offerings, I would be appreciative. -Prof. Elliott

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hY6jkZtPYGAkaYamJ-I7t6rzkGVoz1c-k8_Vb91r7gE/viewform

A Comment about Why This Matters

In almost every term and in almost every class, I get the question of why what I ask my students to do matters.  Several answers are forthcoming, which I need not repeat; they may be read at the links below:

http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/07/i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo/ (yes, the URL is funny)
http://m.chronicle.com/article/Ahas-Ahead/143867/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/01/01/258674011/editing-your-lifes-stories-can-create-happier-endings?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=share&utm_campaign

To them I add the notion that the increasing media-saturation in which all of us are embedded serves to present increasing numbers of symbols at varying degrees of overtness and abstraction.  Being able to recognize and interpret them, using that interpretation to drive understanding of the things containing the symbols, the things being represented in the symbols, those who propagate the symbols, and we who perceive the symbols is therefore increasingly important.  Among many other things, my classes teach the recognition and interpretation of symbol.

I have said in class that the world tries to mess with our heads.  The symbols are a major avenue for doing so.  Drive well rather than being run over.

A Comment Regarding Reports

During the Spring 2014 term at Oklahoma State University, I will be trying to write brief reports of classroom attendance and activities in the hopes of providing a useful study guide for students.  I do not normally prepare lecture notes ahead of class time, instead setting out with general guidelines of what materials to cover and composing notes along with the discussion as class goes on; posting reports to this webspace will offer students a better chance to review.  Too, it makes use of a resource I know I have not been diligent in employing.

Generally, I mean to record attendance and major points of discussion as well as noting any major assignments made or soon to be due.  Long narratives will likely be lacking.  Other information will appear as needed.

A Comment Regarding Textbook Selection

For the section of ENGL 2543: Survey of British Literature I I am teaching at Oklahoma State University in the Spring 2014 term, I am using the second edition of the Broadview Anthology of British Literature rather than the traditional Norton Anthology.  That the text is not the "usual" selection for such a course is known to me (as is the unfortunate additional cost), but there are reasons that I prefer it.

One of them is tied, I think, to the increased cost.  Compared to the edition of the Norton Anthology available to me when I had to select the textbook for my course, the Broadview offers a broader view (please forgive the wording) of the literary history of the British Isles.  It includes more authors and works outside the traditional canon, and I am making a point of extending my class outside the canon.  This is in part due to comments in Tim William Machan's January 2012 Speculum piece “Chaucer and the History of English" and Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch's entry on Robert Southey in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that argue against the use of celebrity figures as the representatives of their times; I am convinced by the line of reasoning that holds that the very exceptionalism from their contemporaries influences celebrities' celebrity.  Thus, to offer a more detailed image of what earlier British literatures were, I look to the anthology that reproduces more of the non-canonical, traditionally transmitted works (although I do not shy away from treating many of the old standards).

Another reason has to do with the versions of the texts presented, my views on which follow from my own coursework during my graduate schooling.  I inherited from my professors there views on the translation of Beowulf conducted by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heany (excellent poet but not the best translator), which is in the Norton Anthology, and of Marie Boroff's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (one of the better if not the best done yet), which once was but is no longer.  That the one is present and the other absent argues against the Norton.  Also, I like Liuzza's Beowulf as a piece of poetry and as a reasonably accurate philological representation of the text in Cotton Vitellius A.xv, and I like James Winny's work with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight--and both appear in the Broadview Anthology of British Literature.

Yet another is a result of my own scholarly focus.  My MA and PhD were awarded by a department whose mission is explicitly generalist.  Within that literary generalism, however, I focused my attentions on medieval English literature and the ways in which it has been transmitted and appropriated; more narrowly within that, I have attended to Arthurian legendry.  Both my master's thesis and doctoral dissertation explicitly concern themselves with Arthuriana, as do one of my earlier scholarly publications and a number of my conference presentations.  That I am an Arthurianist is fairly well established.  That I would therefore focus my teaching in a survey of earlier British literature on Arthuriana therefore makes sense.  I think that the Broadview Anthology of British Literature does a better job treating Arthuriana than does the Norton, and for that reason, as well as the others I name, I selected it as the textbook for my Spring 2014 section of ENGL 2543: Survey of British Literature I at Oklahoma State University.

A Return to a Reading List

Quite some time back, I mentioned a beginning reading list that I came up with in response to a student question.  While I no longer clearly recall the student or the class in which the student asked the question, I have from time to time revisited the idea of a beginning reading list, something that can serve to help students who may have been less overtly and directly socialized into the mainstream cultural background of the American academic humanities than others to integrate more fully.  It continues to trouble me somewhat that the reading list I discuss in that long-ago post is so heavily Anglo- and male-centric as it is, although I must admit that my own reading has not gone as far outside that set as I should like for it to do.  But there are some additions I can make to it, additions that reflect my desire to be more inclusive and capacious in my reading and that reflect, if in only a small way, the ongoing process of globalization that is affecting the entirety of United States mainstream culture.  They are in no particular order:

• Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
• Sun Tzu, The Art of War
• Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
• Cervantes, Don Quixote
• Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
• Julian of Norwich, Ancrene Riwle
• Isaac Asimov's Robot and Foundation novels
• J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes writings
• Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Twain, Huckleberry Finn
• Eliot, "The Waste Land"
• Buck, The Good Earth
• Morrison, Beloved and The Bluest Eye
• O'Brien, The Things They Carried
• Swift, "A Modest Proposal"
• Jigoro Kano, Kodokan Judo
• George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series
• John McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
• David Crystal, The Stories of English
• Harry G. Frankkfurt, On Bullshit
• Phyllis Wheatley's poetry
• Anne Bradstreet's poetry

As I noted before, I note again: there are many, many others that can be added to such a list.  Perhaps, in time, I will return to the list again.

Until then, there is this to consider: What does it mean to have a standard reading list?

A Belated Opening Comment for the Fall 2013 Term at OSU

As I may have mentioned, I have moved, taking up a position as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.  My duties in the position have me teaching four classes, two sections each of ENGL 1113: Composition I and ENGL 3323: Technical Writing.  Each section has nineteen students enrolled, and I admit that I am looking forward to paying more individual attention to my students than my previous work, teaching six or more sections that began with an average of thirty students on the roster, allowed.

I am also looking forward to a return to the traditional American university experience.  I have not had access to it since my graduate work, and even as an undergraduate attending a doctorate institution, I did not have quite so much of it as might be supposed.  The school I went to for my BA is a relatively new creation, dating back no further than 1969.  There are and have been many excellent scholars there, but less than forty years is not time for a great many traditions to develop--and as a medievalist and student of textual transmission and reception, I am interested in traditions.

The lower teaching load ought to allow me more time to work on my own scholarship, as well.  While in my previous position, I did what I could to keep abreast of current research and to contribute to it in conference presentations, but there was only so much that I could do with the teaching load I carried.  With less of that to handle, as well as less time spent in commuting (I was an hour home to office in New York, and now I am half that--and a nice walk, to boot!), I ought to be able to spend more time writing the kinds of things that will help me to find a permanent position in the academic world.

I am quite happy to begin in this new venture, therefore, and I look to make the most of it.

To What End All This?

Something occurred in my class today which has repeatedly happened before and yet surprises me each time: a student asked what the reason for the class is.  That students enrolled in practical, productive majors--particularly at a technical school, where I currently teach--should ask why they need to have courses in English or public speaking makes a certain amount of sense, I admit; it does not seem immediately obvious why someone in training to fix air conditioners, for example, or fill eyeglass prescriptions would need to be able to get up in front of a group and speak for a few minutes on a simple topic, to write a short contrastive essay, or to read a newspaper article and render up a quick summary of it.

There are reasons, however, that such things are and have for quite some time been fairly standard parts of collegiate curricula in the Western world (however fraught such terms as "standard" and  "Western world" can be).  One fairly instrumental reason that I tell my students and that I try to demonstrate to them through example is that there may well be circumstances, regardless of a person's field of study, that require such things.  Anyone may be called upon to give testimony in front of a judge, a jury, and lawyers, for example, and many people will have to make a solid argument for getting money--venture capital and initial investments, after all, do not come with the rain.  Practicing how to make such things happen then becomes potentially important.

Perhaps more important is that the students themselves are subjected to many such appeals.  They, and I, are inundated with arguments each day.  People try to get us all to do things, to give them money, to adhere to certain codes of behavior and standards of conduct.  They work upon us, and I work upon my students, and the students work upon me, to produce specific results, not all of which are to the benefit of those upon whom the work is done.  It is therefore necessary for all of us to understand how arguments are made so as to be able to perceive when others are trying to take advantage of us.  There is no way to offer meaningful resistance to manipulation otherwise, and I do not know many who delight in being manipulated.  Conversely, when we see that others are at least making an honest and sincere attempt to persuade us appropriately, we can see that they are at least according us some measure of respect, and we can therefore know better how we ought to treat them.

Related to unpacking how others attempt to manipulate or persuade us is unpacking what our utterances and those of others reveal about us.  The things to which we refer indicate much about what we value; they show what we think is important and what we think our audiences think is important.  If I say that something is a Sisyphean task, I am showing that I take as a common reference point certain aspects of Classical myth--or that I think my audience does.  (Such things also allow for an economy of speech and writing--I can say the task is "Sisyphean" rather than having to explain that it is one which I believe to be "fundamentally impossible and futile to pursue but equally impossible to set aside."  Many of my students express a desire to "get in and get out," yet they despise trying to master sets of knowledge that allow for such referentiality, and I do not understand it.)  They speak to our acculturation and our ability to understand and engage with the cultures in which others are enmeshed, promoting understanding of ourselves and one another.  In such understanding, we can come to better know one another and to realize the common humanity of which we all partake.

It is an unfortunate truth that many of the problems we have--the various "isms" that are so frequently decried come to mind--are a result of people not understanding one another.  Many other problems result from people not valuing one another, however well they may or may not understand each other--although I tend to think that the undervaluation proceeds from an incomplete understanding.  It follows that developing a superior understanding will help to solve those problems, and since study of the humanities helps to foster that understanding, it can help to improve how we interact with one another and, it can be hoped, the world in which we do so.

More to Get Started in Spring 2013

For the Spring 2013 term at Technical Career Institutes, I am teaching the following classes:

ENG 099: Basic Communication (two sections)
ENG 101: Freshman Composition 1 (one section)
ENG 202: Technical Writing and Presentation (one section)
HUM 110: Speech (two sections)

In each, I hope to advance students' knowledge and understanding of rhetorical principles and practices, whether delivered orally or in writing.  To my mind, work on both sides of the argument--interpretation and production--is necessary to do so.  Accordingly, I have my students examine arguments as well as develop them.

This does bring up the question of what is and ought to be expected of such classes.  For many students, the expectation is that I will lecture and they will passively receive.  And I do, admittedly, do a lot of lecture.  Many of the students in my classes are, for whatever reason, not thoroughly grounded in the academic background knowledge that many classes in the curriculum at the school take for granted, and it is necessary to help them get up to speed.

At the same time, collegiate instruction cannot be simply the imposition of information.  It has to go further than that, into the development of mental practices and disciplines, as a number of articles in NCTE and other publications assert.  And those cannot be externally imposed. They have to be brought about from within the student, not just or even primarily from a textbook (which, frankly, most students do not read) or a series of lectures (to which many students pay little or no attention).  Collegiate education is not about the ability to recall information--although it does include that.  Rather, it is about the ability to assimilate that information, to integrate it with prior knowledge so as to arrive at a more nuanced and detailed understanding of the world and the people within it.

It is a thing worth considering.  Comments are welcome.

Spring 2013 Opening

The Spring 2013 term at TCI began last Wednesday.  I am only now beginning to get caught up with what I need to do to get the semester started; the time I usually do so (the week or so before the semester begins) was taken up with personal matters that could not be set aside.  I have been more or less ready to go with my classes, although I have not been able to get quite so far ahead as I should have liked to.

Still, even though the beginning of the term has been a bit rough, I am hopeful for it.  Today and tomorrow, I finish the first rounds of meetings with my classes, and I look forward to moving through the semester with new groups of students.

More, of course, will follow here as it becomes available.  Until then...

Fall 2012 Feedback

I gave the students in my ENG 202.210 class a chance to offer some direct feedback to me today.  We had a nice conversation, and there are some things that I hope to take away from the talk for application in later terms.

Written feedback (I had students fill out brief forms) let me know that I need to do two things, particularly.  The first is to clarify the explanations I give of assignments, particularly as they appear on the website and as they pertain to the first assignment: the standard email with attached memorandum.  As I noted during the class meeting, I am sketchy on the website so as to encourage class attendance, but, as I look back over what was submitted, perhaps I do need to tighten up what I offer there.  One or two students commented that doing so during the classroom explanation of the assignment is also likely to help.

The second is to secure more student assignments as examples.  I did note to the students the ethical (and sometimes legal) concerns involved in doing so, but I did accept their reasoning; they find it easier to understand the work of their peers than the examples I create and post.  The students did note that they wanted mine to remain up, but that having the divergent perspective was illuminating.  I can understand the position, and I will work in future terms to secure more student examples.  I may also do a small bit in the few remaining days of this term, so as to get things going.

Oral feedback (I did say we had a nice conversation) more or less reflected what was in the written feedback.  There were more complaints about other faculty in the spoken work than the written, though; I entertain it because students do have a right to air their grievances (particularly when I ask about what has gone poorly), although I do insist that they not use my colleagues' names.  Professional courtesy requires it.

I expect that I will have more to say regarding feedback and my reflections on the term's work in the coming days and weeks.  And I am going to be revising my syllabi extensively to reflect what I find in that feedback and what I continue to learn from my own ongoing reading and research.

Announcement

I received an email this morning.  As I have discussed before (here and here, among others), I do a fair bit of research work in addition to and in support of my teaching, much of which takes the form of conference presentations.  When discussing course calendars, I make note of when I will be away for conference work, and I comment (I well remember) that conference travel is nice work when it can be gotten.

I am going to get to do a bit more conference travel, it seems.

I received an email today which tells me that an abstract I submitted in response to the call for papers from the 2013 International Congress on Medieval Studies has been accepted.  Once again, I will be heading off to Michigan in May to give a talk about something about which I know a fair deal--and I will do so knowing more about it than I do now.

It is possible (although I make no promises in this regard) that I will use my work on the Congress paper as a model for paper development in my classes.  I am not about to offer sections of it here (that would actually be a breach of etiquette, since conference research is supposed to be original and not before published), but it does offer me the opportunity to engage, directly and intimately, in the writing processes I discuss with my students once again.  I will be able to reconnect with the kinds of things my students face in the assignments I offer them, and that ought to aid me in discussing things with them in what I hope will be a helpful fashion.

A Brief Note about a New Program

Today, I attended a training session for a new program that the school I teach at is trying out this term.  One of my classes this term will be recorded and the lectures posted online for students to access at home or elsewhere.  The idea is that students will have access to materials which will help them to understand the course better.  In theory, because students will know that they have access to the lectures on their own time, they can be more engaged and interactive during class time--note-taking will not interfere with their being able to respond to questions.

I welcome your thoughts about the matter.

Teaching Philosophy

One of my earlier career goals was to become a high-school English teacher, and I have in the past been certified to hold such a position in Texas.  While I was going through my training to earn such certification, I was advised by a number of my pedagogy professors to develop a coherent statement of my teaching philosophy.  That is, I was told that I ought to think about why I teach and use that to develop and refine how I teach.

As I made a concerted effort to be a conscientious student, I did as my teachers told me.  My first effort, though, was not a good one.  I have a copy of it somewhere, I think, but I am ashamed to pull it up and let other people see it.

My situation turned out such that I did not need to put forth that initial version of my teaching philosophy.  An opportunity to pursue graduate school opened up for me, one that promised to give me a change of scenery and a paycheck, and I took it.  After a semester in graduate school, though, I landed in another pedagogy class.  Like those I had been in earlier, that class required me to draft a teaching philosophy.

When I wrote a teaching philosophy for my graduate class, I was more pleased with the result than I was when I wrote one as an undergraduate.  I understood more going into the project, so I was in a better position to be able to learn more from actually doing the writing.  Also, I had had a lot more practice writing, so I was better at the task of putting words on the page.  What resulted has remained the teaching philosophy that I have "on file."  That is to say that when I have sent out applications for college teaching jobs over the past few years, the teaching philosophy I drafted for my graduate class has been the one that I have sent along with the other application materials.

So far, it seems to have worked out pretty well.  I have been able to land a full-time college teaching job at a two-year school in New York City, while most of the people in the field at my age are either part-time workers or still graduate assistants.  There is nothing wrong with being either, I must note, but full-time work has better benefits and brings in more money.

I try, though, to remain aware of what I do, and that means that I need to go back and look over what I have done to see how I can do it better when I have to do it again.  This process applies to my teaching, and since it does, it also has to apply to what underlies my teaching.  As such, I looked back at my teaching philosophy and realized that it needs some changing.

Some of the changes are a simple result of the passage of time.  It is nearly five years now since I wrote my current teaching philosophy, and my understanding of the world has changed (I hope for the better!).  Also, the last few years of teaching have been instructive.  When I initially wrote my teaching philosophy, I was in coursework at a state college, but my last five terms teaching have been at an urban, for-profit college that serves traditionally under-privileged populations.  I have learned things from the students in my classes that I would not have been exposed to did I not have the experiences I have had these past terms, and my beliefs about teaching have shifted with that new knowledge.

Right now, among the other writing projects I have to do (dissertation and conference papers), I am working on revising my teaching philosophy.  Without doubt, sections of it will appear here as I go through revision; I find that outside help is always welcome, and there is something about putting writing where others can see it that motivates me to be a bit more careful in how I set up my words.

Until then, I welcome comment about teaching practices and hints about where I can find more information about them.

Definitions
Conscientious /kân*shē*ĕn’shǝs/ (adj.)- devoted to or focused on doing the right thing
Pedagogy /pĕd’ǝ*gō*jē/ (n.)- the study and practice of teaching
Philosophy /fĭl*ŏs’ǝ*fē/ (n.)- "love of wisdom"; in this selection, a statement of guiding ideas and beliefs arrived at through a combination of study and observation in practice

Statement of Purpose

I had begun to write a different post altogether when it occurred to me that I ought to lay out my purpose in setting up this blog.  Like my teaching website, this blog exists to help my students with the work that I require them to do.  For the website, the help comes in the form of laying out the specific guidelines of individual assignments and courses.  The blog is for students to get examples of writing (particularly summaries) and to see writing in development.  Because there is less formatting work involved, producing text in a blog tends to be faster.  Accordingly, I can be more responsive to student concerns and issues in this blog.

With some luck, I may be able to engage students in discussions in the comments, as well.  That, though, will depend greatly on the students and how things go, overall.

One additional note about this blog needs to be made.  As it is explicitly a teaching concern, I am likely to offer definitions for terms.  In most of my writing, I do not do so.