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.

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 the Spring 2014 Literacy Narrative

The literacy narrative I assigned to my students at Oklahoma State University in the Spring 2014 term focuses on redeeming a literacy experience thought negative at the time of its occurrence.  I have exhorted my students to consider something bad that has happened to them in terms of their literacy and to look for how that thing has been made good in the time since.  My initial, and admittedly cursory, review of their drafts has shown me that many students are focusing too much on the bad and not enough upon how it has become good for them; the latter is treated in a paragraph or two at most, when it really ought to be the bulk of the paper.  (And I have tried to model it in the literacy narrative example I posted for them.)

The specific prompt of the assignment is something I take from my experience as a graduate student.  Early in my master's curriculum, I had a class in how to teach composition.  (I am fortunate to have been explicitly trained in how to do so; I know that many who are asked to teach that most common college course are asked to do so without the benefit of such a thing.)  Part of doing so involved the students in the class discussing what brought them into the study of English, particularly at the graduate level.  I will not go into the details of my own discussion, although I will note that the essay I wrote (badly) in response to the assignment has the subtitle "My Plan B in English."  The professor (who has since moved on to publish more excellent scholarship and to take on an administrative position at a prestigious, if relatively small, school) left on it a comment indicating that her hope for me was that I would be able to someday rewrite the piece as a success story.

I am not in such a place yet as will allow me to do so.  But I am in such a place that I can hope my own students will begin for themselves the work I have not yet completed and can therein perhaps not continue to abuse themselves with misconceptions about their own failures.  I can hope that they do not make the mistakes I have made; that they will err is certain, as it is for us all, but I hope that they will make new and better mistakes.

And, just to clarify, I had determined the topic before I read this piece.  But I appreciate the piece, nonetheless, and recommend it to my students (again) for their consideration.

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.

Regarding a Grading Practice of Mine

When I mark student work, I tend to make end-comments more frequently than I do in-line or sidebar comments.  What usually happens is that I develop a digital form which I keep open in a window alongside that in which I open the document I am evaluating, and as I read the latter, I make comments in the former.  From those comments, I determine the assessment I will accord to the student document, and the score and my comments are appended to the end of the student document before I send it back to the student and enter the grade into my records.  This allows me to evaluate papers fairly quickly while still allowing for reasonably thorough assessment.

It also allows me to set up yet more practice for my students.  I have found that when I do leave in-line or sidebar comments, my students make no other adjustments to their papers than the things specifically commented-upon.  When there are systemic issues, they are not corrected throughout the students' papers, and the students tend to repeat the same errors in future work.  (Too, if I do miss one or two errors--as happens, since I am but human--they are not corrected when the students go back over their work if all the students do is "fix" what is marked.)  Offering end-comments, however, denies the students the easy fix-what-is-marked-and-everything-else-is-fine option for correction.  It requires students, if they will actually work to improve upon their papers (and several have told me that they do not), to read through their work carefully, paying attention not only to the surface-level concerns that they and many members of the general public equate with "good" writing, but to the deeper issues of content and style that actually make for good writing.  Admittedly, it involves more work for students, prompting complaints (oddly frequently from the same students who will beg for extra credit opportunities), but it also involves the kind of self-evaluation and assessment that typifies good writing, meaning that it is a valuable exercise for students to do.

Some Concluding Comments for the Fall 2013 Term at Oklahoma State University

I realize that I have been far from diligent in maintaining this webspace this term.  I will not make excuses for the deficiency, although I will note that it seems to have not affected student performance substantially; the average grades in the four classes I taught this term seem to be much as they were at comparable institutions, as does the distribution of individual assignment grades.  I take some small comfort in knowing that my deficiency has not translated into student deficiency.

Even so, I am annoyed by my lack of performance even more than I have in the past been with demonstrated lacks from my students.  They are in a position to learn, and so errors from them are to be expected.  I am still learning--I am not so arrogant as to believe that I know all that I need to know--but I am supposed to have demonstrated a work ethic superior to that I expect of my students, here and elsewhere.  That I have not done so galls me, despite the lack of actual and enforceable consequences upon me for the lack.

There is perhaps a teachable thing in this.  Even if I am not strictly accountable to others for what I do or do not do here, I am accountable to myself for my in/actions.  The intrinsic motivation demonstrated (if abortively) is something I hope that my students will develop in their own lives as readers and writers; to truly engage with the written word requires that the reason for doing so come from within rather than without.  Indeed, the purpose of the external motivation of the GPA and accolade is to get students--any of us who read and write, really--accustomed to engaging with text so that the internal drive to attend to text and respond to it in kind can be given mental space and material to develop.

Even if it is the case that the internal motivation sometimes falters, as I have shown this term, it is the only real means to find an authentic readerly method and writerly voice, and it is towards the development of those in my students that my teaching is in no small part directed.

Comments about an Article Read in Flight

Certain affairs required me to take a trip this July.  The details of the trip are not relevant, except to say that I flew via United Airlines, and so I had the opportunity to read the July 2013 issue of Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine offered by the airline.  It was a quick read and for the most part unentertaining, but one point did stand out as particularly relevant to teaching.  To wit, in Arnie Cooper's article "Mr. Fix-It," Kyle Wiens of iFixit is reported as refusing "to hire people with poor grammar.  'I understand missing a comma, but if you use "to," "too" and "two" [sic] incorrectly,' he said at the time, 'it shows me you have no idea what you’re talking about.'"  The remarks serve as a reminder that it is not only English teachers and professors who care about such things.  It is not only in the academy that adherence to prescribed standards of usage matters, but in professional contexts as well.

While Wiens's comments do seem to partake of narrowly prescriptivist views that are not necessarily in accord with the best understandings of language and usage held by linguists and rhetoricians, they do align with prevailing popular understandings of "good" writing.  Freedom from "error" is one of the things for which people look when they decide that a piece of writing is worth reading, and it is often (if incorrectly) used as an indicator of competence and intelligence--as Wiens indicates of his own hiring practices.  Having a firm command of the "standards" that have grown up through repeated use and tacit social agreement, then, is something that is immensely helpful for those seeking work, and not just in the "soft" fields of the academic humanities, but in the "practical" field of electronics repair.  It is likely true in other fields, as well, allowing for a quiet assertion of authority and credibility, as an authoritative, credible source is more likely to be believed and valued than one that is not.

Also to be noted is an issue of context.  In-flight magazines are frequently read by those who fly, and many of those who fly do so for concerns of business and profession.  Many of my own flights are taken to get me to research conferences, and I often overhear others talking about business they will conduct when they get where the planes take them.  The in-flight magazines are therefore poised to spread their messages through the middle socio-economic strata of mainstream United States society (the lower being unlikely to fly much and the upper enjoying chartered flights that offer different entertainments)--where much hiring and economic activity take place.  Wiens's comments thus have the potential to spread widely, and although there are problems with them, they do serve to spread the idea that control of one's prose is a skill not just for the classroom, but for far outside of it.  And that is a welcome vindication of the years-long efforts of those who teach English.

Work Cited
Cooper, Arnie. "Mr. Fix-It." Hemispheres. Illus. Carl Wiens. Ink, 2013. Web. 15 July 2013.

About an In-Class Assigment in Technical Writing and Presentation

A few semesters ago, I began using a particular in-class assignment in my ENG 202: Technical Writing and Presentation classes at Technical Career Institutes.  In the assignment, I give students a document to read, usually one originating online.  I ask them also to examine the document in terms of how well it does or does not fulfill the functions of technical writing, as determined early in the semester through guided class discussion of students' background knowledge of technical documents (that the classes are at a technical school helps with this).

Students do, admittedly, have some difficulty with the assignment.  Several fail to understand the prompt that is given--"Discuss how [the selected document] functions, and how it fails to function, as a piece of technical writing.  Please refer to specific textual and paratextual details to support your discussion"--and offer instead a summary of the piece or a free response to it.  I am happy to see that the students can write an adequate summary and are able to engage meaningfully with their readings, but within the context of the course, I cannot necessarily reward their doing so on the assignments given.  If, as is often assumed to be the case for a technical writing class, the task is in large part preparation for the workforce, then I very much cannot reward inattention to the assigned task.  Employers are hardly likely to, after all.

Even with the difficulties some students face, however, the assignment is valuable.  Other students perform increasingly well on the designated tasks, improving each class meeting in terms of their abilities to stake claims, identify and deploy appropriate textual evidence to support those claims, and explain how the evidence functions to support their ideas.  They also improve in the usage issues upon which I comment as part of the requirements of the course and of academic instruction in writing generally.  And all of the students are repeatedly engaged in examination of "real-world" materials that correspond with the concepts covered in textbook readings and continued classroom discussion.  They are therefore offered abundant practice in working with technical writing materials and in interpreting evidence, both of which are likely to be helpful to them in their careers and the lives which enfold them.

The assignment could be easily deployed in other contexts.  For a technical writing class at something other than a technical school (and even at a technical school, although I do not do so with my own classes as explicitly as I perhaps could), the initial discussions of technical writing features that undergird the assignment could be supplemented with provided exemplars of technical writing, arriving at something of a list of genre features from representative high-quality examples of it.  Also, the documents I offer to my students tend to reflect my own personal and professional interests--they have included such disparate ideas as aikido, gaming, and tenure processes--largely because I am able to access them easily.  Some of the difficulties students have faced with the assignment possibly stem from unfamiliarity with the content.  Examples of  technical writing in other areas of inquiry could be meaningfully deployed to correct for that particular problem.  (This presupposes that it is a problem, which may well not be the case.)  Further, the documents I provide, owing to the limitations of the teaching environment in which I offer them, are somewhat decontextualized; they are often print-outs of online materials, and the shift in medium affects the way in which they can be interpreted.  Presenting them in their native hyperlinked online context could allow access to more illuminating paratextual features--as well as to hypertextual features which teaching more aligned with digital media can more effectively address.

While the above paragraph identifies ways in which I might improve upon my own use of the assignment, it is still one well worth using.  It, like the riddle assignment about which I have written before, does much of what I want to have done in the classroom, offering students practice in the specific skill proficiencies mandated by course descriptions and connecting that knowledge to the larger cultural contexts in which my students will work and live.

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.

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.

About Riddles

Across several semesters and levels of instruction (remedial, developmental, and mainstream freshman composition; sophomore-level genre writing), I have used riddles as a teaching device.  What I have tended to do is take riddles, either pre-existing as from the Exeter book or generated by me, and embed proofreading errors of the sorts I see in student papers into them.  The riddles, thus adjusted, are given to the students, who are directed to do three things with them:

1. Proofread the text of the riddle, either via proofreader's marks or a corrected re-writing, so as to make it conform to the standards of edited academic American English as defined in the grammar handbooks included in the standard course textbooks.  Students are encouraged to make use of the reference guides to aid them in making the corrections.
2. Offer a solution to the riddle.  Students are told that the "correctness" of the answer is not so important as what happens with whatever answer is given in the next part of the assignment.
3. Explain how the solution to the riddle they provide fits all of the clues given in the text.  Even if the answer is not the "right" one, a sound explanation of how the evidence in the text supports the answer provided is appreciated.

I tend to take the work the students do on the riddles as quiz grades, and I tell the students truthfully that I only actually grade parts 1 and 3 of the assignment.  That is, I am interested in how well they proofread and how well they deploy evidence to support their ideas.  In doing so, I offer the students practice with the surface-level concerns that need addressing (partly for mutual intelligibility, partly because of institutional concerns in several of the classes) as well as the kind of argumentation that their writing in the classroom and critical engagement with the rest of their lives will require.  In brief, the riddles give the students the opportunity to practice many of the things that a writing class is supposed to teach, particularly as the curriculum at my current institution figures writing classes.

In past terms, students have tended to struggle with the work early in the semester, but improve throughout the term, until by the end of the course, they are doing fairly decently--and they appear to be deploying the skills so practiced in their more formal assignments.  I have therefore viewed my use of riddles as a successful teaching practice, and have continued to do it.

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.

More on Teaching Philosophy

Quite some time ago, I mentioned that I was engaged in revising my statement of teaching philosophy.  I have had occasion to work on it and review it a bit recently, for reasons that will remain private for now, and I am reminded, as the Fall 2012 term is about to begin at the school where I teach, that it is frequently helpful for me to discuss my own thoughts and understandings as I try to get students to develop their own.*

I remain convinced that if there is no challenge, there is no reason to improve, and the improvement of the self is the reason behind education, formal and informal.  Even an online satirist is aware of the latter, although he couches his assertions...indelicately.**  Although, as I know and have noted, many of my students are not convinced of the utility of what I teach--mostly rhetoric and composition, despite my academic background being mostly in literature--their lack of conviction does not negate the truth.  For we are all engaged in telling stories and in presenting arguments, and it behooves us all to be able to do so convincingly.  Too, we are all presented with stories and arguments seeking to compel our beliefs and actions, and it is incumbent upon us to be able to understand and analyze them so as to be able to reject those which are made poorly or are based upon bad ideas.

Thus, while it is perhaps true that my students will not ever have to compose a formal essay after leaving my classes, and they may never be positioned such that they are in direct opposition to another person in a debate, they will have to convince their bosses that they deserve to keep their job--and maybe that they even deserve a raise.  They may have the misfortune of being in a position to have to convince a jury of their peers that they are innocent of wrongdoing, or the similar misfortune of having to convince a jury of someone else's that they have themselves been wronged.  They may be in a position to be asked to do a thing that they find somewhat questionable, and so they will have to decide if the cost is worth the benefit.  Many will find themselves needing to impart lessons to the young without making the overt statement that so often prompts resistance.  Some of them will seek to prevail upon another person to give them the time and opportunity to fall in love with them.  None of these are insignificant concerns, and all of them are aided and abetted by deploying the skills my assignments teach and of which they foster practice.

Those assignments offer a relatively low-risk laboratory for those skills.  The worst that can happen to a student in my class as a result of the assignments is that the student gets a bad grade--and, in many cases, that grade can be brought up.  It is a far lesser consequence than erring in the "real-life" applications of those skills outside the classroom, and so it seems to me that students are well-served to be well and truly challenged in the classroom.

*Lad Tobin's Opinion piece, "Self-Disclosure as a Strategic Teaching Tool: What I Do--and Don't--Tell My Students," from College English 73.2 (November 2010: 196-206) comes to mind as one resource related to discussing one's own personal engagement with the subject matter being taught.  Mark Edmundson's "Against Readings" in Profession (2009: 56-65) springs to mind, as well.  So, too, does much of the training in teaching I received as an undergraduate and a graduate student.  It is not formal citation, I know, but it should suffice in a piece of writing so informal as a blog to account for whence some of my ideas derive.

**I make a point of trying to invoke current and popular media in my teaching and examples, as noted here, here, and occasionally here, among others.  Sometimes, my sources use naughty words.  Then again, so do major authors such as Shakespeare and Twain...

About Negative Evaluations

The academy--that is, the totality of the practicing and aspirant scholars involved in formal schooling--has two primary purposes: the dissemination and development of knowledge.  Both are necessary, as knowledge is of no value if it is not shared, but without the development of knowledge, there ceases to be something which can be shared.  It is therefore the duty of all scholars to work towards both ends--even if it is all too often the case that one is neglected in favor of the other.

I strive to perform both of the scholar's duties, to teach and to uncover more to be taught.  It is a commonplace that the latter informs the former, that by doing research in the literary humanities I increase my own base of knowledge, which I can then pass on to my students.  The type of knowledge gleaned, however, is not always of the expected sort, as I was reminded this morning.

As part of my work to develop new knowledge, I write papers (much as I ask my students to do).  As part of my work to disseminate that knowledge, I try to get those papers published.  That means that I have to send the paper out so that other people can read it and evaluate it for its form, its content, and a few other factors that vary by the publisher (again, much the same thing that I ask of my students, if on a slightly different scale).  A bit more than a year ago, I sent out a paper; today, I got an email saying that the paper had been rejected.

Not "Fix this up and we'll take it," but more like "No, it's not getting published."

I was not entirely pleased to find in the email what I found (again, as is often the case with my students when they receive my comments).  I have never excelled at accepting criticism gracefully, and, like many others, I do not like being told that something into which I put some effort does not suffice.  How unfortunate, then, that the world little concerns itself with my likes and dislikes.

After thinking on the email and the paper for a while, however, I was able to get far enough away from my initial emotional reaction to consider what the comments were actually saying.  The first thing was that they were discussing the paper and not the writer; it was my work, not myself, that was being evaluated.  Since it is the case that even the great ones err in the areas of their greatness, it is no shame to me that one individual effort was found lacking; it simply means that I must learn more and work harder.  I can hope that my students can come to the same realization for their own efforts.

The second was a reminder of something that I tell my own students.  For in the paper, I had performed a close reading of a particular poem.  That is to say that I went through the poem, line by line, and laid out its features of rhythm, rhyme, and syntax.  Doing so left me with several pages of details, which I gathered together in coherent prose, complete with appropriate citations, sound transitions, and all the adherence to the conventions of academic American English that could be asked.  What I lacked was something to do with the detail.  I got so caught up in picking out the small bits of information that I neglected to employ them for an end beyond themselves.  Thus the paper was incomplete despite its merits and despite butting right up against the maximum acceptable word count, so that it deserved the evaluation it received.

My knowledge developed as a result of my writing and submitting the paper.  I do have a much better understanding of the features of the poem about which I wrote, which is good.  Better, though, is that I have something teachable (even while I am on leave): at times, a solid, well executed effort just is not enough to meet the requirements of a given task.  That does not mean, however, that no good comes of the effort, and it does not mean that the person who makes the effort is of no value.  It just means that the person has not succeeded...yet.

Spring 2012 Semester Commentary

This is the final week of the Spring 2012 term at Technical Career Institutes, after which I will be on leave until the fall.  I do look forward to having the time off, which I will be using to travel around the United States and across the Atlantic to Ireland and the United Kingdom, but I find that I will miss some of what I have had here this term.

That is not to say that I will miss all of it.  Some things about this term I am glad to see go by.  One of them is the catastrophically high failure rate in my freshman composition classes--and it is not the result of poor performance so much as no performance.  Every semester, the students who fail my classes do so predominantly from simply not turning in work; they are bright and capable, but do not submit assignments.  It is not even that they turn work in late; they simply do not turn work in.  And this semester has been particularly bad for that.

I always wonder what I could have done to prompt better submission rates.  I am not going to step down the rigor with which I conduct my classes; that would not be helpful in the least, as I have mentioned from time to time.  But it confuses me that, given my penchant for assigning work that students can use their media activities (movies, television shows, video games, comic books, and music, so far) to complete the work, I do not see more submitted.

I will miss some of my students from this term.  Although I did have to deal with some who were objectionable, and I had to endure seeing so many falter when they need not have done so, I had a fair number of intelligent, engaged, and interested people in my classes.  More students can well be like that, although I realize that doing so is not easy; much serves to make unpalatable the expression of curiosity and willingness to try out new ideas that undergird being a good student, and I know that many of my students see no point in becoming good students.  They are out to get passed through with their credentials so that they can go and do what they think they want to do; they do not realize that there are other things, things which might not initially appear to be worth doing but, upon investigation, are well worth undertaking.*

Some of my students have come to realize it this term.  And I am glad to have been among those who helped them do so.  It is that gladness that makes me just a bit sad as I shake my students' hands and send them on their merry ways, done with my class and my students no more--at least, until the fall.

*I do not mean by this to say that the kinds of things for which my students are trained by their coursework at Technical Career Institutes are not worthwhile.  I have worked with my hands before, and I well know the satisfaction that comes with actually building a thing.  I know also the satisfaction that comes with moving only a little and seeing another person's full momentum set aside as if it is nothing.  But there is a great glory in looking at a text and seeing in it multiple levels of meanings; it enriches my understanding of the world, and so I am able to participate the more fully in that world.

Sample Classification Paper, Option 1

Students, below appears an example of a classification paper, option 1, as discussed on the course website here.  Please note that the example, when formatted appropriately for submission as a paper (which it is not as it appears on the blog), is at the high end of acceptable length for a shorter paper in ENG 101.  Please note also that it is an example of how the argument should be made; I make no explicit claims about its truth value.

Good citizenship consists of participating in the structures of public order while being willing to work against them in the interest of a greater good, of being able to set aside the proverbial "letter of the law" in favor of supporting the "spirit of the law" or the underlying principles towards which the law is directed.  A number of people have asserted that Mr. Elliott is far removed from such a definition.  Those people are incorrect.

The assertions that Mr. Elliott is not a good citizen are grounded in several misperceptions.  Perhaps the most emphasized of them is that Mr. Elliott takes delight in the suffering of his students, and of other living creatures, for no end but sadism--the simple enjoyment of the sufferings of others.  And there is admittedly evidence that can be reasonably interpreted in such a way.  Mr. Elliott is prone to pointing out the failings in what he sees around him, which does tend to cause discomfort in those targeted by his criticism.  Also, his sense of humor runs to the morbid; he makes frequent reference to the eating of small animals, as in nature programs and the writings of Swift, and with evident jollity in his voice and manner.  Further, he makes specific mention of inflicting pain on people as a recreational activity--and he often comments that the recipients include the elderly.  In a view which takes his admittedly demonstrable appreciation for the discomfort of others as the dominant feature of his personality, there is no greater good to be served by his happiness at the misfortunes of others, and so he operates in a manner opposed to the underlying principles of most legal systems in the industrialized world, which assert the dignity of the individual as a core belief.

The problem with the interpretation is that it assumes that the demonstration of the enjoyment of pain is both the dominant feature of Mr. Elliott's personality and that it serves no end beyond itself.  The viewpoint relies on accepting Mr. Elliott at his word, and if it is the case that his word is to be trusted, it must also be remembered that he has on many occasions remarked that he takes his job as a teacher quite seriously.  As a teacher, and as a teacher of English, Mr. Elliott is engaged in the transmission of a specific set of cultural ideals that, while not shared among many of his students, are largely in line with the social structures in which he and they operate, both in the academic setting in which they interact specifically and in the broader social context of the United States of the early twenty-first century.  By his very vocation, then, Mr. Elliott is participating in a deep-seated and fundamental way in the structures of public order.

His specific method of teaching also evidences his dedication to social structure.  In each of his courses, Mr. Elliott distributes a detailed syllabus, a statement of the policies and procedures by which he seeks to conduct class.  Semester after semester, students find themselves adjudged by the policies to which they tacitly agree by remaining in the classes for which he produces the syllabi, with Mr. Elliott adhering strictly to the rules for himself and his students which he has set.  Additionally, he grades major assignments in his classes by stringent rubrics, even to the point of awarding good grades to students he finds personally objectionable and whose positions he finds execrable; they perform the tasks required of them by their assignments, and their performances are found satisfactory when compared to the rubric he creates, despite whatever personal feelings Mr. Elliott may or may not have.  That he allows his explicitly stated standards, rather than his gut feelings, to inform his assessment demonstrates alongside the fact of his profession Mr. Elliott's dedication to and participation in the structures of public order.

He is not, however, unthinkingly rigid in following those structures, using them to drive the education which he and others value as a fundamental social good rather than allowing the rules to stand in all cases as the sole and final arbiter of what happens in and around him.  The very standards come equipped with some room to negotiate.  His syllabi carry the comment that the policies outlined on them are subject to change.  This is primarily to account for the occasional change imposed upon him by the institutional hierarchy above him (his compliance with which is itself an indicator of his participation in structures of public order), but also allows him to adjust formal rules to suit evolving situations, should the need arise.  His course calendars carry a similar message, and with similar intent.  And his syllabi carry in many sections the explicit message that Mr.Elliott is willing to make case-by-case exceptions to his policies, so that those students who are putting forth effort but are running into difficulty have some time and cognitive space to use to get properly situated and adjusted to the demands being placed upon them.  He is therefore avowedly willing to set aside the formal rules in the interest of student learning, which is the higher ideal which his policies exist to facilitate.

Even the biting, morbid humor often cited as a case against Mr. Elliott serves to engage student learning, even if it is far removed from the usual practices of many other teachers.  Students remember the extent and specificity of criticism offered in no small part because of the wit in which it is couched, so that the unusual practice serves to drive student learning.  The supposed suffering he inflicts upon them is presented as a challenge to be overcome, which is itself another means of driving learning; while it is true that many students do complain about such things as the amount of work Mr. Elliott assigns or the specificity of his grading, those things do serve the greater educational purpose, as it is only through practice that proficiency is attained, and it is only through the receipt of correction that errors can be identified to be eliminated.

It becomes clear, then, that Mr. Elliott, insofar as he does engage with structures in the classroom even as he is willing to step aside from them to promote the learning of his students--the end goal of classroom structure--is a good citizen.  That he is one should prompt some reevaluation of what goes on in his classrooms, and in classrooms generally.

The Fall 2011 Term Begins

Today, the Fall 2011 term began at the technical college where I work.  My teaching schedule is not quite what I had expected, but it is a good one, and I am eager to begin upon it.

I find that this time, I do not have nearly so much of the nervousness that I have in past terms had at getting new sets of students to work with.  Part of this, I think, is my increasing familiarity with the job and its demands; this is my eighth term at the technical college, the fourth as a full-time instructor, and my fifth year of teaching at the college level, generally.  I am still young in the career, but I am not an untutored novice stepping into the front of the classroom for the first time.

Part also is that I have given much thought to the way in which I teach.  I am happy to work with students who are also willing to work, and I am not going to waste time with those students who are not.  Willingness to work has nothing to do with age, gender and orientation, racial/ethnic background, religious position, or socio-economic status, as I have long maintained.

No, what I do is offer guidance and direction to my students, showing them that the things I do can be done with enthusiasm and enjoyment--but that it is not easy to get to the point where they can be enjoyed.  Practice, practice, practice, and more practice, with evaluation and criticism of performance are needed to get to the point where attention to the niggling mechanics is no longer necessary and the greater questions of when and how to deploy techniques can be addressed.  In short, it takes a long time with the dull, repetitive work on fundamentals before sufficient competence can be achieved to have fun with things.  And it is boring to go over a basic concept again and again and again...but that does not make it unnecessary.

It is a tacit lesson underlying much of my teaching.

A Comment on "'Inventing the University' at 25: An Interview with David Bartholomae"

In College English 73.3, John Schlib conducts an email interview of David Bartholomae, author of "perhaps the most often cited and discussed essay in composition studies" (260) and so one of the major figures in the field.  In the course of the interview, Bartholomae notes that "a certain form of close reading...is the essential lesson for any writer/reader/thinker" (271).  He also discusses having created, working with others, "a curriculum where reading and writing assignments were sequenced, so that students worked on a semester-long project" (273).

I like to think that my own composition assignments work in this way.  I strive to set things up to promote attention to specific details, which aligns with Bartholomae's claim for close reading.  I also have explicitly sequenced assignments so that the first paper, a definition, makes possible the second and third papers (classification and focused comparison/contrast, respectively), and that one of the three early papers becomes the long later paper.  It makes of the term a single, extended project, such as that for which Bartholomae calls.

There is validation in having ideas show up in the mouths--or in this case, the inboxes--of major figures in the field.

Work Cited
Bartholomae, David, and John Schlib. "'Inventing the University' at 25: An Interview with David Bartholomae." College English 73.3 (January 2011): 260-82. Print.

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