Students,
Today looks like it will be my last day at TCI; I have not been offered a teaching schedule for the summer. Some of you will doubtlessly delight in the news; I know that I am not always a student favorite. I also know that some of you will be disappointed by this; several of you expressed to me your desire to take classes with me again in future terms.
It has, for the most part, been good to have you in my classes. I wish you the best of luck in the future.
-Dr. Elliott
Showing posts with label Spring 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spring 2013. Show all posts
Friday, April 26, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Announcement about Office Hours
Once again, a faculty meeting will prevent regular office hours; this week, I am not having them.
Monday, April 15, 2013
About Office Hours, 17 April 2013
Students, be advised that, due to another faculty meeting, I will not be holding office hours this Wednesday, 17 April 2013.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
About Office Hours, 10 April 2013
Students, please be advised that, because of a faculty meeting at the 31st Street building, my office hours on 10 April 2013 will be truncated. Be advised also that the meeting is apt to delay my getting to class afterwards; it is still meeting, but it will start perhaps a bit late. Signs will be posted to that effect.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Announcement about Office Hours on 27 March 2013
Students, please be advised that, due to a faculty meeting, I will not be holding regular office hours on 27 March 2013. If you need to speak with me, please email me to set up an appointment.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Sample Illustrative Definition
Students, please find below the text of an illustrative definition, as discussed here. Please note that, when properly formatted for submission as a paper, it is of average length.
With the exception of one semester during my undergraduate study, I have been in the workforce continuously since I was sixteen years of age. During that time, I have held a number of jobs, including working as a grocery store cashier and cash-office clerk, a line cook and delivery driver for a fast-food pizza franchise, a full-time college student, and a collegiate researcher and teacher. My years in the workforce have taught me that work is a means to define myself, both in terms of finding out what I want to be and in supplying what is needed for me to become that thing.
One means by which a thing is defined is through negation; a given item is recognized as itself in part because of what it is not. Hence, finding out what I do not want to be is key in finding out what I do want to be; it helps narrow my focus. My earlier jobs did much to teach me what I do not want to do with my life, helping me to find what I actually do want to do with my time and efforts. My work in grocery stores in the Texas Hill Country offer an example of how it could happen. As a cashier and cash-office clerk, I was involved primarily in customer service and cash-handling for some twenty to thirty hours each week. I was supposed to keep customers happy, whether they came into the store happy or not, whether they were willing to be happy--or even reasonable--or not. It mattered little that they would walk in stinking of sweat and smoke and swill, or that they demanded to be given things for free; I was supposed to smile and nod and try to meet their impatient, often intoxicated demands. At the same time, I was supposed to ensure that money kept coming into the store's possession (despite the reluctance of customers to part with it) and to be sure that the money I reported bringing in was actually present. And I was to do so for the amazing hourly wage of six whole dollars. Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was not a substantial income. It was not enough, truly, to justify the time away from my studies that I spent in earning it; although it offered me some small amount of spending money, so that I could buy another book or two for my own reading pleasure, I was not able to save up so much as I should have liked. Working at the grocery store was a poorly compensated job that annoyed me greatly, forcing me to be subservient to people who took no thought for others or who took delight in abusing those obliged to be deferential. I learned from it that customer service jobs--typically work-intensive and underpaid--are not the kinds of things I want to have. I learned that I needed to look elsewhere so that I did not end up, as did many of my co-workers, staying in such a job for decades at close to minimum wage, with customers complaining day after day after day, until I died.
I was still in the Texas Hill Country when I took up work making pizzas and delivering them for a fast-food pizza franchise--a job that did far more to help me find what I want to be and supply me with what I needed to become that than did work in the grocery store. In that job, I would come in early on Saturdays and Sundays, usually arriving before the manager. In short order, as the manager counted money and ran to the bank to make a deposit, the first batches of pizza dough would be laid out and their tempering--the process that set them up to be topped and baked--begun. Several tubs of pizza sauce would get made next, the concentrate mixed with water and stirred vigorously until the five-gallon buckets were ready to be deployed throughout the day. Green bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions red and white would get chopped and portioned out, put into the table where the pizzas were made and into the cooler for later use. Then the orders would begin to come in, and the manager and I would grab dough, stretch it as was needed, top it as was required, bake the resulting pizza, cut it, and box it. Some of the pizzas would go across the counter to where a customer was waiting. Others would go into insulated bags and from there to my car, in which I would race back and forth across town, trying to beat my delivery estimates and earn money for my own pocket as much as the restaurant's. I dealt with customers only in fits and starts, and always with time between, since each order went to a different place and I had to tend to making pizza before I could hand it over. I therefore had much time to myself--and all of it paid; I learned that I like to work away from supervision, doing what I know I need to do and doing it well not for fear of a boss griping at me, but because the reward for my doing so was increased the more diligently I worked. Further, I was amply rewarded; my hourly wage was $7.70 per hour, and I earned a dollar from the restaurant for every delivery I made (usually three or four each hour, bringing what the store paid me above $10 hourly). Then there were the tips, which ranged from none or very little to twenty--or, once, fifty--dollars at a time. I was able to build up a solid bank account even with being able to buy the things I needed for my studies and the games I played for fun. Working in pizza-making and pizza-delivery was therefore helpful in showing me what I want to be--a self-directed individual worker--and in supplying me with what it took to help me be one.
What it ended up taking was long-term collegiate study, and that study cemented the concept of what I want to be. For some twelve years, I was enrolled in college classes, although only nine of those years had me in the classroom as a student regularly. During that near-decade, I would go to classes soon after waking, attending lectures and immersing myself in the life of the mind afterwards by reading deeply and extensively. Too, I availed myself of the cultural offerings of the departments in which I took classes, sometimes for credit (as in the case of attending concerts while I was a music major), and sometimes not (as was true with performances by actors from London and weekly poetry readings while I was in English departments). As I did, I began to realize that a full engagement with the life of the mind, an immersion of myself in study, was eminently attractive. I thus began to devote myself to the idea; being in the college classroom as much as I was helped me to realize it is where I want to be. In addition, I was in the enviable position of being paid for my undergraduate and graduate studies; as an undergraduate, I was awarded a number of grants and scholarships that did much to support my studies, and as a graduate student, I enjoyed an assistantship that paid for my tuition and offered me a stipend. They collectively helped me to build up a cushion of resources, both financial and material, that I have since used to pursue my desire to remain in the collegiate classroom. I have been able to purchase materials that I yet have, and while the money has come and gone, when it has gone, it has gone to good use in keeping me as I wish to be: a participant in the college classroom.
My formal studies have ended, but I remain in the college classroom as my vocation, working as a researching teacher. At present, I have six sections to teach, each of which began with approximately thirty students but is now much reduced. For each, I do a substantial amount of reading, keeping abreast of current research in rhetoric and composition studies as well as poring over the documents my students turn in to me. Too, I comment about what I read, making notes in the margins and drafting more extended commentaries at the ends of essays and articles. I also work to draft examples of the kinds of writing I want my students to produce, as well as occasionally explaining in writing the rationale behind the assignments I offer. In addition, my reading and research extend beyond my classroom activities, so that I independently model the behavior I wish to see form my students as I read through and seek to produce essays, articles, and books in medieval studies and literary criticism. I tease meaning from the pages of literary works and refine that meaning through successive filters of critical discourse published by others, putting what insights I have into what I hope are well crafted words on pages that I then submit for others to review. The work within and without the classroom sustains me. Although I do at times suffer from the amount of grading I do, the rewards of teaching are many, not least in seeing others come to have better understandings of the world in which they live and ways in which they can think and write about it. Further, I am immensely enriched through the research I do to model what I want to teach; because of my research, I know more about the products of the human mind and spirit than I would have ever been able to do through the classroom alone. Too, the fact that I am paid a salary--and a fairly generous one--is of help, for I could not do as I do without food to eat and a place to sleep, and the paycheck accounts for both.
In my work as a researching teacher, I am confirmed in the self-definition that my earlier jobs have let me develop. Each has led me to find what I want to be and to enact that being. Each has shown me that such things can be done--and each has led me to hope that others may find for themselves the kinds of things that work has shown me.
With the exception of one semester during my undergraduate study, I have been in the workforce continuously since I was sixteen years of age. During that time, I have held a number of jobs, including working as a grocery store cashier and cash-office clerk, a line cook and delivery driver for a fast-food pizza franchise, a full-time college student, and a collegiate researcher and teacher. My years in the workforce have taught me that work is a means to define myself, both in terms of finding out what I want to be and in supplying what is needed for me to become that thing.
One means by which a thing is defined is through negation; a given item is recognized as itself in part because of what it is not. Hence, finding out what I do not want to be is key in finding out what I do want to be; it helps narrow my focus. My earlier jobs did much to teach me what I do not want to do with my life, helping me to find what I actually do want to do with my time and efforts. My work in grocery stores in the Texas Hill Country offer an example of how it could happen. As a cashier and cash-office clerk, I was involved primarily in customer service and cash-handling for some twenty to thirty hours each week. I was supposed to keep customers happy, whether they came into the store happy or not, whether they were willing to be happy--or even reasonable--or not. It mattered little that they would walk in stinking of sweat and smoke and swill, or that they demanded to be given things for free; I was supposed to smile and nod and try to meet their impatient, often intoxicated demands. At the same time, I was supposed to ensure that money kept coming into the store's possession (despite the reluctance of customers to part with it) and to be sure that the money I reported bringing in was actually present. And I was to do so for the amazing hourly wage of six whole dollars. Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was not a substantial income. It was not enough, truly, to justify the time away from my studies that I spent in earning it; although it offered me some small amount of spending money, so that I could buy another book or two for my own reading pleasure, I was not able to save up so much as I should have liked. Working at the grocery store was a poorly compensated job that annoyed me greatly, forcing me to be subservient to people who took no thought for others or who took delight in abusing those obliged to be deferential. I learned from it that customer service jobs--typically work-intensive and underpaid--are not the kinds of things I want to have. I learned that I needed to look elsewhere so that I did not end up, as did many of my co-workers, staying in such a job for decades at close to minimum wage, with customers complaining day after day after day, until I died.
I was still in the Texas Hill Country when I took up work making pizzas and delivering them for a fast-food pizza franchise--a job that did far more to help me find what I want to be and supply me with what I needed to become that than did work in the grocery store. In that job, I would come in early on Saturdays and Sundays, usually arriving before the manager. In short order, as the manager counted money and ran to the bank to make a deposit, the first batches of pizza dough would be laid out and their tempering--the process that set them up to be topped and baked--begun. Several tubs of pizza sauce would get made next, the concentrate mixed with water and stirred vigorously until the five-gallon buckets were ready to be deployed throughout the day. Green bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions red and white would get chopped and portioned out, put into the table where the pizzas were made and into the cooler for later use. Then the orders would begin to come in, and the manager and I would grab dough, stretch it as was needed, top it as was required, bake the resulting pizza, cut it, and box it. Some of the pizzas would go across the counter to where a customer was waiting. Others would go into insulated bags and from there to my car, in which I would race back and forth across town, trying to beat my delivery estimates and earn money for my own pocket as much as the restaurant's. I dealt with customers only in fits and starts, and always with time between, since each order went to a different place and I had to tend to making pizza before I could hand it over. I therefore had much time to myself--and all of it paid; I learned that I like to work away from supervision, doing what I know I need to do and doing it well not for fear of a boss griping at me, but because the reward for my doing so was increased the more diligently I worked. Further, I was amply rewarded; my hourly wage was $7.70 per hour, and I earned a dollar from the restaurant for every delivery I made (usually three or four each hour, bringing what the store paid me above $10 hourly). Then there were the tips, which ranged from none or very little to twenty--or, once, fifty--dollars at a time. I was able to build up a solid bank account even with being able to buy the things I needed for my studies and the games I played for fun. Working in pizza-making and pizza-delivery was therefore helpful in showing me what I want to be--a self-directed individual worker--and in supplying me with what it took to help me be one.
What it ended up taking was long-term collegiate study, and that study cemented the concept of what I want to be. For some twelve years, I was enrolled in college classes, although only nine of those years had me in the classroom as a student regularly. During that near-decade, I would go to classes soon after waking, attending lectures and immersing myself in the life of the mind afterwards by reading deeply and extensively. Too, I availed myself of the cultural offerings of the departments in which I took classes, sometimes for credit (as in the case of attending concerts while I was a music major), and sometimes not (as was true with performances by actors from London and weekly poetry readings while I was in English departments). As I did, I began to realize that a full engagement with the life of the mind, an immersion of myself in study, was eminently attractive. I thus began to devote myself to the idea; being in the college classroom as much as I was helped me to realize it is where I want to be. In addition, I was in the enviable position of being paid for my undergraduate and graduate studies; as an undergraduate, I was awarded a number of grants and scholarships that did much to support my studies, and as a graduate student, I enjoyed an assistantship that paid for my tuition and offered me a stipend. They collectively helped me to build up a cushion of resources, both financial and material, that I have since used to pursue my desire to remain in the collegiate classroom. I have been able to purchase materials that I yet have, and while the money has come and gone, when it has gone, it has gone to good use in keeping me as I wish to be: a participant in the college classroom.
My formal studies have ended, but I remain in the college classroom as my vocation, working as a researching teacher. At present, I have six sections to teach, each of which began with approximately thirty students but is now much reduced. For each, I do a substantial amount of reading, keeping abreast of current research in rhetoric and composition studies as well as poring over the documents my students turn in to me. Too, I comment about what I read, making notes in the margins and drafting more extended commentaries at the ends of essays and articles. I also work to draft examples of the kinds of writing I want my students to produce, as well as occasionally explaining in writing the rationale behind the assignments I offer. In addition, my reading and research extend beyond my classroom activities, so that I independently model the behavior I wish to see form my students as I read through and seek to produce essays, articles, and books in medieval studies and literary criticism. I tease meaning from the pages of literary works and refine that meaning through successive filters of critical discourse published by others, putting what insights I have into what I hope are well crafted words on pages that I then submit for others to review. The work within and without the classroom sustains me. Although I do at times suffer from the amount of grading I do, the rewards of teaching are many, not least in seeing others come to have better understandings of the world in which they live and ways in which they can think and write about it. Further, I am immensely enriched through the research I do to model what I want to teach; because of my research, I know more about the products of the human mind and spirit than I would have ever been able to do through the classroom alone. Too, the fact that I am paid a salary--and a fairly generous one--is of help, for I could not do as I do without food to eat and a place to sleep, and the paycheck accounts for both.
In my work as a researching teacher, I am confirmed in the self-definition that my earlier jobs have let me develop. Each has led me to find what I want to be and to enact that being. Each has shown me that such things can be done--and each has led me to hope that others may find for themselves the kinds of things that work has shown me.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Announcement: No Office Hours on 20 March 2013
Students, be advised that, due to a faculty meeting, I will not hold regular office hours on 20 March 2013. I expect to be available by appointment following the end of my regular teaching schedule, after approximately 4:10pm.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Sample Summary
Students, below appears an example of the kind of summary discussed in class and on the course website, here. I found it when I was drafting the midterm exam for my sections of ENG 099 in the Spring 2013 term; that it appears here ought to indicate that it will not be the one which appears on the exam.
The editors of the New York Times published "The Trouble with Online College" on 18 February 2013 in the online version of the newspaper. The article asserts that fully online courses are not effective with such classes as first-year composition. Noted in support of the assertion are remarkably high attrition rates, the disjunction between student skills and online course requirements, research conducted by Columbia University, and the perils of poor course design. Also noted, if slightly off-topic, is the potential success of hybrid online/traditional courses, although difficulties in implementing hybrid instruction are identified. Although the deployment of information from Columbia University, a noted research institution, would normally make the article eminently credible, the research referenced is of limited scope, discussing only two of the fifty states and potentially only those in community colleges. The possibly non-representative sample limits the effectiveness of utilizing Columbia's data, which, with the slight deviation from topic, sharply reduces the effectiveness of the article.
The editors of the New York Times published "The Trouble with Online College" on 18 February 2013 in the online version of the newspaper. The article asserts that fully online courses are not effective with such classes as first-year composition. Noted in support of the assertion are remarkably high attrition rates, the disjunction between student skills and online course requirements, research conducted by Columbia University, and the perils of poor course design. Also noted, if slightly off-topic, is the potential success of hybrid online/traditional courses, although difficulties in implementing hybrid instruction are identified. Although the deployment of information from Columbia University, a noted research institution, would normally make the article eminently credible, the research referenced is of limited scope, discussing only two of the fifty states and potentially only those in community colleges. The possibly non-representative sample limits the effectiveness of utilizing Columbia's data, which, with the slight deviation from topic, sharply reduces the effectiveness of the article.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Sample Summary
Students, below is another example of the kind of summary desired from you, as discussed here.
Robyn Malo's "Penitential Discourse in Hoccleve's Series" appears in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 34 (2012: 277-305). The article's central claim is that Thomas Hoccleve's Series uses the rhetoric of imprisonment to portray the narrator as both sane and without sin; Malo also asserts that the penal figuration serves as a unifying principle of the work. Significant critical commentary is invoked to bolster the argument, both directly and as a point of refutation against which to push. Malo also deploys comparative quotations from Hoccleve and his contemporaries to highlight the differences in their discourses. In Malo's reading, Hoccleve's work becomes a means of self-investigation--unusually for the penitential mode in which much of the Series functions. It is an intriguing reading of an author usually considered minor.
Robyn Malo's "Penitential Discourse in Hoccleve's Series" appears in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 34 (2012: 277-305). The article's central claim is that Thomas Hoccleve's Series uses the rhetoric of imprisonment to portray the narrator as both sane and without sin; Malo also asserts that the penal figuration serves as a unifying principle of the work. Significant critical commentary is invoked to bolster the argument, both directly and as a point of refutation against which to push. Malo also deploys comparative quotations from Hoccleve and his contemporaries to highlight the differences in their discourses. In Malo's reading, Hoccleve's work becomes a means of self-investigation--unusually for the penitential mode in which much of the Series functions. It is an intriguing reading of an author usually considered minor.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Announcement for ENG 202.210
Because I was unable to post the previous announcement sooner, the following:
The business letter may be submitted in hard copy at, or via email before, the beginning of class on Monday, 25 February 2013, without penalty. Submissions after that time will be regarded as late, with the appropriate penalties to the grade (outlined in the syllabus).
The business letter may be submitted in hard copy at, or via email before, the beginning of class on Monday, 25 February 2013, without penalty. Submissions after that time will be regarded as late, with the appropriate penalties to the grade (outlined in the syllabus).
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Announcement, 21 February 2013: For Students in ENG 101 and 202
Students, I apologize for not getting this message posted sooner, but I am absent from work today. Assignments are still due today, as indicated on the course calendar, but the next assignments (illustrative definition for ENG 101, resume for ENG 202) will be pushed back; more details will be forthcoming on Monday, when I fully expect to be back in class.
Be well.
Be well.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
About Office Hours on 20 February 2013
Students, please be advised that, due to a mandatory meeting, I will not be holding office hours on Wednesday, 20 February 2013. Also, because I will be covering another instructor's classes that evening, meeting times after my regular instructional day will be sharply limited.
Friday, February 15, 2013
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.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Sample Narrative Essay
Students, please find below an example of the narrative essay, as discussed on the course website, here. When formatted for submission as a paper (which it is currently not, due to the changes in medium), it is at the low end of acceptable length.
At a particular state university in the American South, there was at one time a policy in the English department that students, after missing ten percent of class, would suffer a letter-grade reduction for each additional absence. The policy usually meant that students could miss six to eight classes before failing through a combination of missed assignments and outright grade reduction, and it inevitable happened that students would fail themselves out of classes for no more complicated and no better a reason than simply not showing up when they were supposed to. Most who suffered such a fate acknowledged the justice of it, and either reformed their conduct in subsequent semesters or found another way to spend their time--and found out that failing a class is not nearly so bad as losing a job.
From time to time, however, a student would take exception to the policy, and would protest the treatment. Usually, the protest began with a complaint to the instructor or professor, who would almost always calmly and resolutely refer the student to the stated policy in the syllabus and display the attendance record; the protest rarely worked well for the student at that level, and so the student would go on. The next visit would be to the department chair, who would ask the instructor or professor for a copy of the attendance record and the course syllabus and, upon reviewing them, would generally confirm the decision of the faculty member. From there, the student usually went to the Dean of Students, who might be a bit more sympathetic, but who would also usually confirm the decision of the department chair and the faculty member.
One student, however, a young woman who thought that "since we [in the class] didn't have an assignment or activity listed...thought there was no class on these days, and didn't come," despite the clear indication on the course calendar of when the faculty member, at the time a graduate teaching assistant, would be away: "Instructor will be away; class is cancelled" is quite overt, and its lack strongly suggests that class was still to meet. And that is what the department chair told the student's mother when she came into the department chair's office after a month of calling the graduate teaching assistant's office several times a day for the entire month between terms. It is what the department chair maintained when the student's mother complained of her daughter being taught by a "mere" teaching assistant, and it is what the Dean of Students maintained when the mother went to that office to complain.
It is not what the graduate teaching assistant said to the woman when, in the second week of the next term, she approached the teaching assistant outside of the classroom in which he was scheduled to teach. Nor did he say it in the rare intervals over the next thirty minutes when the woman, lines and dark circles about her small and deep-set eyes, paused for breath among the thirty-minute attempt to badger him about her "little girl who just misunderstood and shouldn't be punished for something that isn't really her fault and don't you understand how much I paid to have her in a classroom with someone who knows what to do." But he did say to her that he could not discuss the student's grades with her, certainly not without the student present, as it would be a breach of professional ethics and, possibly, the law. The student herself, being of major age and therefore legally liable for her own actions, not the mother, would have to make the complaint, and to the teaching assistant's knowledge, the student had not.
It is also not what the teaching assistant said after the woman left in a huff. What he did say, when he reported the incident to the department chair, is that the student's mother had cornered him outside of his classroom and tried for half an hour to get him to change the student's grade. The department chair passed that word along to the Dean of Students, to whom the woman had gone to complain about "that damned graduate student" who had soured her on college entirely, such that she "wouldn't be paying for her daughter to sit in a class taught by someone like that ever again," despite the fact that most of the classes her freshman daughter would have to take--and pass--were taught, semester after semester, by teaching assistants such as the one who had done nothing more than follow the policy clearly written in his course syllabus. The Dean of Students passed that information on to the campus police, who, chartered by the state, were duly empowered peace officers, authorized to carry out arrests and, at need, to do more.
They told the woman that her return to the campus would be viewed as an act of criminal trespassing.
Her daughter's attendance the following term was perfect.
The graduate teaching assistant went on to teach at other schools with at least one story to tell.
At a particular state university in the American South, there was at one time a policy in the English department that students, after missing ten percent of class, would suffer a letter-grade reduction for each additional absence. The policy usually meant that students could miss six to eight classes before failing through a combination of missed assignments and outright grade reduction, and it inevitable happened that students would fail themselves out of classes for no more complicated and no better a reason than simply not showing up when they were supposed to. Most who suffered such a fate acknowledged the justice of it, and either reformed their conduct in subsequent semesters or found another way to spend their time--and found out that failing a class is not nearly so bad as losing a job.
From time to time, however, a student would take exception to the policy, and would protest the treatment. Usually, the protest began with a complaint to the instructor or professor, who would almost always calmly and resolutely refer the student to the stated policy in the syllabus and display the attendance record; the protest rarely worked well for the student at that level, and so the student would go on. The next visit would be to the department chair, who would ask the instructor or professor for a copy of the attendance record and the course syllabus and, upon reviewing them, would generally confirm the decision of the faculty member. From there, the student usually went to the Dean of Students, who might be a bit more sympathetic, but who would also usually confirm the decision of the department chair and the faculty member.
One student, however, a young woman who thought that "since we [in the class] didn't have an assignment or activity listed...thought there was no class on these days, and didn't come," despite the clear indication on the course calendar of when the faculty member, at the time a graduate teaching assistant, would be away: "Instructor will be away; class is cancelled" is quite overt, and its lack strongly suggests that class was still to meet. And that is what the department chair told the student's mother when she came into the department chair's office after a month of calling the graduate teaching assistant's office several times a day for the entire month between terms. It is what the department chair maintained when the student's mother complained of her daughter being taught by a "mere" teaching assistant, and it is what the Dean of Students maintained when the mother went to that office to complain.
It is not what the graduate teaching assistant said to the woman when, in the second week of the next term, she approached the teaching assistant outside of the classroom in which he was scheduled to teach. Nor did he say it in the rare intervals over the next thirty minutes when the woman, lines and dark circles about her small and deep-set eyes, paused for breath among the thirty-minute attempt to badger him about her "little girl who just misunderstood and shouldn't be punished for something that isn't really her fault and don't you understand how much I paid to have her in a classroom with someone who knows what to do." But he did say to her that he could not discuss the student's grades with her, certainly not without the student present, as it would be a breach of professional ethics and, possibly, the law. The student herself, being of major age and therefore legally liable for her own actions, not the mother, would have to make the complaint, and to the teaching assistant's knowledge, the student had not.
It is also not what the teaching assistant said after the woman left in a huff. What he did say, when he reported the incident to the department chair, is that the student's mother had cornered him outside of his classroom and tried for half an hour to get him to change the student's grade. The department chair passed that word along to the Dean of Students, to whom the woman had gone to complain about "that damned graduate student" who had soured her on college entirely, such that she "wouldn't be paying for her daughter to sit in a class taught by someone like that ever again," despite the fact that most of the classes her freshman daughter would have to take--and pass--were taught, semester after semester, by teaching assistants such as the one who had done nothing more than follow the policy clearly written in his course syllabus. The Dean of Students passed that information on to the campus police, who, chartered by the state, were duly empowered peace officers, authorized to carry out arrests and, at need, to do more.
They told the woman that her return to the campus would be viewed as an act of criminal trespassing.
Her daughter's attendance the following term was perfect.
The graduate teaching assistant went on to teach at other schools with at least one story to tell.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Sample Summary
Students, please find below an example of the kind of work expected for the standing summary assignment in ENG 099 at Technical Career Institutes. You may not use the article summarized below and linked here for your own work.
Andy Martin's "The Treachery of Translators" appeared in the online New York Times on 28 January 2013. In the article, Martin asserts that the task of the translator is a daunting one, one fundamentally an act of interpretation that seeks to improve upon the works being transferred between languages. Martin, who notes that he teaches collegiate courses in translation studies, cites four instances of seemingly failed translations from his own career. Although he relies primarily on anecdotal evidence, Martin does craft an engaging presentation of the challenges facing those who seek to make texts available to readers of other languages, prompting further inquiry.
Andy Martin's "The Treachery of Translators" appeared in the online New York Times on 28 January 2013. In the article, Martin asserts that the task of the translator is a daunting one, one fundamentally an act of interpretation that seeks to improve upon the works being transferred between languages. Martin, who notes that he teaches collegiate courses in translation studies, cites four instances of seemingly failed translations from his own career. Although he relies primarily on anecdotal evidence, Martin does craft an engaging presentation of the challenges facing those who seek to make texts available to readers of other languages, prompting further inquiry.
Monday, January 28, 2013
About Homework for ENG 101, 28 January 2013
Students in ENG 101: Freshman Composition 1 have homework assigned in class on 28 January 2013 and due in typed hard copy at the beginning of class on 4 February 2013.
The assignment is to read the article, either as given in class or cited below, and to discuss its features. What does it look like? How does it sound? What claims does it make, and how does it make them? How, in brief, does it function as an academic essay?
If you missed class, get a copy of the article; it is available online through the TCI library, and hard copies are likely available.
Peyser, Thomas. "The Attack on Christianity in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." Explicator 69.2 (2011): 86-89.
Keep the article handy, as we will likely be looking at it in class again in the coming weeks.
The assignment is to read the article, either as given in class or cited below, and to discuss its features. What does it look like? How does it sound? What claims does it make, and how does it make them? How, in brief, does it function as an academic essay?
If you missed class, get a copy of the article; it is available online through the TCI library, and hard copies are likely available.
Peyser, Thomas. "The Attack on Christianity in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." Explicator 69.2 (2011): 86-89.
Keep the article handy, as we will likely be looking at it in class again in the coming weeks.
About Homework for ENG 202, 28 January 2013
Students in ENG 202: Technical Writing and Presentation have homework assigned in class on 28 January 2013 and due via email before the beginning of class (9am) on 4 February 2013; please send as a Word document for ease of comment.
The assignment is to look at one of the two articles, as provided in class and cited below for the convenience of those who missed class, and discuss how it meets the criteria for a piece of technical writing discussed in the standard textbook and in class.
If you missed class, find the articles, read them, and catch up on the homework. Both are available through the online resources at all branches of the New York Public Library:
Bowen, Lauren Marshall. "Beyond Repair: Literacy, Technology, and a Curriculum of Aging." College English 74.5 (May 2012): 437-57.
Condon, William, and Carol Rutz. "A Taxonomy of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs: Evolving to Serve Broader Agendas." CCC 64.2 (December 2012): 357-82.
Keep the articles handy. We will discuss them in class in coming weeks.
The assignment is to look at one of the two articles, as provided in class and cited below for the convenience of those who missed class, and discuss how it meets the criteria for a piece of technical writing discussed in the standard textbook and in class.
If you missed class, find the articles, read them, and catch up on the homework. Both are available through the online resources at all branches of the New York Public Library:
Bowen, Lauren Marshall. "Beyond Repair: Literacy, Technology, and a Curriculum of Aging." College English 74.5 (May 2012): 437-57.
Condon, William, and Carol Rutz. "A Taxonomy of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs: Evolving to Serve Broader Agendas." CCC 64.2 (December 2012): 357-82.
Keep the articles handy. We will discuss them in class in coming weeks.
Friday, January 25, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
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...
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...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)