I began reading Angus Fletcher’s A NEW THEORY FOR POETRY (Harvard University Press, 2004?) on the airplane to Florida (where I am now).  Somehow, in the notions of the horizon and its role in poetry (Fletcher takes an interesting look at poetry as something, in the lineage of Whitman, that is necessarily political and something, in its paradox and sense of aesthetics, as necessarily environmental), and for some reason the idea of horizon–its unattainability, the way that it reminds me of those problems from calculus class where the limit approaches zero but will infinitely approach (and therefore never reach) zero–reminded me of the Barthes piece on the Eiffel Tower.  I think I need to consider this more deeply, but I couldn’t help but think about the synergy between ideas of “paradox” in poetry (which is a very New Critical sort of thing and which is something that punctuates how Fletcher writes of “the horizon” in poetry)–or, at least, the notion of the form of poetry (which is a very abstract sort of idea)–and the “paradox” of the Eiffel Tower–that place in which you stand but constantly look out into the world, as if the rest of the world is somehow an “inside” and you, from “inside” the Eiffel Tower, are really the outside voyeur that is, at the same time, a place you go to visit.  Strange to think of paradox as a theory for poetic form (idea world) and structural form (physical world).  I wonder what the architecture of poetry would look like if one were to try to depict this paradox?  In unveiling my students’ final research project, they seemed excited that while there is the option to write a straight-forward research paper on an idea of their own interest that is linked to the concept of “narrating the war time experience” and the elements we see in Marjane Satrapi’s PERSEPOLIS (ie liberal radicalism vs. religious fundamentalism, underground music scene, “east” vs. “west” as they become constructed through war-time propoganda, the black market and romanticized objects, etc.), I have given them options to propose a portfolio-style project that is related, somehow, to their majors whenever appropriate (i.e. one of my J school students entirely lit up when I mentioned to her that, since her specialty is magazine, she might want to consider putting to work the skills she’s learned in extracurricular activities to create a few-page “magazine” of a variety of different articles that have a very cohesive sort of theme.  She immediately saw how something like this could be expanded upon in projects for her future classes and could ultimately be fine-tuned into a portfolio piece for the end of the semester).  One of my students who’s really into 1960s, hippie culture, protest music, etc., is interpreting “narrating the war time experience” as a means of songwriting–how songs narrate a generational experience and how that is manifested, on a large scale, through stuff like protests, concerts, and rallies that were held during Vietnam.  I told her to fine tune her idea over the holiday and to come to me with something more accomplishable in just a month’s time, and she said she would but that this is an idea that immediately excites her.  My student who is Iranian and who has written in class before about what it’s like to be Iranian American in the middle of Missouri is excited to dip into this book and find writing ideas that somehow link to her personal knowledge, her family history, and aspects of her Iranian heritage that are perhaps not the mainstream expressions of identity.  I’m excited.  I think my students are excited.  And they totally rocked out during library presentation.  I spent a lot of time the other day staring at the Ionic columns in front of Jesse Hall on campus and thinking about them vis-a-vis my superhero, Ionia, for my final portfolio/project.  I was wondering what it means to have something of ancient Greek architecture smack dab in the middle of a university campus in the town with the only Greek Orthodox church in central Missouri (which was erected, even, just in the last 7 or so years).  I was wondering if it means anything that these columns–which I find to be the most beautiful of the 3 types–is in the middle of a campus with an interesting classics department but where there have been some faculty struggles from people in our department to encourage the university to offer a modern Greek language class.  I was wondering what it means that I chose this character, Ionia, based on this column, because I find it the most beautiful and before I even realized, or thought of, or walked by the five columns that stand independently of the structures they normally are built to support.  What is it for these columns to be taken out of context?  What would it be to take my superhero out of context?  What is her context?  Is modern-day Athens enough?  What is it for my students to be taken out of their context (the homes they left behind) to start college and, in their first semester, have writing and critical thinking shoved (necessarily, but not always easily) down their throats?   For now, though, I’m getting back to reading Fletcher and getting some shut-eye.  It’s been a long day.  

I have been working on my final project–in particular, the syllabus, assignment sheets, and other required materials that will accompany the project I make.  At first, a few weeks ago, I sort of put together a hodge-podge rough first-stab at a syllabus (I had an idea in my head) and then obsessed over the readings for a few weeks.  Over the last few weeks in class as we have done in-class work and have been partnered up to link concepts we have learned to deliverable outcomes (assignments) a lot of ideas have sort of crystallized for me.   There might be a danger in developing my syllabus as I have  (around one book that I have been guiding my current 1000 class through–THE WATCHMEN by Allan Moore and Dave Gibbons), as now, at the tail-end of the book, I am beyond ready for a break from it, but it is a book that I feel comfortable teaching, think is rich with material to make a variety of different syllabi, and think will provide an interesting and different way of thinking, reading, and questioning for many students.  I think that’s maybe more important–the teachability factor–than whether it’s my most favorite (!!!) book or not.  I think in a syllabus that revolves so much around the ideas of this class (the question mark to which we do not necessarily have a pre-set answer, invention, exploration, classroom as a collaborative environment), having a sort of mastery–a comfort with a text as “teachable” by you–is sort of important.  I think that the chaos of exploration somehow needs to be mitigated with the certainty of texts and a syllabus that you can totally help students get through.  My final assignment is very much a fragmented, many-pieces-fit-together sort of thing, and I am psyched for it.  Won’t reveal too much, though, until my presentation!  :)

REALLY interesting to look at the rhetoric and construction of Obama’s speech last night and to compare to McCain’s.  I watched last night at Ragtag and was in tears (I am an emotional Greek girl…so it goes…) and was texting friends and calling friends and hugging my friend and hi-fiving all of the people around me.  Today, though, as I am doing work from the comfort of my home in my favorite pajamas, I am replaying both speeches on msnbc.com and am watching parts of the live stream.  I need to examine the speeches more closely, but interesting things that I picked up on:   Obama:

• began by situating himself within a context (family, David Plouffe, those who he thanked, the voters, creating a no-distance context)
• rhetoric of everyone that works towards campaign and citizenry, everyone has ownership, and an implication that everyone has a sense of authority (see below points for authority)
• incorporated language from  founding fathers and the type of language included in creation of our country’s original documents
• had word constructions and deliberate points of repetition that somehow echoed MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech (implication of race and civil rights context of the moment without outward statement–and speaking of civil rights, mentioned “gay and not gay” in his list of the different types of citizens in USA and the different ways of division that extend above and beyond “red and blue” that he brought together to a message of unity, “United States” emphasized in “United States of America”)
• Lots of “we” (”we” have work to do, etc.) [and on an odd note, reminds me somehow of all of the stuff we’ve been reading about collaboration in the comp classroom and the whole idea of excavating ideas and architecting assignments  that are not reductive, that do not reproduce stale and staid thesis-evidence-conclusion construction to answer an exigency or reason for writing.  Also reminds me of the discussions we’ve had in class of lessening distance between teacher and student and changing manifestations of “authority” in the writing classroom–ie, it’s not about the ‘power’ of the professor or the student’s ability to act out, respond, or react from a point of underlife or alter ego or identity-that-is-not-student-based, but “authority” is about how it is developed through research, exploration, analysis, developing a space for natural exigencies to exist and to be understood as situations with implications and opportunities]
• Catch phrases not abandoned but re-worded (main street still there, not red states/not blue states/but United States still there, the audience incorporates chanting of other catch phrases into their listening and participation)

   McCain: 

• opposite construction of Obama–the “thank you” stuff was all at the end.  Sets himself apart from his voters and his following.  Sets himself as He Who Is Followed rather than Obama’s He Whose Arms Are Linked With Those Around Him Who Are Those Who Organize Themselves
• notes the historical moment of this election and adds emphasis not for all Americans but for African Americans–keeps Obama, in this way, as the candidate of race and keeps the election as that of race
•  catch phrases abandoned (no longer the maverick, no mention of comebacks, etc.)
• creates distance between himself and his audience (ie no call for audience involvement or chanting–quiet, calm, uninvolved audience)

    Don’t QUITE know what to say–these observations may change and grow as I listen again and again.  One thing that was interesting was a video stream on MSNBC.com of segments of  Obama’s speech with segments of MLK speaking and then a discussion of how Obama brings hip-hop-cool and homilistic poetry/poetics to his speech, how it’s not the same as MLK because it’s not the same moment, it’s not the same exigency, not the same reason for speaking or the same intended result, but there is a similar spirit and a similar call to action or, from Sarah’s presentation, implication.  Interesting also how the rhetoric of Obama’s speech implies everyone–from those whose votes he gained to those whose votes he acknowledged he did not get.     ALSO on a bit of a different note, I found something really interesting in the tension between bodily control and bodily involvement.  What I mean by this is  the calm and cool of Obama vs. the animated body language of his audience vs. the fight to control that I saw in Palin’s face and McCain’s arm gestures vs. the quiet, calm, reserved, control-ness of audience.

I composed my flickr set around bits of advice I have received over the years as a writer and bits of advice I would give to any young writer who might ever randomly ask for it.  There are, right now, 14 photos.  I am more interested in capturing photos that I find interesting and that are as varied as the types of advice I have received than amassing a LARGE quantity of images just because I can.  Over the next couple of days, some more images may be added.  Or maybe not. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26522657@N05/sets/72157608493409439/  

 (All photos taken courtesy of my halfway shitty Motorola Razr camera phone.)  

Elements of Thomas’s blog (what a re-configured version of the Crash assignment discussed in class would look like) and Niya’s blog (her discussion on the price teachers pay in authority for an assignment model that is more focused on exploration) have been with me all evening.  As discussion in class (and the nature of our readings) has shifted towards assignment and classroom models that are based more on exploration, portfolio assignments, and the sort of work that exists with a huge question mark for an end result instead of an instructor-determined ideal, I’ve been wondering what it means to have authority in the classroom and what our roles are as instructors.  Add to this the nagging voice of the Stanley Fish piece we read in 8005.  Add to this the strange pragmatism that I have in figuring out how to use the stuff we read and discuss.  Add to this my own tendency to over-think, to over-worry,  to look back quite critically at the things I have and have not accomplished since I began teaching.  Many times, I will hear people mention their “authority” as a teacher, but I don’t quite think that I know what this means anymore.  There are the things I’ve always thought:

• inspiring respect from students
• having enough knowledge of subject matter to guide discussions (with “subject matter” ranging from the craft-principles of good writing to the stuff that students read)
• grading fairly

…but I wonder if all of this is secondary  to the basic authority of one’s own writing process?  This might sound a bit hokey, but I wonder what power there is in our own self-awareness as writers and our ability to patiently sit with–and then challenge–our students to engage in acts of self-awareness?    I wonder if this is the basic thing about exploratory/portfolio-based assignments: by focusing on some of the “parts” (research, analysis, process pieces), instead of the idealized whole–and that question that teachers can so often ask our students to answer (i.e. “how does Crash explore issues of race?”), if we focus on some basic things:

• teach research principles that can empower students to learn about the race relations in LA, or aspects of the history between police/civilian interaction, or movements in Hollywood to capture race, police, gender, and urban issues in movies
• teach analysis as something based on concepts that are indicated–or illustrated–by actual things (i.e., the concepts that drive “what makes a Hollywood blockbuster” or “how do people interact” or “visions of authority in urban environments” or “the economics of a multi-cultural and multi-racial city”–all of which are played out in very specific ways in movies like Crash)
• Explore issues of representation or–as Trimbur might call it–delivery (or, for me, the sense of mapping–or a sense of visual, or that grand question people often ask of what something would “look like”)–by showing students how to use technology and engaging students in discussions of immediacy and what it means, vis-a-vis immediacy, to prepare a piece of paper vs. post a blog that contains research-able concepts vs. post a hyperlinked wiki entry vs. post a series of deliberately sequenced images–AND the different literacies that come with visual reading (ie sequential art) and more traditional word-based literacy (a great example of this might be to show students a couple of pages of script from a movie they have not seen and then create storyboards and then watch the sequence in the movie that has just been read and then blog/write a process paper/freewrite about the differences or similarities, what the process was like of creating a storyboard, what decisions they had to make)

…and then give students the freedom in creating an assignment that somehow incorporates research & analysis (as the two go hand in hand) and that is somehow multimedia and/or interdisciplinary.    (I realize that this model is not too dissimilar from the final project that we have to produce for this class)  I think that the questions Niya and Thomas raised are right on–how is this sort of stuff evaluated?  I think this is where our real authority comes in as instructors–how do we hold our students up to the standards of research, analysis, and writing style, and the self awareness and careful consideration with which we guide them towards considering as they make decisions?  For me, at least, this is the question that would guide whatever grading rubric I would create for an end assignment along these lines.   The assignment would likely be multi-part–process-based pieces (or freewrites, which do the same work of giving students a space to think and explore, only on the other end of an assignment) that, as reflections, might have “easier” grades, parts of an assignment that are group-based and for which all students in the group will get a similar grade, parts of the grade based on in-class workshopping and the type of “thinking and reading critically” that comes from in-class analysis, grammar quizzes, revision/editing quizzes/exercised done as group lessons in class, final portfolio, etc.   I know this is nothing new, really–it’s sort of a recap of different things we’ve discussed in class–but what DOES strike me is the capability that a simple-seeming paper question holds.  Small tweaks–extracting (and retaining) the root of “How does Crash explore issues of race?” (root: there is a movie Crash, there are issues of race relations, it’s set in LA, the movie involves cops) –and opening them up so the “how” and “why” of it, and the declaration of “X explores Y” is put aside–and then just retaining the X and Y of the question–and offering them as 1. models for learning new skills and 2. areas for students to brainstorm and create their own end assignment (and letting requirements focus on modes of writing, analysis, representation, etc.)–is ENTIRELY fascinating.  And as an added bonus: this thinking has totally lead me to reconsider the assignments I have been configuring for my sample syllabus for class.  I’m seriously thinking the whole portfolio idea and assignments that build upon each other a bit differently–and that implicate students as writers and thinkers who involve a lot of creativity and self-directed writing decisions into their end products. 

Book Synopsis, Context, Guiding Principles

Pop Perspectives is built around the idea that the traditions of the writing classroom  revolve, first and foremost, around the methods of learning and modes of writing in which students are engaged.  The subject matter is not necessarily a matter of tradition so long as it interacts with a careful model of contextualization, close reading, questioning, analysis, and rhetoric.  Gray-Rosendale is concerned with how students can apply the aspects critical thinking—and its resultant communication—into a classroom situation that is based on the natural exigency that their world provides in the form of pop culture, its products, and the modes of communication that fill everyday life (i.e. advertisements, newspaper articles/op-ed pieces/letters to the editor, sports broadcasts, for example). 

Applying the traditional modes of writing and ways of considering texts (deconstruction, contextualization, analysis, unpacking the rhetorical foundation) to cultural texts that are found everywhere—and the cultural texts that exist as analyses of other cultural texts—brings an immediacy to the situation of a writing classroom, offers students with skills that extend beyond the sphere of academic writing, and marries together the “academic” (or, the traditional ways of thinking and writing) with the “relatable” (or, what students might more naturally be interested in). 

For Gray-Rosendale, context is a key concept; just as readings are conveyed within a context (organization of chapters, pre-reading considerations, post-reading questions, etc.), both academic activities and cultural observations are set within context of each other.  Learning is based on relationships and methods of thinking and writing so that, ultimately, the subject matter of any composition curriculum is similar to a stereo’s plug—something that is inserted into pretty much any outlet in order to have functionality.  The intersection of academic methods of consideration and communication with the everyday concerns, influences, and interests of students points to Gray-Rosendale’s primary concern for maintaining academic integrity while inviting student engagement.  Everything can be a text, and every concern that students have can bring its own call to write in a way that supports the goals of a typical college writing curriculum.

Organization

Pop Perspectives is divided into two parts: one that is instructional in the modes of analysis, rhetoric, and argument that Gray-Rosendale considers the building blocks of any composition classroom and one that is focused on readings that analyze and critique aspects of pop culture that fill students’ daily lives. 

In instructing students in the modes of critical reading, thinking, and writing that Gray-Rosendale’s curriculum encourages, Part 1 is split into three chapters: one that introduces culture and criticism (and, in this endeavor, introduces students to the focus of and rationale for Pop Perspectives); one that considers a reconfiguration of the act of reading to a type of reading that incorporates critical thinking, close analysis, and a type of questioning that would help students find opportunities to write; and one chapter that focuses on the construction of an argument, conducting research, and then writing. 

Each of these chapters includes an example—a letter to an editor, a copy of one of President Bush’s speeches during a Veteran’s Day celebration, a couple of ads, and then a student paper with commentary—which is meant to help illustrate the lessons in analysis, contextualization, rhetoric, and argument that Pop Perspectives wishes to share with students.  What these examples do, I think, is provide students with insight into the questioning and analysis that goes into examining cultural texts—which is the work done in the essays that fill Part 2—and which is worthwhile, insofar as it gives students a good way of understanding and contextualizing the texts they will read.  The risk in this, however, is that while the idea of criticism and analysis of cultural texts is conducted as instruction, when students read the essays in Part 2 that provide criticism and contextualization of cultural texts, the tools of critical thinking and writing are still dissociated from these same texts.

Part 2, as I mentioned, is filled with critical readings of cultural texts and is broken into eight chapters (“Understanding Life and Jobs”; “Imagining Spaces, Rituals, and Styles”; “Playing Sports”; “Analyzing Print Ads and Commercials”; “Watching Television”; “Seeing Movies and Listening to Music”; “Surfing in Cyberculture and Gaming”).  For each reading, there is a “Before Reading” section that asks students context-setting questions that will (should?) help them get into the mindset of the author and of the piece that will then be read.  After each reading, there are sections of “Critical Perspective,” “Rhetoric and Argument,” “”Analysis,” and then “Taking Action,” which is a section devoted to classroom-based activities, projects, and writing that will help process everything that has come before—the context-setting, the reading, and then the analysis. 

Classroom-related Thoughts

What I think is great is that this reader is full of pieces that analyze and critique aspects of contemporary culture; this provides a model for students on how to critique, and it provides interesting ideas about the interrelatedness of reading and writing as academic, creative, and cultural activities; the “chain” of critical thinking that happens between cultural text à analysis of cultural text à student’s writing which dives off of the analyses this book presents. 

If I may offer a criticism (and this is perhaps a really small criticism), I think it would be beneficial for students to not have the pre-reading paragraphs that asks questions for students to consider before reading texts.  This sort of thing might be, I think, beneficial to appear in the instructor’s version of the text and not the student version.  I say this because it would be nice, I think, for the instructor to have flexibility in choosing ways to set context and prepare students to engage in the activity of reading rather than stick to the questions because, no matter what, they appear before the reading and students will likely read and use Gray-Rosendale’s vision in developing a mindset with which to enter the reading.  Contemporary culture offers so many ways for instructors to be creative, if so interested, that as an instructor I find it difficult to be OK with the way Gray-Rosendale’s readings are set up.

Yesterday morning I let my students go after 30 minutes in the classroom.  I had prepared a lesson on thesis statements and on how, as readers, we can turn to a thesis statement and consider possible roadmaps or outlines for the text, regardless of whether we follow through and read it or not.  I prepared a thoughtful discussion that compares students’ ideas about the “three point thesis” and a thesis that pairs an observation on a text with a perspective on that observation–and how this sort of a formula, I guess you could call it, opens up the paper that will follow to either stick within the “comfort zone” of the three-points-that-support-a-thesis or to challenge oneself to step outside of that, think creatively, and construct a discussion and expansion of thesis that is a bit more nuanced.    And as I am totally not *new* to, I had the sort of class where my students were just quiet and looking at me like I am from Mars.  This hasn’t happened too much this semester–something I am grateful for–but for some reason, yesterday morning I felt entirely unsure how i should best handle it.  I felt like I had a decision to make–a lecture filled with my own agitation that, in the middle of the semester, my students somehow can’t pull it together and stay awake for the 8 AM class they chose to register for, or let my students go and give them a writing assignment to complete and hand in on Thursday and encourage them to use the rest of the class period to work on their assignment.  My choice?  Assignment.  Leave class early.   I decided that there is enough sternness in springing an assignment at the last minute without the bad will that a lecture, or a frustrated voice, or a professor who is turning red in the face can give.  I also decided that I was way too stressed out to handle any stern discussion–and the remaining 45 minutes of class–with grace but that I could handle a quick on-the-spot assignment with a *very* quick due date and a 5-10 minute remainder of class with grace.  My students, I think, even with their fizzle-headedness, deserve grace.  I deserve grace.  The importance I see in teaching, I think, deserves grace and composure.  I feel bad about ending my class so early–it’s something I don’t really do–but, well, it’s what I did.  For better or for worse.

ReMix

Catherine G. Latterell

Book Synopsis, Context, Guiding Principles

ReMix considers different aspects of American culture and the ways that similar themes and ideas have been “remixed” (to borrow language from music that has been remixed) to create things—movies, songs, stories, advertisements, and everyday material items—that have become a part of daily culture. One of the questions that seems at the heart of this textbook is a take on the “what came first—the chicken or the egg?” question.  Essentially, it seems that Latterell’s texts, questions, and guiding concepts ask students to think about how everything—movie ads, tattoos, songs, commercials, TV shows, stories, poems, essays, newspaper pieces—exist to both create aspects of personal, cultural, social, and political identity and place and how these same aspects of identity place provide a space for these same “texts” to emerge. 

In exploring this dynamic—what makes us, and our lives, possible and how we make these same “things” possible—Latterell asks students to ask questions that dig deep into the context in which each area of exploration exists and that make connections.  Instead of seeking to explore cause/effect relationships and encouraging students to think reductively or just from a deconstructionist perspective, Latterell works to encourage students to ask “why” and “how” in creative ways to draw connections between cultural texts, symbolic concepts, and everyday life.

From close consideration of the book’s introduction, the types of questions asked after readings, and the context-setting pieces that introduce each chapter, the guiding principles of this book seem to be:

• Nothing exists in a vacuum; all possible “cultural texts” have a variety of contexts through which they can be closely examined
• All students are primed to be cultural critics, as all students exist as part of the many cultural contexts that make each “text” possible
• All “texts” are based on a series of assumptions that can be identified, questioned, challenged, and then “remixed” into culture-based criticism and analysis

Organization

ReMix is organized into seven chapters that tackle a different aspect of cultural situation: identity, community, tradition, romance, entertainment, nature, and technology.  Each chapter begins with an introduction that lays out the basic cultural assumptions that seem to give birth to the area the chapter explores and the types of text that fill the chapter.  Incorporated into the introduction is a variety of examples (including comics, pictures of items—toys, cake toppers, computer screen images etc.) that illuminate the assumptions and how they have manifested in the everyday.  At the end of each chapter’s introduction is a series of questions that challenge cultural assumptions and, for each question, a list of reading(s) with page numbers (ie, a chapter-level table of contents) that explore the question at hand. 

Each reading culminates in a list of analysis-focused questions that encourage students to make connections between the issues explored in the reading (and in the chapter’s theme) and everyday activities.  In the chapter on romance, for example, after a reading on online dating, an analysis question asks students to draw parallels between online dating and job hunting, shopping, and playing games.  Another question asks students to draw connections between the reading and another one in the chapter.  These types of questions work together to encourage students to consider the links between their lives and the readings at hand, which works to make the exigency that the writing classroom—and that each reading—provides seem less like a “testing ground” for writing and more like a natural invitation to consider the ingredients of everyday life, thought, and curiosity as opportunities to think critically and write analytically.

Classroom Considerations

ReMix presents interesting opportunities for guiding a freshman comp class through questioning the world around them in ways that are geared towards thoughtful and considerate analysis.  While all of the examples are from contemporary culture, I can envision a comp class that explores any historical period from a cultural studies standpoint (ie a class that is developed around Shakespeare could include cultural texts from the Renaissance and discussion on the interplay between highbrow- and lowbrow-cultural experiences and products as well as the interaction between advertisement, the business of life, economic class, and the cultural traditions that were most prevalent) and draws parallels with (or explores differences from) the here-and-now.  I can also envision a class focused around the concepts of this book as an opportunity for introductions to “writing across the disciplines” sort of work that gives students opportunities to consider the majors they anticipate entering and the ways in which their fields are discussed within the university (i.e. how departments are organized, career days in their fields, the advertisement of internships, etc.), how their fields are advertised on university websites, and how jobs in their disciplines are advertised, discussed, encouraged, etc. 

This book indicates that there is an opportunity for everything to be considered as a “cultural text,” and I think that taking this concept as an opportunity to analyze students’ writing as a cultural text offers opportunities to encourage timid students who are at or near the start of their college careers an easier entrée into the idea of workshopping each other’s assignments and considering their work—whether intended to be printed on paper or published on blogs, wikis, or other course-focused websites—in a productive, interesting, and thoughtful manner.

The opportunities for major writing assignments that arise from the thought behind this book are limitless.  Among the ones that most immediately come to mind are:

• Mystory focused on personal exploration linked with cultural awareness
• Research paper focused on contemporary cultural interests for students (i.e. the “making” of a pop music star and an exploration of different manifestations of this)
• Comparative assignment that requires students to interview older family members (parents, aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc.) about cultural interests when they were the student’s age
• Wikipedia assignment on a cultural practice manifested in university life, such as advertisement of major football/basketball games and the interplay between university/town, the advertisement of concerts on campus, an exploration of student life/student activities fairs and festivals on campus (i.e. international student fair, career fair, Diwali festival, etc.)
• Analysis of a main food court, student union, or other casual gathering spot on campus and the types of cultural representation that are visible

Age 6, 1985: someone gives me a stencil set.  All of the shapes to trace are zoo animals–and, in particular, seals and monkeys.  My mother, who is in the fuzzy time between finishing law school, taking the bar exam, and figuring out employment as an attorney, encourages me to spend a lot of time reading, “practicing” the penmanship that had been considered very, very messy, and doing the other “quiet kid” things that give her the head space to focus on her lawyering stuff.  I write my first story, “Mr. Seal’s Day.”  I do not recall whether or not I showed it to someone.  Later that year, I lose all of my worldly riches–$20–somewhere in the back of my closet.  I am sitting on my pink carpeted floor crying and crying and crying.       

Age 10, 1987: I am, for yet another summer, visiting my grandparents in Ohio for most of the summer.  My grandmother takes me and my brother to the library every few days to get new books.  She buys us workbooks every week so that we can still keep practice with the writing, reading, vocabulary, and math skills that we will continue to learn when school begins in September.  I am resentful to do school over the summer, but I like the rewards we get–Smurf dolls, candy, new toys, etc.

 Age 12, 1989, autumn: At Round Valley Middle School,  as I begin the 7th grade, the teachers are talking about strikes.  I am in honors classes, which my school system calls GATE (Gifted And Talented Education).  I dread my English class, because it is my worst class.  The teachers do go on strike, and there is no school for maybe a week.  I learn about unions, contracts, and tenure from Mrs. Rohan who is supposed to be teaching Social Studies.  In my GATE English class, I write a book report that is designed to look like a book jacket.  The book had some early American theme to it, and it was set in Philadelphia.  In my clumsiness and lack of artistry, I try to cross-stitch an early American flag (13 stars, in a circle, and stripes) to attach to the front cover.  My mom, thankfully, oohs and ahhs over how nice it is even if I don’t have a perfect circle, even if my stripes are not even, even if the back of my cross-stitch is very messy.  I worked hard on it–on the crafty piece, yeah, but also on the actual book report.  I don’t quite get summaries, still, and how to use my own words to discuss the main theme, plot, characters, setting, etc. of the story.  I don’t get argument.  I don’t get conflict, climax, resolution.  I dread bringing my piece to school, because I am known as the kid who blows class off and gets B’s instead of A’s.  Sarah Scott, who lives down the street of me, brings a book report on the same book that is a jigsaw puzzle.  Everyone loves the wooden jigsaw puzzle and her red, white, and blue paint job.  My clumsy book cover is ridiculed for its lopsided circle and for its girliness.  Sarah Scott’s dad, who snootily and cockily outbid my father on a John Deere tractor at a neighborhood yard sale when my dad really could have used a new tractor even though it was too expensive for our means, made Sarah’s jigsaw puzzle and did the sanding, the paint job, and even the initial sketch of the 13 states that got cut out.  I overheard Sarah in the bathroom telling one of her friends how her dad “totally helped [her] out with it.”  The written part of my book report, though perhaps not totally correct, was more intricate than anything I had ever tried and was a result of a direct intense effort to try to get it right.  Sarah’s written part of her book report was just a few paragraphs long and very, very simple.   She got a better grade on the assignment, and in the class, than me.  Mr. Levine, my algebra math teacher (it was my favorite class and my best grade for school), spent most of the spring throwing chalkboard erasers at the heads of kids who were acting up.  I heard somewhere that he is now pumping gas on the other side of the county.           

Age 14, 1991: I am pulled out  of Round Valley and am sent to an all girls’ Catholic school, Mt. St. John Academy, that I don’t know if my parents can afford or not.  I have a scholarship, at any rate.  School is like a 35-ish minute drive from home and a pain in the ass to get to.  I hate my uniform skirt.  I have no choice in the matter.  I have to go.  My English teacher, Mrs. Carroll, reads out loud to us often, and she reads The Princess Bride.  I sit in her classroom a lot crying because I feel out of place.  I want to do well not because I love English but because Mrs. Carroll has been very patient with me and, for reasons that I don’t get, believes in me in ways that I will not be able to understand for another 10-15 years.           

Age 17, 1994: I am at Villa Walsh Academy and a senior in high school.   Mt. St. John’s sort of went under with bankruptcy, and my parents sent me from one plaid skirt school to another at the start of my sophomore year.  I am immediately put on scholarship and in honors classes.  By the time of my senior year, Sr. Marian convinces the principal to let her develop an expository writing class.  A group of students who have been in honors classes with at least a B+ grade or who have been in AP English with any grade (but it’s usually a solid A), consistently, are invited to add the class to their schedule.  I don’t know if I am supposed to be invited or not, because English is still my “ball and chain” subject, but somehow I am in the class.  There are 8 of us total.  We workshop essays.  We learn to develop a thesis and to write differently than any 5-6 paragraph book report I’ve ever written before.  That year I also have Sr. Marian for world literature (THE Senior English class).  I am slated to go to A Very Good And Expensive East Coast College and am supposed to be a chemistry major and pre-med (chem and math had always been my best subjects), and while I love expository writing–it’s so different from any writing I had ever done!  I have the chance to say what I think is important for evidence, or to choose my thesis, or to offer a perspective that I am often encouraged to not articulate, ever, for fear of soundling like a dumbass.–I could do without World Lit.  Instead of a final paper, we had to give presentations and were assigned groups of 4 and sections of our textbook that had not yet been discussed.  My group was given 20th c. Russian lit, and I was given Anna Akhmatova and her poem, “Lot’s Wife.”  It’s the fist time I ever read a poem, loved it, cared about it, understood it.  I put a lot of effort into my presentation, and I wound up doing a bit better than two of the other girls in my group who were considered the star students and the apple of almost every teacher’s eye for being sassy and smart and hip.  At the end of the year, Sr. Marian asks my world lit class what we gained from being in class.  I am sitting right in front of her little podium.  I sit back, cross my arms, and very nonchalantly say “oh, this class didn’t really affect me so much.”  Sr. Marian tries not to scream, but her voice is agitated as she says, “well then what the heck do you call everything you’ve ever done in my classes, Stephanie?  A lie?”  Everyone in class looks at me.  I am practically in tears.  It is not until I visit VWA while on break from college and sit down with Sr. Marian that she tells me how much she knew, all along, that I would love lit and writing classes more than anything even though I showed a talent for math and science more immediately as a child.  It’s not until I am in college that I will understand, for the first time, what it feels like to have someone believe in me fiercely.           

Age 18, 1995, fall: first semester of college.  Am supposed to be a chemistry major and pre-med.  My intro chem class should be easy, because I rocked AP Chem in high school.  Instead, it is frustrating and hellish.  There are 120-ish people plus me in my class, and my lab section is horrible.  I should know this stuff, but I never get my experiments right and often have to repeat them a 4th, 5th, 6th time.   I love my freshman seminar, though, and I love reading Wiley’s translation of MONKEY and I love reading Cathy Davidson’s 36 VIEWS OF MOUNT FUJI.  I don’t know what it means or what it would take for my writing to get stronger, but I feel sincerely and naturally compelled towards something–writing and reading–for the first time in my life.  One night, I am sitting in the hallway of my dorm doing my homework because I can’t stand to be in the same room as the telephone on the same day in which I had a really shitty conversation with someone very important to me.  I am in tears and can not focus on my French work, even though we are reading Baudelaire’s poems in French.  In my notebook, I scribble what is to be my first poem.  4 weeks into my chem major/Priveleged Kids’ University life and I am running to writing and expression for comfort instead of formulas and equations.  As fall term progresses, I realize that there is something important about writing and about teaching or, as it occurred to me in my weird little logic, sharing a sense of empowerment over this skill–writing–with other people.  I decide that somehow, I will be an English major instead of a chem major, I will write poems, I will read books, I will teach people in college.  I might have students who are stubborn like I am, and that’s OK.  I might have students who are as lost as I was at age 18, and that’s OK.  I might have students who don’t think anyone believes in them, and that’s OK.  And I might have students who resist and resist and resist, and though I will have to fight my own impatience, that is also OK.

I’m having a bit of a hard time with the readings for this week, so I am looking forward to Niya and Melanie’s presentation.  I think they’re better at deciphering some of this stuff than I am.  Instead, this morning, I want to reflect a bit on teaching and on my students this term.  

1. It’s still hard to get my students excited and, half the time, awake, at 8 AM.  It’s a difficult time in the morning–I know how hard it is for me to wake up early, to guzzle down caffeine and throw a smile on your face and stay awake.  But I do it.  It’s just a bit frustrating to be met with students who are half-asleep and for this to be Week 7 (or 8?) of the term.  First couple of weeks I understand.  That’s a tough time.  But we’re far enough in…
2. When students just aren’t getting into a text, what are some of the things that you do to get them riled up?  My comp class somehow has a gender imbalance–17 girls and 3 guys–and many of my female students are sorority pledges.  A good handful of them just aren’t getting into THE WATCHMEN and aren’t too thrilled with superhero comics or the idea of superheroes in general.   Once I get them talking, they seem to do well with conversation.  In any given class there seem to be a few students who can carry conversation and steer the group towards some interesting points and some interesting passages in the text.  It is, however, like pulling teeth to get students to discuss the book or to discuss the ways in which themes are developed throughout the book.  I keep on chipping away and encouraging discussion, but I’m up for ideas from other people on what they do besides freewrites, small group discussions, and giving a few basic discussion questions.
3.  One thing I have noticed is that when I start the class with a discussion of writing before a discussion of texts, the students seem to get more into a discussion of assigned readings when we get around to it.  They hate when I bring in paragraphs from their own writing.  They love when I bring in passages of papers from former students.   And my students are easier to just point out what is not working in a passage than to point out what is working.  Or, I think more importantly, how something is or is not working.  
4. One of the things that has popped up for me this term–I think in large part because of our 8010 readings and the ones that started off the semester and, thus, set up a context for our understanding–is the fine line between inviting students to become engaged with the exigencies of the classroom (and I think in the comp class there are multiple exigencies that are all nested within each other) and feel like *I* need to do something,  anything, to entertain my students or try to get them enthusiastic about the classroom.  It’s something that I have grappled with in one way or another over the past few years, especially after one particular teaching experience where part of my evaluation was on how much I got students excited about learning and about the classroom (which I will admit has caused me some anxiety since then…), but it’s come to a big head this term: the fine line between making students aware of the exigencies and “performing” for them, as teacher-entertainer, who gives them reason to enjoy class and want to come and want to participate and want to be awake, one way or another, for 8 AM.

  …that’s all.  Nothing huge or deep, just the stuff on my mind.