week 5 reflection

Fiction colors my life. My bookshelves are 95% fiction. My DVD collection is probably 98% fiction. Last year I read 45 books and 42 of them were fiction. A big goal of mine for 2016 was to consume more nonfiction. I am watching 1 documentary a week, and reading as much nonfiction as my busy life allows. It just so happens that all of this lines up with this Teaching College Composition course. I never once considered teaching fiction as part of a composition course until Professor Hayes said something about it like a week or so ago. It also coincides with the decision of the English department at my school to have me take over the AP Language and Composition course next year, meaning all of this nonfiction consumption is going to come in handy. It also means this Teaching College Composition course is going to have a serious impact on my teaching next year. In fact, the material I will be producing for this class is shaping my syllabus for next year's course.

I have my four major nonfiction texts picked out already, and I ran into the same problem with AP Language as I did with AP Literature; a majority of the recommended texts are by straight white dudes. It is frustrating to be confronted with this everywhere I turn. I did manage to get one text by a white woman, and one text by a black woman in my major texts. I will definitely be doing more supplemental materials from underrepresented groups of people.

I am finding myself in discussions about inclusiveness on a nearly daily basis. Just yesterday my friend and I were talking about the use of language like "black film" as if that somehow means films without qualifiers are the standard and that standard is white. I have too many students who do not see the problem with white-washing, or the problem with the fact that women have almost no chance to direct big budget films, or do not see the problem with stereotypical characters because they are funny. I believe it is a huge part of my job to try and help open their eyes to some of the injustices in our world, not just the super big things like overt KKK style racism, or idiocy of Men's Rights Activists, but the more covert issues that color our world.

I find myself exhausted at the struggle, but then I think about the struggle People of Color, women and the LGTBQ community goes through on a daily basis, and it reminds me how lucky I am. It also reminds me I have to do my part to show my students that the voices of the underrepresented matter, and if that means Straight White Dude voices, like mine, have to be silent for a little bit, that is okay. That was weird to write because as I type up this blog post, I am using my Straight White Dude voice.

Cultural Studies and Composition

This week's Cultural Studies reading spoke to me in meaningful ways. It does seem that a Cultural Studies element should exist in a composition classroom. Both as a way to allow more students to connect to the course and as a way to keep composition relevant as the world's texts move forward at a rapid rate. One of the passages that had me nodding me head in agreement and saying "YES" loudly as I read in a Starbucks was "treating popular texts as if they merited the same degree of attention and appreciation of canonical texts" (99). This got to me because in my real life as a High School English teacher, the CANON is akin to the holy Bible, but it is problematic to me because a majority of canonical texts are written by Dead White Guys, and were placed in the CANON by, you know, other Dead White Guys. As education desires inclusion, and as colleges admit a more diverse population, sticking to texts written by Dead White Guys presents a multitude of issues.

When popular texts are given the same weight as canonical texts, it allows for professors to find texts that represent the widening student body, and find texts to which young people can connect. As someone who tried to teach The Scarlet Letter two years in a row, I can tell you that the themes and ideas in that text were big hits with my students, but the book itself was mostly unread. What good does it do a teacher/professor to assign texts to be read, if a majority of students refuse to read it or simply cannot read it. In my teaching of that book, I had to find articles, videos, audio, blog posts, etc on the same subject to help guide my students along.

Another important reason for Cultural Studies to have influence over a composition course that goes along with the passage I posted, is that it redefines the power structure, which is something about which I am passionate. The Straight White Male perspective has long been the default perspective, and it is long due for a change. By incorporating a wide variety of texts for students to read, and by being more inclusive in general, it gives the diverse population of students more of a chance to experience different perspectives. By showing our students inclusive voices, it opens up their own abilities to express themselves in unique ways.

In the AP Literature course I am currently teaching, I find myself increasingly frustrated that a majority of the recommended texts are written by Dead White Guys. Because I want my students to be as prepared as possible, I am teaching 5 major texts from Dead White Guys, but also 1 major text from a woman, and 2 major texts from People of Color. Also, 90% of the poetry we go over is written from someone other than a Dead White Guy. As a student of AP Literature I read pretty much only canonical works and it was not until college that my eyes were opened to a wider variety of texts. I do not want my students to go away to college only having the Dead White Guy perspective. It is imperative on me to help students disrupt the power structure in all texts.

Week 4 reflection

In the next few weeks I am preparing to start my next big writing assignment in class. I am trying to incorporate some of the ideas from the Bean text into the assignment. Starting a new writing intensive unit is always a big of a challenge because students are so resistant to writing in a formal way. Trying to balance the things I am learning in this class with the Common Core State Standards, and the Bi-Laws of my school, which require a certain amount of pages for essays during a school year can be a complex series of challenges in its own way.

This week I ran into a former student at Sac State for the first time. He is the first one to go to college in his family line. We chatted for a bit about the transition from high school to college, but mostly we talked about writing because he said he wished he had taken writing more seriously in high school because there is so much of it at the college level. I am trying to figure out how to make students aware that those who are going to college are going to face writing in more than just English and history class, but until they are actually in college, they never think about, so not only do I need to teach writing better, I need to help them see why learning how to write is important outside of English class. And when I think about that too much, I want to curl up and take a long nap. 

Response to Rose

I felt this article on a deep level because it is something I grapple with on a daily basis in my job as a high school English teacher. For many of my students writing feels exclusionary. Whether it is the language barrier many of my immigrant students feel, or the fear of grammar rules they either never quite learned, or just cannot seem to remember. They look at writing as something smart people do, and they do not feel smart. This exclusionary barrier bleeds over into college, where many of my students are the first person in their families to go. Many feel they lack the skills necessary to write at the college level, so I often find myself wrestling with this word skill. When Rose says “In the case of writing, the skills should be mastered before one enters college and takes on higher-order endeavors. And the place for such instruction-before or after entering college-is the English class. Yes, the skill can be refined, but its fundamental development is over…”(8), I cringed because I do not know what that looks like. What does mastery of a skill of writing look like? I am a pretty skilled writer with a degree in English, who teaches writing every day, and I do not think I have mastered it. I am thirty-five years old, so how can I expect my sixteen year old students to master this skill.

 This article makes me think about Forced Learning. Students who are scared of writing have a hard time learning because it feels forced. They are struggling with confidence, then they have to take in all of this other information, much of which slips through them, landing them in remediation, a word with such a stigma, I get students who try to take AP Language who have no business taking it because on the off chance that they will get a four or five on the exam would mean that for many of them, they would not have to take a college composition course and possibly end up in a remedial class which they have to pay for, but does not count for college credit towards graduation. This is the perfect way to exclude poor students who struggle to pay for college in the first place.

 It is tough to see how this plays out in the long haul because I think it requires an overhaul in our entire educational system, but also in the job market. Some people were not meant to go to college, but we keep shoving that idea down their throats, so they get in, struggle to pay for it, end up in remedial classes, then dropout feeling like failures. It is a vicious cycle, and it is something I spend too much time thinking about.

Week 3 reflection

I am currently writing this reflection with a fever of over 100 degrees, on what is supposed to be a week off from teaching, so you will have to pardon if this reflection is either slightly incoherent, or just a bit hazy. My body is pumped full of some good stuff at the moment. This course has got me thinking a lot about restructuring my high school classroom for next year, which I have talked about in both of my reflections already. What I realized the last week after reading chapters 3 and 4 of the Bean text is just how wide open composition really is. It is not just about writing essay after essay, it is teaching writing in a variety of genres. Instinctively I know that there are different genres of writing, and I teach a wide selection of writing, but I have always made the essay the most impactful piece of writing, and I am seeing now that is actually problematic. Instead of looking at other genres of writing as the pre-writing, or the "filler" writing, it is time to make those types of writing as important. It has opened up a whole new world of curriculum to me for next year. Though I got into high school teaching to teach literature, the reality of high school is that the focus is shifting away from literature analysis, and to types of writing applicable to students who are going to college or to a job. It is exciting and exhausting to think about.

Week 3 response

As with anything else in this world, I am weary of choosing one or the other, in this debate between outer-directed theorists, and inner-directed theorists. It makes sense to me, that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. During class on Thursday, our group discussed how we felt that box 1 and box 2 on the Flower and Hayes model, needed to be less boxy, and dropped into the second model, and then maybe we have something we can all work with. Each discourse community comes with its own set of distinct conceptual structures, and its own language, so it would make sense that much of what we learn, and how we learn, has to come from external factors. Yet, in terms of teaching composition, we have to be aware that our students are visiting different discourse communities, and it is virtually impossible for us, as instructors to get our students well-versed in every single one, so we do need to be able to teach the students how to spot the intricacies of discourse communities, and doing so involves a heuristic approach. If not a literal checklist, at least a set of tools the students can use to identify within their internal processes, to move from discourse community to discourse community without feeling lost. One of the concepts in the Bizzell article that stands out to me is that the writer must be able to define goals in terms of the interpretive conventions of that specific community. I think, then, the aim of teaching a composition course, should be to give students the tools to be able to identify conventions when they find themselves in a new discourse community. I am not as interested in the deeply theoretical, as I am in how to make the theoretical applicable in the classroom. As a side note, I always assumed composition courses were all about essay writing, so the Bean has opened up so much more to me.

Week 2 reflections

A professor I had never met until this week thinks I am crazy for trying to teach full time and take three courses for the Master's program. He is proving to be right. It has been an insane week, however, it has also been a week full of pure learning. In my two lit courses I have already learned so much to help the students in the AP literature course I teach. The critical pieces of writing are helping to resharpen my mind in terms of looking at books as more than simply words on paper. We are digging deep into our current text, Things Fall Apart, with the help of critical essays. On the composition side, the John C. Bean text has opened my eyes to realizing how much more I can be doing to help my students with writing. My brain is moving in a ton of different directions now, and it has been stressful, but also fun. The problem I am running into is time management, of course. But, I am also running into this issue of wanting to do it all. I want to completely overhaul my curriculum for next school year. My brain has shifted over to next school year already. It is crazy how much of my time is spent planning the future classes, fixing all of the things that are not currently working. On top of my regular teaching and Sac state load, I am also planning to teach AP Language next year, something I have never done, as well as writing a complex yearbook class curriculum with the hope of submitting it to the UC system to get the class approved for their A-G high school graduation credit. All the while trying to lose 35 pounds this year, get my novel published, and continue writing fiction in the hopes of jump starting a fiction career I put of for a decade out of fear. It's a big time in my life. I know in the next few years kids will be a reality, but I feel like that's a post for my actual journal.

Responding to Sommers

"The Experienced writers see their revision process as a recursive process-a process with significant recurring activities-with different levels of attention and different agenda for each cycle." (Sommers, 386) The looming question after reading this article stems from the above passage: How does one transition from a novice writer to an experienced writer? Is it simply the amount of time one has been writing? The amount one has written in a lifetime? Is there a specific process that exists that moves a writer from novice to experienced? according to the case study Sommers completed, "student" writers look at revisions as a process of strengthening vocabulary and deleting words or fixing grammar, but not massive overhauls. Students are looking at the economy of time. They think about how quickly they can make a few surface level changes to satisfy the requirements of a second or third draft. Essentially they write one draft and then tinker with it a little bit. I immediately thought about my own classroom. What do I do to foster the idea that deep level changes in writing are important. How can I change my process having read Sommers' article? First thing I did was get rid of the peer review worksheet. Next thing I did was ask the class what the word revision means to them. This was an enlightening few minutes. For an overwhelming majority of students the revision process has never been made important. They look at as a box to check in the writing process to fulfill a requirement for the teacher. During our group time, I mentioned to my group that I do not remember learning how to do true revisions to essays. I am sure I learned at some point, but I do not remember when I realized that the revision process was, as Sommers points out, recursive. This is the crux of revisions. There has to be a way to show students that rough drafts are meant to be mounds of play-doh, from which they shape into a final product. It is not the final product minus a pinch of reshaping. The idea is not the mound, the draft is the mound. This is where I am now. In another few weeks my students will begin the essay writing process over again. I need to show students the importance of reordering and addition, not simply deletion, or word choice corrections. If only Sommers' article had included the magic pill of answers.