Learning to Listen - Teaching

The classroom has always been, and will probably always be, my Summerland/Heaven/Joy AND my Hades/Hell/Eternal Frustration.

I was an awkward child. One could probably say that I'm still an awkward adult, but I've grown into my awkwardness. And even though I struggled back then with my lack of brain-to-mouth filter, some of my first kindred souls were teachers.

Sixth grade year, I had the first teacher ever that I could have hated. She taught Algebra, was one year away from retiring and would YELL at us for not getting a concept the first time. Even so, she still circled the entire inside of the middle school with me, TWICE and with a gimp leg, to find my purse that I'd lost.

In eleventh grade, I met Mrs. A -- she is the inspiration for the craziness in my classroom. Her methods ranged from singing operetta while standing on her desk to giving us a packet of worksheets on grammar to finish until we could "relocate our respect, for her and for our education". She had a Santa Snoopy that lit up and sang, even though she was Jewish and she instilled in me the love for American literature that I cannot shake til this day.

I've known, for longer than I can remember, that I would teach one day. The subject switched, from Sign Language (I was told I'd be fully deaf by 25, I'm not), to Spanish (gave that up in fear of a life of teaching Spanish I to kids who HAVE to take it), and finally, to English....for one reason:

You can use English as an excuse to teach/do almost anything.

Critical thinking skills, safe discussions of controversial issues, writing to learn. You can let kids explore a topic they've always wanted to know, read Twilight for their semester book report, and possibly admit to caring for something outside of themselves.

Subject-of-love for me aside, EVERYONE is a teacher of something...or should be. Just because a person can't control small hordes of teenagers, like I prefer to do, doesn't mean their lives and knowledge are not worth the sharing.

So, my suggestion for anyone who bothers to read me tonight - GO find something you love and GIVE it to someone else...by teaching THEM how to do, be, say, find it themselves.

Extended Blog: Teaching Philosophy

Extended Teaching Blog

My teaching philosophy/pedagogical style can be broken down into four parts: classroom structuring, activities, out of classroom, and “mechanics.”

Classroom Structure

My teaching is student-centered. In my classes, I use a variety of classroom “structures,” including whole group discussion, small group, and lecture. I feel that a student-centered classroom is essential; it gives the students the feedback of up to twenty-two people instead of just one and allows the students to learn from people who are more “on their level.” A lot of my class sessions alternate between whole group and small group work – I don’t like for the students to work on a single in class activity for too long. I use lecture sparingly because I feel it lends itself to Freiere’s banking method of learning which I see as pointless. I use lecture only to introduce a totally new topic to them, or if I feel that they will benefit from writing down the information.

Activities

In addition to the generalized organization of my classes, I have a few activities that are utilized regularly and are therefore worthy of mention as part of my teaching philosophy. Once a week, I have my students complete a “critical response.” This involves putting a quote on the board, or an advertisement on the overhead, or song lyrics and having the students respond in writing. Sometimes I give them questions and sometimes I simply told them to write for ten minutes without stopping on the topic. Then we would discuss their answers as a whole class, allowing them to have something prepared to say before facing the “embarrassment” of talking in front of the class. I feel that most students come to college without their own opinions and without much in the way of critical thinking skills, both of which seem to improve over the semester with this activity.

The other regular activities of note relate to revision – small group conferences and in class peer editing. While these are both forms of small group they worthy of a separate discussion. I was against small group conferences at the beginning of the semester. I saw no point in them, and only held them because my syllabus from August had not been altered to exclude them. But I held them for the annotated bibliography and found that my students produced better papers because they got feedback from me and their fellow students at an earlier stage of the writing process than they did with normal workshops. And I believe that peer editing is vital to student composition at the beginning level. I usually put students in groups of three, so that their papers are read twice. The first person reads for content and to see if they are “getting their point across,” and the second person reads for mechanics such as grammar and punctuation.

Prep Work/Out of Class

Part of my teaching philosophy includes what goes on outside of the classroom. I always overplan my lessons, in case an activity bombs or my students “get” a concept more quickly than I expect them to do. My grading philosophy includes an attempt at a one week turnaround with papers. I tell them (both in person and on their syllabus) to expect a two week turnaround, but I remember what it is like to be awaiting judgment on something that I worked very hard on. I use my syllabus as a contract and a way to put some of the responsibility back on the students. I used to make a syllabus when I taught high school but the importance of it at the collegiate level is much higher, and I hold my students to the policies and assignment discussed on it. I also expect them to hold me to my policies etcetera as they are written in the syllabus.

“Mechanics”

I use the term “mechanics” to describe the physical layout of the classroom and technology. The layout of the classroom affects how different activities run. For example, I put the class into a large circle for full group discussion and presentations, with desks facing for small group work, and rows for lecture and tests. Many classes my students will move their desks from one layout to another as “mixing it up” keeps their attention.

As far as technology, it is a part of my teaching philosophy, but not the basis of it. I require that students have a school email and are registered for Blackboard. I send out announcements about class changes and other vital information through email, and I post grades and copies of assignment sheets on Blackboard; both of these actions are a means to give students more responsibility for their own education. I use an overhead projector to give the occasional lecture notes.

Web Writing Woes

I all ready did my blog for this week, but today's discussion lead me to thinking about enough that I decided there was one more good ramble in me this week.

Let me start with a bit of background in my interest on this topic. My first year of teaching and, to an extent still to this day, www.webenglishteacher.com was my best friend. For someone just starting up in the world of teaching English, be it literature or composition -- this website was a godsend. It has lesson plans, unit plans, examples, citation how-tos, and links to author bios and university writing centers. But, best of all was its wide array of samples papers and projects.

I think that a similar site on a more local level for MSU would be fantastic! Regardless of whether a prof or a GTA is new to teaching itself, taking on a new class or position can be daunting. To be able to point a student (or myself) to a model position paper could save a lot of time and confusion. This is not to say that the website would replace teaching, but it would be an un-valuable resource.

As for how to do this....does it have to be large and complicated? Today, Dr.Cadle mentioned that it's easier to get grant money if the grant-givers see that something is all ready being done. Now, before I make my suggestions...let me give the disclaimer that I am not especially internet saavy. I can point and click and use it for research, but my only web design experience is two painfully set up semester long websites for literature classes as an undergrad. ANd I used geocities web-builder for those.

But my question/suggestion is: why not set up a website, using Dreamweaver or whatever the preferred webdesigner is, and put together a basic site. Have a section for models of the various types of 110 (and/or 210, etc) papers, a section assignment sheet models, unit plan ideas, etc...?
I understand that this would take time and effort in the gathering of said models and web designing, but I see more merit in starting a separate basic site than trying to somehow incorporate this level of accessibility and communication on Blackboard. I DO use Blackboard with my classes, but only for the Gradebook (as I find it easier than constantly having students email and question me on what their grade is) and to post copies of assignment sheets so that students will be accountable for that.

I will continue to ponder on this, but these are my thoughts so far.

Assessment Week

Assessment, formal assessment anyhow, is the hardest thing for me to pin down. I imagine that is the case for most teachers. I have no trouble with progressive assessment, or whatever you would call monitoring and discussion based assessment...but I have trouble deeming someone's written work as 'good' or 'bad', especially if I can tell that they have worked hard on it and/or if it's a great improvement over previous papers. With the papers that are an improvement, I always have to stop and think about whether I should give it the "C" that it deserves or to give it an "A" or "B" because it's progress.

Rose's "Language of Exclusion" was interesting for me to read. It had some of the same concepts as Lives on the Boundary did, but the presentation and his writing style were very different. I realize that the shift in style is due to the difference in audience, from that of educators and pedagogy students to a more formal academic venue; but it was still strange to go from the almost friendly tone in Lives to this article.

Reading this article also made me think about my own means of assessment. I am a fan of rubrics, both as a student and as a teacher. As a student, I like to see the areas that I need to work on. It doesn't matter if there are points or simply a checklist like the rubric we discussed in class. Rubrics also show what the teachers value...and I'm sorry, but it's important to know what the professor wants. As much as what should matter is becoming a stronger writer...you sort of have to take on the professor's values as your own for the duration of that class.

I know that Rose would not agree with most of the rubrics I use for my classes. They are not wholly grammer/usage based, but I believe that if the grammar and mechanics are so poor that it disrupts the flow of the paper....it should affect the grade.

All of the above rant aside, most days I wish that (after the basic level classes are over) there would be no grades, only comments and working on improvement in writing. My ideal writing class would have units such as: Style, Diction, Flow/Organization, Thesis. Now, I don't think this would work for basic level writing....

Sophism

Vitanza's article, unfortunately, didn't clear up any of the questions I have about rhetoric and the finer points of arguments. Or maybe it's just that I didn't read through it enough times, or even that sophist's principles aren't meant to be understood by those who do not follow the theory.

I really don't have much else to say that wouldn't be space-filling blathering, so I guess I won't count this as one of my top 10 blogs.

Rhetoric and Audience

I found Corbett’s article on classic rhetoric in the composition classroom to be the most influential for me, of the readings from this week…and no, this is not because it was the shortest of the three. I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of rhetoric is close to nil; my undergraduate studies of rhetoric left me with a sort of lofty definition: “the study of argument”. Now, I know there’s more to it than that, and I could extrapolate a little, but my ability to explain rhetorical studies is vague.

Still, I found Corbett’s explanation and defense of classical rhetoric terms and practices food for thought for my composition classes. I agreed with his statement that “students find theme-writing so unrealistic” because of the vague audience that they usually have to write to – the “general public”.

I also agree with and found that I have put into practice his idea that students need a solid, concise thesis statement before they can properly start an academic paper. I actually had them do an exercise in class yesterday (the day I handed out the assignment sheet for the research paper) that guided them through a self-questioning process in order to produce a thesis statement for their yet-unwritten papers.

I would be interested in what our creative writing focused people in this class have to say about his statement, near the end of the paper, of “But hasn’t the cult of self-expression had a fair chance to prove itself in the classroom? How often does the student with creative promise even show up in our classrooms?” He is basically saying, in my opinion, that classic rhetoric methodology should replace the majority of creative expression in academic writing. I don’t think they are mutually exclusive.

It seems like the theme for this week’s reading can be boiled down, yet again, to one word “audience”. In fact that seems to be one of the major themes for this class for the semester. All of which leads me to the question: How do we make a more concrete audience for our students to use for their Comp 110 papers? Or, how do we help them learn to seek their own audience? It seems that audience training is important to the English department here, but not to all of them. So, how do we teach them to help themselves in finding and/or creating an audience for future, non-110 papers?

Drafting Differences

Starting with the last article first...I have some fairly strong agreements and disagreements with Flowers and Hayes' argument for a cognitive process of writing. I agree wholeheartedly that writing is, in part, an intellectual process. To think that writing "just happens", and that it doesn't run through multiple processes of the mind is absurd. My disagreements lie with, and this is totally a worldview/personality difference, the insistence for charts and discussion of hierarchies of goals and that ilk. I guess then, my issue lies more with the need to overthink what I see as a natural process. Granted, it obviously is a learned process, but I see the potential to write as a latent, natural process, that requires teaching only to give form to the process.

I really enjoyed the Harris article, and the resulting discussion for the matter, on one-and-multi draft writers. Honestly, before dealing with this article, I had always considered one-draft writers simply lazy or procrastinators. And while I still don't know that I myself will ever be a one-draft writer, I can understand where they are coming from now. It was also neat to see practical application of previous readings for class in this one. I had struggled some with the reader versus writer based prose, and this helped me to better understand how the focus of writing can be influenced by audience.

The information discussed in Sommer's article about revision...mostly wasn't new to me, but I do feel like I benefitted from gaining an understanding of the format of the types of articles that I may someday write and publish in scholarly journals.