Elbow and the Internet

As is to be expected, I enjoyed the Elbow article more than the other two. They were not horrible, I just am an Elbow fan. I've said before that much of the Crosstalk book authors leave me feeling stupid when I read them, but Elbow is always more clear, even if I do not agree with everything he writes. I do not know if a writer can ever turn off the audience of self. I wholeheartedly believe that writers can tune everyone else out and just write for themselves, but even in a diary or journal, you are writing for the audience of the future self.

The Lunsford article on textual ownership was, once again, best understood after class discussion. It reminded me of an old friend and classmate who believed that information should never be copyrighted or classified...that it should be available for all. This is a very grey area in my opinion, because it is hard to own an idea, but that's what most information is...creative and/or informative shaping of ideas. I understand though, that this is a world where what you own is often the deciding factor of who you are, regardless of whether it is financial or intellectual capital (Dr.Burling's influence is starting to show), but I also think that information should not be hoarded. That is my head speaking, though, as my heart would want to receive full credit and ownership for any stories, poems, ideas, projects that I produced.

The narrative-based article on safe spaces for women to write should have appealed to my fairly strong feminist side, but in reality, it did not. I can understand where the woman felt like her personal space had been violated when the 'master male' student let himself into her web server, but even metaphorically, I feel that rape is a too-strong comparison. And speaking from a teaching point of view, the narrative styled formatting made it hard to pull pithy passages. There were ideas to be summarized, but not necessarily 'quotable quotes'. I agree with their concerns about creating a safe space to write, but I don't know if that need is really only for the women in our classes....it applies to every student.

Are you really out there, audience?

I take a sort of joy in the fact that I am writing in my blog, where I know who my intended audience is, about the concepts of addressed versus invoked audience. It's all very post-modern and 'meta'.

I agree, to an extent, with Chris' confusion in class yesterday about the idea of a fictionalized audience. I think though, that I have more of a problem with Ong's belief that an audience is more real for an orator than it is for a writer. There is always a real, actual audience for any piece of writing, even if the audience is simply the writer-as-a-reader of their own work. It is, instead, a matter of 'determining' who the audience is, not a matter of creating a previously non-existing audience.

I also do not understand how a reader can take on a role that requires them to ficitionalize themselves. I understand the part about taking on a role; I have two reader roles -- with pen in hand and for pleasure.

Maybe I am too caught up in semantics here, but fiction to me means 'not real'. Therefore, the audience is never fictional or constructed because the reader all ready exists (regardless if the reader is the writer or someone else).

The Lunsford/Ede piece was interesting to read as a direct follow up to Ong's writing. I've never before read a (partial) critique of an author that I had just read. I enjoyed that this essay mostly dealt with the strengths and weaknesses of several theoretical models, instead of taking the usual very distinct bias that some of the other essays in the book take. I understand that the purpose of writing a paper on a specialized topic (or almost any writing at all) is to make an argument, but at the level that I am at in the world of composition theory, it is occasionally good to just become more informed on something.

It's Friere Day, Yeah!

So, once again, I found twice as much benefit in discussion yesterday as I did reading the essays and chapters by myself. Friere is infinitely more relatable than some of the other topics we've covered, but I'm learning that I simply "get" more out of talking about something. I've always been a very verbal learner, but before taking this class, I could usually get a good grasp of the things I've read. I also kind of (read: arrogantly) felt that because my undergrad degree was in English EDUCATION that I would somehow magically understand all the pedagogical stuffs. Tis not the case, though I am learning, bit by bit.

Now my reactions to the readings themselves: I had heard, vaguely, of the banking method before this week, but had never really read much about it. After three years teaching high school, in a place that virtually required the banking method, my knee jerk reaction was to hate it on principle. It seemed, and still somewhat seems to me, common sense that students need dialogue and to be questioned and challenged. And it seems equally common sense to me that there needs to be mutual respect and a general love for humanity in order to create an environment (in the classroom or out) where good dialogue can be generated.

And while I do believe all of the above, I truly think that the banking method is not only useful, but necessary in almost every classroom. Depending on the class, the extent of which the banking method would be useful fluctuates. Even within the English and Composition classrooms, students need basic vocabulary and knowledge of formats. And while these could be taught in a 'discovery' or dialogue method, it would be a waste of time.

Tardy Post for week of 9/5 - 9/8/06

First and foremost, I wanted to comment on the discussion about the readings before I talked about this week's readings, themselves. Class on Friday was, for me, one of the most beneficial classes I've had this year. Sometimes with the articles we are assigned, I get bogged down in the length and the big words, and I end up only understanding half (if that) of what is being explained in the article. But the group mini-presentations left me going "Oh!" a lot, in my head.

Now, as for the readings themselves, I "got" the most of the Royster article on cross-boundary discourse and the least from Bizzell's article on cognition. I feel that the monitoring and modeling how to blur the line of the "Other" is something very practical, and can be applied both to our classrooms and our everyday lives. I mean, being more consciously aware of what we say about people who are something we are not, be it race/gender/religion, seems common sense. And being that we are teachers, regardless of our political pedagogy, we have the need to model that way of thinking for our students. And it has to be modeled, because I don't believe that is something that can be taught.

The Kirsch/Ritchie article on politics of location seemed to be mostly about how to handle research subjects. I probably need to go back and read this one again; not because I didn't understand the concepts in it, but because the idea of human subjects as something that I might be working with is so new to me that my focus was on that. I guess part of my brain always thought that English majors only studied the literature and writings themselves, but I am seeing now that there is more to it than that.

This week's readings were clearer and more beneficial to me personally than some of the previous ones because I feel like I finished the week understanding (at least the main point) of each of them.

New-old Revelation

So, I was reading Tobin Lad's "Process Pedagogy" last night, when I came to a realization: we (profs/teachers) want to teach process writing, and they (our 110 students) don't want that. I looked back over the diagnostic essay that I gave my students last week, at the part about 'expectations for the class', and realized that all of them expected, and sort of wanted, to be taught how to write the form-perfect essay.

How do we overcome that? I, personally, am an advocated of writing as a process. But I also realize that the student and the teacher kinda have to be on the same page of what's being taught and learned. (This is not to say that I am the only teacher in the classroom, but that is a discussion for another time).

And now it becomes a much bigger issue that "are they understanding what I'm teaching", because they are only listening for how to write 'correctly', and I am only teaching how to write 'from the heart'.

Food for thought....