A Post About Whatever I Want

I found Miller’s and Shepherd’s article on “Blogging as Social Action” quite interesting this week. I thought the concept that the confessional nature of blogs has blurred the line between private and public was entirely truthful and fascinating. The authors mention how these social media platforms create a unique opportunity for kairos, saying the right thing in the right amount at the right time. More so than blogging, though, I think that kairos has become the defining factor of Twitter. Creating concise witticisms that take up no more than 140 characters takes discipline and practice, and not everyone can achieve this form of kairos. Twitter even released a manual instructing politicians how to best use the platform to craft their messages to followers (and I suppose that Trump and Carson have used different strategies than advised, as their shared goal only seems to be sounding freaking crazy to garner attention).

Miller and Shepherd point out that these types of platforms can “seize on the unique opportunity of a fleeting moment to create a new rhetorical possibility.” Anyone, with proper understanding of how to craft a concise message, can become famous almost overnight through social media. We literally have a category of social media stars these days, who find their voice on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. What fascinates me about this, though, is the fact that we all daily see individuals who use these platforms almost unsuccessfully; people tend to mix up intended uses for each medium. For example:

• ·      Using blogs/Facebook/Twitter as a diary or journal
• ·      Using Facebook as Google
• ·      Using Facebook/Instagram/Twitter as free advertisements (you know, the post with ONE MILLION hashtags)
• ·      Using Facebook walls in place of private messaging/text messaging
• ·      And finally, not allowing for the restrictions of an online medium. The post is too long, not broken up enough, or just looks uninteresting. We all know this feeling:
• 
  

Online writing and writing is exponentially different than offline. Miller and Shepherd point out this concept of voyeurism through social media; they assert, “The technology of the internet makes it easier than ever for anyone to be either voyeur or an exhibitionist.” We tend to make ourselves into willing subjects, creating a social media identity, or as we refer to it in professional domains, social media presence. On the other end of the spectrum, we “creep” on other individuals that have created a web presence for themselves. Facebook was revolutionary in this regard—generations had never before grown up with an ability to instantly gain knowledge about another person without actually interacting with said person. This is so engrained in our society that it has now become a common courtesy to Facebook “friend” any acquaintances in everyday life. Our immediate reaction is to search for someone online in order to get to know him/her.

I am fascinated with how this online presence bleeds into job searches. I, among hundreds of thousands of users, have spent ridiculous amounts of time crafting my LinkedIn profile in the past, thinking that this would have a grand influence on any potential job opportunities. However, now, it seems to me that to be professional online, one should concentrate on one’s own domain space like we’ve been discussing in class. I am still trying to figure out how this would look for someone in my specialization, as I do not have much experience with publications or conferences.

Overall, I think we are all still figuring out what the Internet and social media presence can do for us, or how misuse of it will negatively affect a version of our identities.

A String of Thoughts on Robert Brooke's "Underlife"

As I am opting out of the article for this class, I thought I’d discuss my thoughts on one of our readings from this past week.

Robert Brooke describes an “underlife” as having a more complex personality outside that of a defined role—specifically that of student or teacher. He asserts, “Students disobey, write letters instead of taking notes, and whisper to their peers to show that they are more than just students and can think independently of classroom expectations” (721). He says that this concept rests on three assumptions about social interaction: We understand someone based on (1) how they look or sound, (2) what we know about their history, and (3) stances they take towards groups we assume they belong to. Brooke goes on to highlight several different types of underlife that occur in the classroom, the last of which is the most common way that we tend to think about “underlife”—a student’s attention being divided between class activity and something else.

I find his thoughts quite interesting, as I have always typically been a “leave your personal life at the door” kind of person, even as a student. I think there are many ways to learn to be professional in class and showcase your own identity at the same time, though I suppose this depends on the receptivity of the classroom environment. For example, in classes where I have been a student, I have enjoyed expressing my own opinion, but within appropriate reason. I think the classroom provides ample opportunity for students to learn to wrangle their more hostile or unreasonable behaviors when trying to express their ideas; also, students have to learn to pay attention to things they may not even be interested in. If we’re going to look toward teaching what will be relevant to the student, we have to recognize that learning to be professional is relevant to anyone who will have any job. For the most part, your job will not care if you come to work tired or sad, or feel as though you cannot work that day (save for issues with actual sickness). They will not condone your behavior if you do not listen or contribute during meetings. They will not keep you on if you cannot express your opinion in a way that is both helpful and peaceful.

With this in mind, of course we should be doing all we can to encourage voice and identity in the classroom, especially in encouraging our students to see themselves as writers. Brooke describes how most teachers are likely to describe students’ identities in terms of “voice,” a unique stance that an individual takes toward an experience. However, I find it hard to believe that certain forms of underlife, unnecessary distractions (like cell phones), are a firm part of anyone’s identity. If a student cannot part with their phone for the length of a class period, I do not assume that the student is working on something miraculous and technologically innovative, I’m sorry to say. I could be wrong (and the student would be welcome to prove me wrong if they wish), but I assume that the student is texting, or on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or one of the other hundreds of potential social media cites. The vision that we have of this generation, that they are more bound by technology than any other generation, is not entirely true in my opinion. I actually think that generations who did not have this technology previously are much more likely to be obsessed with its innovations. For this reason, I am more inclined to think that students’ identities are not wrapped up in technology, especially as writers. Postman’s description of “information glut” always sticks out to me; if we never move past the Internet and what it can bring to the table, students will be so stunted and paralyzed by the sheer amounts of information that they will never feel that they can have original thoughts. I am all for expressing identity in the classroom, but I feel that, to make students feel comfortable as writers, we should have them begin in a somewhat isolated state, unencumbered by the innumerable ideas of generations that came before them. If not, if we want to capitalize on the technological innovations of our time for educational purposes, perhaps there should be a required class before composition that teaches students how to properly navigate the Internet and sort through “information glut.”

Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job?

I would say the learning objective I felt that we most focused on throughout this class is the aspect of critical thinking: “Students will become more conscious of their processes for planning, drafting, revising, and editing of writing. Students will take an active role in summarizing, synthesizing, and presenting course content.” In this course, I have been confronted with figuring out how I will conduct a classroom, what teaching philosophies I will adhere to (which, I am sorry to say, I had never considered thoroughly before). Not only have I examined my own methods of writing, but also I have been able to examine other possible methods that need to be made available to my future students.

We have worked through theories on various methods of writing through our readings on revision/processes of writing and the hypermediated syllabus assignment. I had never come into contact with any of the assigned readings from this class. This is most likely because the classes I took at my undergrad did not have a focus on rhetoric specifically, and I had never before taken an interest in composition. (Even if I had, I’m fairly sure they teach FYC through literature at HSU). I thought that these readings provided necessary and needed insight to my future teaching career, as I had never taken a class that focuses primarily on the discussion of pedagogy/andragogy. These theories we have gone over have fascinating implications for the classroom and what it means to be teaching students from all different backgrounds. I appreciate that names were given to the phenomenons of “guarding the tower” and “converting the natives,” explaining that all new English teachers will tend to experience these forms of miscommunication with students that they are trying so desperately to impact.

The largest and most important assignment that this class had to offer for me was the hypermediated syllabus. Never before have I been confronted with building my own class, and I was intimidated by it. Even after simmering in all these readings the whole semester, I still remain unsure of the theories behind my choices and whether or not I will continue to think of them as viable ways of teaching—especially since I have yet to teach my own class. Nevertheless, I think it was a valuable experience to be required to think over these ideas and have to momentarily commit to a method of teaching. This syllabus assignment only touched on the decisions I will eventually have to make. While writing it, I know that I played it safe in certain areas where I might not in the future, and I committed to assignments that I have seen work in other classes while avoiding creating my own. I am not quite sure that I brought the “funk,” as Dr. Rice requested, but perhaps with more practice I can step it up.

These experiences will obviously influence my future career as a professor. There is one thing that I wish I had paired with this class this semester—I wish I had taken the initiative to shadow a CI in their 1301 course. I know that I learn best through observing others, so I plan on taking this up next semester.

Identify where you think students may fail in an assignment in your syllabus, and how you will use that at a teachable moment by design.

In my syllabus, I included some reasonable assignments that I believe FYC students should grasp the concept of without much trouble, such as daily quizzes and readings, a weekly blog, a group multimedia project, peer critiques, and a rhetorical analysis. The one assignment that I believe would be out of an FYC student’s norm is the emulation paper:

Emulation Paper: Students will analyze two small passages of prose (posted on Blackboard) and compose their own creative passages that emulate each original author’s style. In addition, students will turn in a one-page reflection for each emulation discussing (1) specific written mannerisms or choices they see the author making and (2) how these choices contribute to the author’s argument and style.

I have taken this assignment from one of my undergraduate grammar classes. We were given a passage of Hemingway’s and another of Mary Oliver’s. This assignment caused me to not only analyze a work, but to dissect it. In my mind, this is a valuable exercise that liberates students temporarily from the pressure of finding their own style; rather, they can try out other techniques that they might have otherwise been afraid of using. I think that Hemingway is a useful author to assign because students do not have to be intimidated by a large vocabulary. His style is simple, but distinctive. Oliver would be a more difficult author for basic writers to emulate, but she provides more opportunity for more creative students to indulge in a new writing style.

I see various things that would confuse a student and perhaps cause him/her to stumble. First of all, FYC students have been taught to be very concerned about plagiarism. I think there could be some confusion about what it means to “emulate” an author without copying their work. We would have extensive discussion about this problem in class, looking at several examples of emulations and dissecting what the emulator did in their own writing to mirror the original author’s. This assignment emphasizes the importance of grammar in writing, showing how form shapes content. I think this could also be a point of confusion for some students, as many writers do not adhere to standard grammar. This makes students examine the purpose behind an author’s usage of such grammar, though. We would discuss reasons for particular phrasing, pacing, vocabulary choices, etc. Lastly, I think that students might be intimidated by having to come up with their own creative pieces.

I am not sure that basic writers would be able to succeed in this assignment, strictly because they must succeed at two things: Writing a cohesive section of their own creative writing prose and doing it in the style of someone else. I believe it is a valuable experience regardless, because students will be confronted with the role of form in one’s writing. Oftentimes, students cannot get past the fact that they are not “good” at grammar, and they do not comprehend that grammar is not meant to be a rule book. It is meant to help us convey exactly what we wish to convey, and there is a stark difference between those two purposes.

List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list.

Keywords:

Dialectic vs. Rhetoric

Empowerment

Error correction

Intertextuality

Knowledge

"What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?"

All this talk of photo essays in class, and I had never heard of them before. I am so glad that we got an example of them in class on Monday. After looking at them, I think this is a great assignment for FYC students. We discussed how photo essays slow students down enough to maximize their on-task thought. In addition, collaboration on this type of creative assignment really forces students to discuss their own artistic ideas, and they may not have been challenged in this way before. I especially appreciate this assignment because the technology is not difficult to work with. Like Selfe puts forth: it is vital to create an assignment that maximizes dialectical engagement without cutting off students who don’t have a high technological literacy. So often we are discussing potential ways to incorporate technology into the classroom, and I find myself thinking that if I were a student, the technology itself would be a barrier for me. Maybe I’m just an old grandma when it comes to new technology—I have a basic grasp of how to do most things, but I often find myself thinking that the payoffs of learning some new technology don’t seem to be worth the struggle of learning it. I also am more than willing to recognize that upcoming students will have a better literacy of technology than I do.

As a student, I have always had a reluctance and an apprehensiveness toward both group projects and projects that required more than a basic knowledge of technology. Group projects seemed to exist just so I could carry the weight of four or five other students in my class, and they always somehow ended up with me (or if I was lucky, me and one other person) scrambling the night before it was due to finish every other neglected portion of the project. I think one of the worst cases of this was during my junior year of undergrad, when my professors wanted the entire Cultural Theory class (about 25 students) to collaborate on a group project to create a mock-news program. Everything worked out okay (mostly because we were a classroom full of honors students), but the stresses of collaborating with such a large group and trying our darndest to cope with difficult and unfamiliar technology in the span of two or three weeks almost proved to be too much. We ended up dividing the program into sketches, much like SNL sketches, and writing and filming in our smaller groups, and editing it together subsequently. (I’m embarrassed to say that a friend and I wrote a rap of new social media diction that has been added to our vocabulary over the years… and it turned out a’ight.)

…All this to say that I never dreamed of assigning many (if any) group projects after becoming a professor. Dr. Rice’s statement in class that all assignments should be group projects was some serious food for thought for me. I understand that in the “real world,” collaboration is an essential skill, and I agree that it should be practiced at least once a semester. However, I do not think that making every project a group project in college would be great practice of the type of collaboration students will have to do in the “real world,”—if only due to the fact that at a job, the students get paid, whereas in school, the students are paying. For students who are used to getting by with the bare minimum grades, there is no reason for them to try in a group; rather, groups tend to protect lazy students and punish good students simultaneously. While we can make the argument that this also happens in the “real world,” we also have to acknowledge that in one instance, you can get fired, whereas in the other, you might just get a lower grade.

I think that for group projects to work, they must be like these photo essays. You must be able to see the collaboration, having each student define and defend the role s/he takes up during the project. In continuation with this idea, I think that groups should never receive one collective grade.

"Engage in discussion about something that captured your attention over the past few weeks in the course. Relate it back to specific class discussions, readings, and your grading/teaching when possible."

I suppose that one concept that has continued to stick out to me in this class is the problem of addressing an audience and teaching students to do so in their writing. We began talking about “audience” by reading Ede and Lunsford and noting their most important questions: What does it mean to address an audience? How do we define audience? To what degree should teachers address/stress audience?

We mentioned in class on Friday that the notion of audience has fundamentally changed in the last ten years with growing globalization. In this regard, it is difficult for students to understand that a piece of writing can have a specific audience, as opposed to sending it into the “void.” I have to admit that I also struggle with the concept of audience, and I find that I relate to the students who cannot always grasp the significance of “audience.” My high school taught English through rhetorical analysis, and I have come to feel that this is the reason I never felt strong about English until college (where they taught English classes through literature). In college, I was rarely, if ever, told to pick out the author’s audience. We would dwell on audience so far as it meant to look at a work’s context—time period, political landscape, biographical information about the author and their relationship to the rest of the world, etc. However, audience was rarely the entire focus in our study of literature. Much more so, in literature, we focused on resurfacing themes in a piece. Literature became the study of a person’s mind and the ways that they chose to present it in writing.

For some reason, discussion of audience can sometimes seem unnatural to me, like going against the grain of what I feel the author was trying to do. Some authors don’t even know what they are doing as they write—they do not have an audience in mind, and their only concern in regards to audience is if their work will be understood by a reader. We discussed in class Mitchell and Taylor’s “General Model of Writing” and how it places far too much emphasis on the audience (even disregarding the author as a reader). With this model, writing becomes pandering to the masses rather than expression of the human mind. In class, we have discussed several times the idea of the author as the first reader. In addition, we talked about audience addressed vs. audience invoked. My main concern is that sometimes, the author is the only reader. Some authors do not set out to “inform” or to “persuade” (they may do so in the process of writing, but for many this is not a primary goal). Some authors just wish to toy with an idea. Some authors begin writing because they see a problem and wish to offer new perspectives on it, to provoke thought in anyone who will read their piece, including themselves (and yet, in our grading, if a student points out that the author’s audience could be anyone, we tell them they need to specify, specify, specify).

Specifically while grading, I have noticed that most students struggle to supply an answer to the concept of “audience.” After three assignments that each ask for the audience and purpose of the same three articles, most students still don’t get it. (Something is wrong when a class does an assignment three times and is still doing it wrong). I think that many students cannot see the higher purpose in picking out audience/purpose/rhetorical choices, because many times, starting that small in a work makes you feel like you are failing to see the greater significance of the work. Specifically within andragogy, I find it almost impossible to explain to an adult why it matters that they be able to pick out the rhetorical choices that Robert MacNeil, John Simon, and Douglas McGray make. When you sit down to learn about great literature and your teacher tells you to search for rhetorical choices in the work (and that’s all you’re allowed to write about), it is very easy to get frustrated with English. In teaching with such a strong emphasis on rhetorical choices, audience, and purpose, I find that Shaughnessy’s idea says it all:  the student “risks as little as possible on the page… producing written Anguish.” We have to allow for deviation in the formula, for other potential ways of seeing a piece to peek through. It’s so complicated, because I feel that it is necessary to be able to recognize rhetorical choices, as that contributes to one’s interpretation of major themes in the work. But for me, writing never “clicked” until I was allowed to discuss the themes that I perceived in the work, rather than being herded into a distinct formula for a certain type of paper. For this reason, I loved the model of GW’s program that Jessica presented on during Friday’s class. I hope that programs like this can become the basis for other composition programs, as they provide such a high degree of relevance for the students.

Extended Analysis Response--Plagiarism

For this week’s blog, I listened to a podcast on plagiarism by Colleen, Jill, Mary, and Rachel.  In their podcast, they highlight several points:  unintentional plagiarism, plagiarism vs. inspiration, plagiarism vs. fanfiction, and plagiarism vs. parody.

I found their discussion on unintentional plagiarism spot-on. Mary discussed the fact that many high-schoolers have no idea that they are plagiarizing, particularly with paraphrases. Many students do not understand that they need to cite paraphrases, nor do they truly understand how to put an author’s thoughts into their own words (as we saw in our grading of the paraphrasing assignments). Personally, when grading I saw many students who simply took to the thesaurus and attempted to translate every one of the author’s words.  I saw this as an even lazier form of Engfish. More importantly, I left notes on each of these papers explaining that they will need to learn to paraphrase properly for future research, or even for future jobs. Being able to paraphrase properly shows that you actually understand what you just read or what was just told to you.  Jill pointed out that many students do not have a grasp of their own voice yet and do not feel that they have a right to some words. I agree, and would go further in saying that some students do not feel like they have the knowledge to restate an author’s ideas accurately. I think that this is why so many of them turned to a thesaurus before even trying to restate an idea in words that they know.

Colleen then moved into discussion of having an “original” thought and questioned, how do you make something truly original? How can an author’s work be inspired by another work and still maintain its originality? Mary pointed out that scholarship builds from other scholarship and that, in today’s world, authors cannot be responsible for the originality of every single thought. I agree, and (as I am not in creative writing) I have always marveled at authors who are able to come up with never-before-seen or –heard-of storylines. I often think of this question of originality when looking at newly released movies. It seems so rare that a movie is released that is not (a) a remake or reboot of an older movie or (b) an adaptation of a book. I am not saying that reboots and adaptations cannot be well done or even quite original; I am saying that, in today’s world, one would be hard-pressed to find a story that was not inspired by another, or a story that does not reflect another in some way.

Jill then transitioned to the discussion of fanfiction vs. plagiarism. Colleen explained the finer points of fanfiction:  the work (a) must be in your own words and (b) cannot follow the author’s original plot. Apparently (I did not know this) some fanfiction authors are professional and they get paid for their fanfics. They have to be knowledgeable about whether or not the author allows for fanfiction of their work, as some authors (Colleen mentioned Anne Rice) dislike fanfiction. Colleen also mentioned that some authors enjoy building up their fan bases, as “fandoms” are a large movement now. Encouraging fanfiction of your own work can serve as free publicity, and many authors choose to take advantage of it. I honestly do not know much about fanfiction, and I had never before thought of its connection to plagiarism. This section of the podcast was enlightening to me. I thought Mary’s addition at the end was fascinating:  the idea that fanfiction almost mirrors oral folklore, in that new storytellers add to, embellish, or even change plot points of well-known stories.

Lastly, they discussed parody vs. plagiarism. Jill elaborated on the difference in parody and satire. Parody, she pointed out, is protected under copyright law, as it says true to the original source material (ex: Young Frankenstein). Satire, in contrast, is if the source material is changed to comment on larger social issues, and is not protected under copyright law. To get around this, satire authors often tack on the words, “Unauthorized Parody” to their work. I had always wondered about the logistics of parodies and I never looked into it. Honestly, I had never thought of how much legalese has to be accounted for in the career of creative writing.  This discussion brought to light for me that my cohorts in creative writing must be constantly thinking about plagiarism and how to get around it. It is an absolute feat for authors to build a good storyline (whether original or inspired by another work) and have it successfully published.

What is andragogy, and how might the approach help in teaching FYC?

As we’ve discussed in class, andragogy is the theory and practice of educating adult learners. Originated by Alexander Kapp in 1833 and expanded on by Malcolm Knowles, andragogy (in Greek, “man-leading") should have sharp distinctions from pedagogy (“child-leading").  In contrast to young learners, adult learners are primarily self-directed and work from vastly different motivations.

In class, we went over the primary motivations for adult learners:

1.     Need to know—Students have to know why they are learning what they are learning.

2.     Foundation—Individual experiences must be valued, as they fuel class activities.

3.     Self-concept—Students feel a need to be involved in the planning and execution of their own education.

4.     Readiness—Adults need to know how subjects are relevant to their own lives.

5.     Orientation—Classrooms that are problem-centered and not content-centered are more effective for adult learners.

6.     Motivation—Adults respond better to internal vs. external motivators.

For adult learners, there must be a good reason for investing time and energy in a subject. They are much more likely to bring their own experiences to light in the classroom, as they are naturally apt to search for real-world applications in the subjects they are learning. In a “traditional” classroom, the teacher serves as a lecturer, as a resident expert that delivers packaged information to students. In contrast, with andragogy, the teacher serves as conductor to students, stepping in to assist students in self-direction when needed. We know that, for adult learners, learning is best acquired in a social setting where they can actively participate in conversation. Also, repetition can be helpful to engrain essential ideas. The whole concept seems rather Platonic (“Truth cannot be taught, only learned”), as its focus is guide autonomous learners with a gentle hand. A teacher cannot force a student to learn if the student does not want to.

As I look back, I find that the basic principles of andragogy certainly pervaded my undergraduate career.  My professors did give some lectures, but most of my classes were opened to discussion for more than half of the class period. My professors were always available should I need to discuss anything, from paper ideas to misunderstood concepts to my future career plans. I think that, for students, college is the transition process between teacher-led learning and self-led learning.

With that in mind, FYC students are just beginning this transition. So many of them come in with external motivators as their only concern (ex: Most students whose papers I graded, when asked what their goal was for the class, answered, “To get a good grade.”). To help them to transition to being internally motivated, FYC (as some of us have discussed before in our blogs) should not have a large emphasis on grading. Rather, students should be assigned projects that they can be passionate about and that spur class discussion. I think the key difference in young learners and adult learners is passion for the subject. If we as instructors can help students to discover a passion for any part of the class, we have taken the first step towards helping them to become autonomous learners.

A General Idea of My Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy stems mainly from the Social-Epistemic values outlined by Fulkerson—the idea that truth is relative and contextual, and that readings should be put into the context of society. I believe that knowledge is not a state of achievement, a trophy to be attained and sat upon one’s mantle; it is an evolution that will continue to change the more we interact with texts and other humans, and the more we attempt to join the discussion ourselves through writing. I also highly value reading a text and discussing it within its context, noting how politics, religion, gender, etc. can drastically change its meaning. In addition, I have found that I highly value Expressionism in teaching—the Platonic idea that truth can be learned but not taught, and that truth is acquired mostly through internal investigation. Truth being an internal investigation would mean that it could be relative to each investigator, which ties in with Social-Epistemic values. I think a focus on Expressionism in the classroom encourages the development of ideas before the development of style. While style and rhetoric impact the message of a piece, it is far more important (at the beginning of a student’s career) that we, as teachers, allow for students to tell their own stories and reflect on others’ through assignments like response essays and journaling. What content will be left to hone if ideas are stifled by fear of incorrect style?

Primarily, I have found that I believe in the power of story—awakening students to the realization that story shapes and propels our lives. Many other teaching philosophies that I have read have talked about a focus on connecting to students through something that they already know or value; every human already has an investment in story. I believe in conducting a classroom that emphasizes the power of connecting to other humans through reading, writing, and discussion, which ultimately creates a discourse of community. Learning happens most effectively within a community, because it instills passion for other perspectives of the world in students and awakens their sense of justice for members of humankind. I believe in smaller classrooms and getting to know my students personally. As a teacher, availability and approachability are vital to fostering dialogue in an effort to transcend barriers through narrative.

I also believe that reading and discussion are immediate catalysts for writing. Meaningful discussion with a classroom community fuels research, as it allows students to create a verbal and mental outline for potential writing. As teachers, we can show students that their most valuable asset for writing and developing ideas is their surrounding community (professors, peers, literature, secondary sources from scholars in their field, etc.). In this community, students are provided ample opportunity for feedback and revisions, both in and out of the classroom. Keeping Expressionism in mind, I would like to note that, by implementing regular and consistent writing exercises in class, students learn that through writing comes agency and voice. Creative writing exercises stimulate originality, and writing exercises that dwell on the importance of secondary sources show that through writing, they can insert themselves into the discussion. Specifically for the teaching of rhetoric, I believe in using examples of speech (perhaps guests from the theatre program to act out, say, Shakespearean monologues) to analyze rhetorical skills. To teach effectively, we must bring the subject down to its contextual level. As rhetoric was once intertwined with speech, it only makes sense that, to fully understand rhetoric, one must witness it in its first form.

As much as I am attempting to analyze my own ideas of teaching, I must admit that I think a teaching philosophy is only as good as the teacher. I fully expect to change my philosophies over time, and I acknowledge that even the best teaching philosophy does not guarantee an effective teacher. However, I think that the process of learning to teach any subject effectively is just as complex as the process of learning how to write—we will all use vastly different modes of getting there.

"Based on your teaching philosophy (which may change over time), what are types of assignments that you would include in a FYC syllabus?"

Though many of us are not confident in our teaching philosophies yet, it is telling how we each can speak to which assignments we were given that challenged us the most and caused the greatest growth in our writing abilities.  As I have said in a previous blog, I have always valued reading and discussion most highly in the classes I have attended.  My most resonant learning experiences took place in smaller classes with an active, engaged teacher who mediated discussion between students. These discussions inevitably contributed to the content of my research in the majority of my classes, and I learned to think critically and make my own rhetorical choices by debating with my professors and fellow students.

Seeing as one of the largest aims of this course is to get students to see themselves as writers, I think it is vital to provide many low-risk opportunities for students to express their ideas thoroughly without the fear of being graded too harshly.  I appreciated my professors who, for daily quizzes, would write a response question over the assigned reading on the board and ask for roughly a page of writing in class.  Oftentimes, s/he would give us ten minutes for response, and the paper was used for an attendance grade.  While this was not exactly “free-writing,” it contributed to class discussions as it allowed students to take ten minutes at the beginning of the class to formulate what they thought of the assigned reading. 

Style takes form the more a student is able to write.  I think that, when first learning to write, it is crucial for a student to take notice of authors’ styles and analyze them; however, I am not sure that a beginning writer should be graded heavily on their writing style.  I think that corrections should be made to emphasize clarity in a new writer’s style, but smaller suggestions (regarding, for example, word choice) should not count as direly.  In regards to practicing the analysis of style, one of the most enlightening assignments that I have ever been given was to write an emulation of an author.  For example, we were given a passage of Hemingway, and we were to compose our own passage in Hemingway’s style.  This exercise made me dissect an author’s writing more thoroughly than almost any other assignment I had had before.  We looked closely at each word’s purpose in a passage and the author’s written mannerisms, which led to a deeper analysis of the author’s rhetorical choices.

Though students do not begin research papers until 1302, I believe the students should at least touch on the writing process in 1301.  For new writers, formula can be a tool that revolutionizes the way they envision writing a paper.  It is almost imperative to break up the process to make writing less intimidating to a student.  Laying out a foundation of a clear writing process—research, note cards, outlines, rough drafts—and going through this process slowly at first can be extremely effective for certain students (as long as the professor attaches the purpose of learning these stages to the process).  As I think of it, the idea is to teach students a thorough process first, and then let them know that it is okay if they deviate from it effectively.  I believe that assigning readings that exhibit many different writing styles can help students to realize that, to be a good writer, one does not have to operate through formula, as formula functions more so as a starting point.  The extra readings that we would work from would most likely be short essays or stories, such as Gawande’s “The Learning Curve” or Pollan’s “An Animal’s Place.”  I would want them to form smaller discussion groups in class to analyze the choices they see the writers making, perhaps speaking to how the grammar, diction, or tone affects the author’s message, and what that means for the impact of the piece.  We might even discuss research papers written with different formats and analyze the purpose or the use of each format.  After, I would ask each group to address the class with their findings.  I would hope that, as such was my case, students would glean insight from both the readings and class discussions, and that would begin to affect their individual writing skills. 

"What is the most difficult thing to teach in the teaching of writing, and how do you go about teaching that?"

Keeping in mind that I have never taught before, I look at this question and I barely have a clue about what the most difficult thing to teach will be; my only experience stems from the one year I spent working in my undergrad university’s writing center. Based off my time working with students in the writing center, the things I have found most difficult to explain are editing and using secondary sources to enhance a paper.

Yesterday, my first quota of grades was due for ENGL 1301.  After grading twenty-nine papers, I can say that I wrote twenty-nine comments that each advised some serious revisions.  I saw students struggling to fill word counts with repetitive sentences.  I saw students attempting to write for an audience they couldn’t begin to analyze—the unnamed, faceless grader.  I saw students testing this grader to see how little effort they could expend on an assignment.  On the other side, I also saw concerned freshmen who were used to writing what a teacher wanted to read, as well as a small few who genuinely appeared to want to build on their prior experience with writing.  As I began grading, I found myself searching for ways to comment constructively, rather than giving in to the vague, easy critiques that I had so loathed receiving on my papers.  I am afraid that over time it will become increasingly tempting to give vague commentary.  I think that, in teaching students to edit their work, it is important to first teach students to distance themselves from their writing. For new writers, it is much easier to critique others’ writing than to hear critiques about their own.  To give an example of this distance, some professors ask students to revise a paper they wrote previously.  This assignment, I have seen, tends to help students solidify their voice and update it. For many of these students, we also tell them to read their writing out loud so they can hear the flow of their paper and revise it accordingly.

In this generation, almost none of these students are coming to college ready to revise their work at all.  I will be the first to admit that I came to college with this “one-and-done” mindset.  In my whole high school experience, I wrote one research paper.  One.  This paper took a whole semester to write, as my teacher stuck to this process-based mentality of teaching.  She said to pick a poem; I picked a poem.  She said to make an outline; I did.  She said to get research from books rather than online, to make an outline, make note cards, make a rough draft, and a final draft.  Throughout this entire process, never did I truly understand the motivation behind it.  I did not understand how I was supposed to integrate my scrawny ideas about a Langston Hughes poem into a paper with published authors and critics.  In my mind, a paper alluding so much to others’ research seemed akin to plagiarism, a watered-down version of these authors’ works.

Working in the writing center, I saw students constantly fail to integrate good sources that both enlightened and supported their work into their papers.  Most students would come through with an assigned number of sources, and they would have already filled them with random websites (from which they took a statistic or one solitary quote) or, oddly enough, Bible verses.  I found it incredibly difficult to explain to these students that, to be worth using, a source must enhance one’s writing.  Teaching students to determine useful, credible source material is, I believe, vital to academic writing and intellectual thinking.  Credible sources are one of the most useful tools of rhetoric when used well.  They create a conversation within a piece of writing between persons that are knowledgeable of the topic, and they allow a writer to insert him/herself into the discourse.  I came to understand finally my relationship with source material by reading across multiple disciplines.  This is why I believe that, in a freshman composition course, reading and discussion are as important as writing, if not more so.  Many of these students openly say they “don’t like” reading, and some will never attempt to read anything more intellectually stimulating than their Twitter feed.  However, relevant reading and in-class discussion, I have witnessed, can sometimes pull students out of this mindset and inspire them to take part in a bigger discourse.

What is rhetoric? What is the history and theory of rhetoric? What do you want to do with the content from this course?

As we discussed in class, rhetoric is the art of persuasion, the art of discourse.  The more I look at ideas on rhetoric, it looks to me like the art of argument.

Of course, when one thinks of the history of rhetoric, one is likely to think of the Sophists or Aristotle.  The study of rhetoric (at that time, expressed most commonly through persuasive speaking) came about in Ancient Greece, primarily as a means of settling legal problems.  Among the Sophists, rhetoric was thought of as the proper way to discover truth, and its users were required to state their arguments clearly and eloquently.  Over time, though, others, like Plato, argued that rhetoric was a way in which to deceive.  In Plato's case, he argued that the Sophists did not advance their students in the slightest by teaching them this form of flattery.  In his opinion, the Sophists were not discovering virtue and truth in their teaching of rhetoric; how could they be, when they condemned Plato's mentor, Socrates, to death in search of this supposed "truth"?  No, to Plato, rhetoric amounted to deception.

Several other philosophers reclaimed the positivity of rhetoric after Plato.  Aristotle went on to expand on rhetoric considerably, and of course, from his writings we get our explanations of ethos, pathos, and logos.  Cicero argued that rhetoric amounted to much more than eloquence in delivery; he maintained that to be a good speaker, one had to be a good person.  In this way, one can continue to discover truth through rhetoric.

I'd like to say that when we began discussing rhetoric in class, that all of this information was circling through my head in a frenzy, and I was ready to mentally fact-check any and all historical mentions against my own knowledge of rhetoric.  Sadly, though, I do not have much experience at all in this field (though I am looking forward to gaining some).  So, when I look at the emersion of rhetoric in the past, I begin to think not of learning about rhetoric in school, but about learning how to argue.  I grew up as a preacher's and a New Testament professor's kid, which meant that every Sunday I was stationed on a pew and asked to listen to my dad's newest oratory presentation.  I can see now that, putting his preaching subjects aside, these weekly lessons began to drill into me an inclination toward certain rhetorical choices.  My dad's pacing, his emphasis on certain words, the tone of his voice, the volume of his voice... all these things, when listened to repeatedly, gave me an ear for good oratory style.  Further than that, when I learned how to argue (with my family, like most humans), I had to have my argument completely put together before presenting it to my family.  If not, I would absolutely fail to make any or all of the points I wished to make.

Everyone has their own style of argument, whether they know it yet or not.  Rhetoric has applications in real life long before we are made to write essays with it.  I am hoping to learn how to teach my future students to harness their version of rhetoric, because this, to me, means giving students the means to express their ideas in the exact way in which they want and to be able to explain their purpose behind their rhetorical choices.  Besides using rhetoric in writing, I think it is dire in today's world to teach students how to analyze rhetoric.  We have to learn how to embrace this "Google" generation, because they, more than any other generation thus far, have to sift through the most of what Neil Postman calls "information glut."  They have to learn how to discern between true and false, reliable and unreliable.  Now that the internet is here, it's not going away.  I think that Plato was right, that rhetoric can certainly be used to fool the masses.  However, with some help, students are more than equipped to fight this deception.