home again

Three take offs, three landings, but only one bag of pretzels. It's good to be back home -- it was a good trip, I think, although we haven't had time to crash and reassess and pick at ourselves.

And my mother's surgery on Thursday ended up okay even though the surgeon pierced her lung and no one figured it out for almost 24 hours and she had to stay in the hospital a few extra days. When I spoke with my mother on the phone today she did something I have never heard her do before: she was doing some wishful matchmaking for one of my brothers. She was a bit breathless while she wished: a result of desire or heart? Or is one now loosened up so that the other functions in a new way? This will be fun to watch; I hope I get to watch for a long long time.

it's not Lake Superior

But it's where we ended up Saturday afternoon. Who knows where?

Sunday night reflections

Which of these two assignments would you rather receive in a writing class?

• 1 Write an essay that imitates the form of a Mark Twain essay, updating it to a modern topic.


• 2 Write a 4-page description of your kitchen. If you don't currently have a kitchen, describe the one you know best: your parents', or sibling's, or friend's. Use the passage from the class handout as a model. Try to describe the kitchen accurately to all the senses, so that we feel we're there; be sure to describe an empty kitchen, without people in it.

Why?

Being only slightly obsessive about things that happen in class -- and also needing to distract myself from a presentation that won't write itself -- and not finding sufficient distraction in Alchemy -- I am trying to think through the best way to talk about how the book for 5931 connects up specifically, directly, and poignantly with what happens in our classes day-to-day.

I got interested in theories about teaching when I taught for a few years at the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, a job training-education program in South Central Los Angeles. I had been a teaching assistant in rhetoric classes at Berkeley before we moved to Los Angeles. At Berkeley back then, the 10-week class was divided into 5 2-week sections, and in each section students read a book and wrote a paper about it -- no revisions, just final copy, please. For 4 of the sections I was responsible for grading 2/3 of the papers (and sitting in on the class) and for the remaining section I taught the book and graded 1/3 of the papers. Together with bits and pieces of substitute teaching from before, that was the sum of my teaching experience.

The teaching at the LACC came about backwardly (as most things in my life do): I volunteered to help them set up and run their computer lab, which led to teaching people how to use the computers, which led to teaching GED prep and life skills classes and developing a whole lot of education materials for on and off the computers (which led to a whole bunch of work for the government and other folks, but that's another life). Because the corpsmembers were most often people who had dropped out of high school (often in the second semester of their senior years, because they did have other whole lives that they valued over the poor quality of the schools), the take on teaching at the LACC was "Figure out what works." So I read off my little butt in order to get help and ideas.

I started by reading books that were directly about what to do in classrooms, and for that I found that it was writings from teachers in K-8 that were most useful to me -- and from specific teachers in that group. These specific teachers knew they needed to make class interesting, but in addition, the books I found that were most most useful were all written by people who valued student engagement, confidence, and pleasure. I found (for example) math books from which I learned that, to get students to trust their own thinking, you can put them in small groups to solve concrete (and fun: let's use raisins!) math problems, most of which did not have only one proper way-to-solution. In such situations, you can also make a rule: if anyone in the group has a question, you have to work it out in the group; if the whole group can't work it out, then you can ask the teacher. (My favorite writer by far from this set of favorites is Vivian Gussin Paley.)

The more I read, the more I realized that the books that were most useful to me all shared overlapping views of students: they were based on a belief that students are smart, that education is about building on what people already knew, and that students can tell you what matters to them. I also read books where the classroom activities were based on a(n implicit) view of teaching as being about filling lacks in students, about making them be what they weren't, about starting off by believing they didn't want what you had to offer; I didn't realize until afterwards, when I was trying to figure out why I had used almost nothing from those book, that the implicit theory underlying the activies they promoted was what pushed me away. All these readings made me realize that there is no way to approach what you do in a classroom without working from within assumptions (even if they are unstated and so not-open-to-questioning) about what classrooms and students are. And those assumptions, taken together, compose your teaching theory.

I realized that I could be teaching without paying any attention to theory and yet that all my teaching had theory underpinning it. The way I arrange a classroom shows who I think I am in terms of my authority; how I grade says something else about my authority and what I think people are learning; how I teach writing -- and communicating -- teaches students to think and act as though writing is an isolated intellectual act or a social practice articulated with identities and power.

All that is long lead up to explain why I chose the Tate book for us to read. Almost all the essays describe classroom activities that grow directly out of assumptions about who students are and what writing is -- and what the whole purpose of living is. I want us to be able to talk with as much knowledge as possible about what we are doing in our classes and why -- with that "why" articulating both to "Because the class could stand to focus on introductory paragraphs" as well as to "Because the class could benefit from discussing whether we want to be the kind of people who are attracted to flashy introductions" -- because I believe this to be my responsibility as the teacher of this particular class. Reading these essays -- and making decisions about where you fit among these approaches -- helps each of us contribute to building the world of relations we seek with others.

today is Blog for Choice Day

It's the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Go here and here to see and read.

"faith" = "woozy old man shriveled little thing"?

This explains where Monty Python got many of their ideas about the teaching and learning of other languages: read An Invented Language, staying until the end.

via mirabilis

carnival of the feminists, #7

over at Feministe.

And through the Carnival, Do you want your wife to work after the war? (via Philobiblon).

young female teacher?

Over at BitchPhD today there's a useful discussion -- with lots of concrete examples -- about teaching while female.

Be sure to read the comments. That's where the useful stuff is.

how research goes some days

X Ten Top Trivia Tips about Composition!

1. Louisa May Alcott, author of 'Little Composition', hated composition and only wrote the book at her publisher's request!
2. To check whether composition is safe to eat, drop it in a bowl of water; rotten composition will sink, and fresh composition will float!
3. If composition was life size, it would stand 7 ft 2 inches tall and have a neck twice the size of a human.
4. Without composition, we would have to pollinate apple trees by hand.
5. Four-fifths of the surface of composition is covered in water!
6. Composition was banned from Finland because of not wearing pants.
7. 99 percent of the pumpkins sold in the US end up as composition.
8. Composition is often used in place of milk in food photography, because milk goes soggy more quickly than composition.
9. It took composition 22 years to build the Taj Mahal!
10. If you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn into composition.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

from The Mechanical Contrivium, via Boynton.

"Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness."

We are better for having had him here, and worse if we let the truths he spoke slip away.

King's legacy lives on through today's leaders (via pandagon) and The Biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., As Described by a Kindergartener.

thinking about 5931 -- and teaching

Since class on Thursday I keep going back to Yang's question about the readings -- about reading the whole book -- and to the comments of one person, from the final reflection, about the amount of work in the class. These matters circle around central issues for me in teaching, issues such as:

• Time -- and quantity. Ideally, for me, all classes would go very slowly. We would have time to savor and digest every reading, everyone could read at her own pace and still take happy part in the discussion -- and we wouldn't feel the need to move on until we felt we had completely satisfied ourselves with a reading or project.


• Authority. Also ideally, there would be no teacher and no class. The original home-schooling movement -- starting back in the 60s -- was a response to the numbing sameness and oppressiveness of elementary school classrooms. In his series of books meant to help parents figure out what to do if they made the decision to homeschool, John Holt describes how parents realized they could cover in 2 hours a day what a classroom would cover in 6; parents could also follow the lead of their children’s interests. I can't forget one description of a 9 year old child who got interested in plumbing and taught herself how to do it, to the extent that she replumbed her parents' whole house (learning along the way all the necessary math). I also remember how Tim Cahill (I think) in one of his travel books describes going to Timbuktu, at some point years ago when the infrastructure had fallen apart: the university was essentially shut down because no one was getting paid and so no one was coming in to teach -- but at a dry fountain there at the unviversity Cahill ran into a group of students who came together regularly on their own to hold a poetry class because they wanted to. In each of these cases, the authority about what and where and how fast to learn is in the hands of the learner.
  

So I place myself in a quandary: I am a teacher who wishes there to be no classes, either of students beholden to me in any way or of institutionally-delimited time. And as a learner, I like it best when I am, for example, in a reading group of friends where we meet regularly because we want to, we read as much as we can, and we do the reading because we've chosen it and it has use and interest for us.

As I read back over this, I see that I have -- sort of -- written myself into a corner: my use of "ideally" above implies a "but realistically..." retort. I could go off into a "But we are teaching and learning in delimited times blah blah blah and we have to give grades and there's academic-cultural expectations about what happens in classes and blah blah blah so forget the questions of time and authority."

Forget that.

I'd rather discuss with you all your take on these conditions. What would your ideal learning situation be -- both as a teacher and a student? In *your* classes, how do you decide what happens? When and how do you negotiate with people in your classes over these issues? (And do you negotiate at all?)

why the internets are cool

bat girl

it is awards season, after all

And so the People's and Critics' Koufax Award for Best Amazon Reviews linked from a Blog Comment Even though the Latest Posting is Two Years Old goes to Henry Raddick of (London UK).

our priorities

from the New York Times today:

"Ms. Olson said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursing questionable refunds by the poor, which she said cannot involve more than $9 billion, than to a $100 billion problem with unreported incomes from small businesses that deal only in cash, many of which do not even file tax returns."

"...while tax fraud by the not-so-poor weighs in at about $340 billion."

My mother? Let me tell you about my mother.

It's my fault for wanting to watch Blade Runner, which is on Spike, which means at almost every commercial break there is an ad for a games-on-mobile service.

A young man with a light Eastern European accent is on a city bus. He impassively commands — and they follow — an old man to turn up his radio, a young woman to dance, two other men to fight, and the bus driver to throw on the brakes, causing others on the bus to fall. I am certainly not the audience for this commercial, but who is?

Who would be moved by the magical implications that playing the mobile games gives power over inner-city others? Who would not be offended by the presented naturalness of a young white man telling older, darker skinned, and poorer people what to do? (And why does the young man have an accent?)

Why is this commercial being made now?

How can it not know what it is?

or:

Because then we're stupid and we'll die?

a walk in the park

Yesterday we went for an afternoon walk at McLain State Park. There were about 30 degrees floating about, and the snow was compressed and crusty, with lots of ice underneath. The wind was sharp, there were lots of deer tracks, and there was no ice on the big lake at all.

if I don't understand you, it is your fault

Over at Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum asked Debra Dickinson to guest blog for a while.

Some of the responses to her various posts:

"Where did this Debra person come from, anyway? Is she here to stay? Most of the time I have no idea what she's is talking about. I mean, I'm sorry, but her posts are mostly incomprehensible to me." "Apparently, this writer thinks blogging is just journalism done to lower standards and with greater self-indulgence. It betrays a contempt for other bloggers and for her audience." "Oh rubbish, the woman was just feeling her way along. She got it wrong at first. So bloody what, it's not contempt, it's getting her bloody sea legs." "hey, this as a much better, more interesting Dickerson post than the last few." "uh, am I the only one here who's finding Dickerson's posts mostly incoherent? I can't even make out Will's argument, much less hers, from this mess. And maverick negro cowboys with made-up diseases wha?!? Maybe blogging actually *is* harder than it looks." 'Yeah, I agree. She needs to frame her arguments better." "Tony- there was an argument there? What was it?" "This was entirely unreadable. Incoherent, poorly written, largely irritating." "That was a terrible, terrible piece, and even aside from the awful writing, it's practically content-free." "Who is Debra Dickerson? And why does she write so poorly?" "Seems that Dickerson can actually turn in a coherent piece, as long as she lifts 95% of it from other sources." "I read the whole thing, even the silly link to the 1851 racist tome. What is your point?" "Yep, that post was the mother of all brainfarts. Race? "The Negro Cowboy"? Huh?" "I read Debra's post shortly after it went online. I didn't have a CLUE what she was talking about, but was too embarrassed to say so. I felt sure I was missing something fundamental." "That was.... a fine example of incoherent blithering on." "Typically one normally intends to have a fucking point when writing. And, given this blog is supposed to be about American politics one might expect a guest author would want to have something approaching a point." "Get rid of this Dickerson person, and her incoherence. Haven't seen a sensible piece from her yet -- what the fuck, is she doing some kind of low wage, between-terms internship or something? Sheesh." "Misogynists? I suppose illiterate looney Left have to dig around for hackneyed smears, but my problem with this incoherent twit Dickerson has fuck all to do with her gender and everything to do with her inability to write coherently or even in an interesting manner."

and so on.

People came down on her for writing "spoze" instead of "suppose." There are comments that took her points seriously, also, but I quoted comments above at length (and there were many more) to show how much her writing was denigrated.

Maybe I'm reading all the wrong blogs, but I read a lot, and I have never seen such responses. There's all kinds of writing in blogs, and people do comment on spelling sometimes (usually their own), but I have never seen such a pack response to a writer who is bringing into a blog arguments that haven't been made there before, arguments about how deeply race is embedded in all sorts of past and present practices.

Such responses to Dickerson are condescending at best, misogynist and racist at worst, and show -- minimally -- that a lot of readers are not willing to put in time and effort to read anything but that which is familiar and re-inforcing of what they expect. This is the pattern we get used to in writing instruction: some readers are blinded by one word they consider to be misspelled, seeing in it moral implications.

The people who wrote the comments I quoted will say, "It's only about the writing" -- just as (for example) was said by those who turned down an article by Carole Blaire, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter that focused on women and academia (Blair, Carole, Julie R. Brown, Leslie A. Baxter. (1994). Disciplining the Feminine. Quarterly Journal of Speech (84): 383-409). One example, but I'll let it suffice for now because it's a strong one and because my stomach needs soothing after reading those comments.

The teaching of writing also needs to be about the teaching of reading and about the teaching of generosity toward that which is not familiar.

flu almost gone; Habermas ringing the doorbell

I gave up and spent the last several days in bed, me, the computer, and the cat, with soup supplied by the sweet one. I got the Instructor's Manual for the textbook edited, following the proofreader's comments. I reviewed the index for the textbook and dealt with three different permissions issues with the textbook (there's only one left, but we're working with people in London on this one, people whose sense of timing is not just other coastal but other continental). I wrote three recommendation letters. I've written letters to friends and those nieces. And I've played a lot of MasterMind. And now I have to review the final pdf of the textbook by Monday (while waiting on those few pages that might need to be edited depending on the permissions from London.) So maybe just maybe this tenacious flu will finally float away and die.

I've also been thinking ahead to the writing I want to accomplish this semester. I have 2 conference presentations, 1 conference workshop, and four presentations at other campuses. Should I turn the MLA presentation into a paper? I'm not sure it has legs, but it was fun to put together, to play off the comparison of these current years to the Gilded Age, to think about the conditions for working, writing, and civic participation in these two different eras that many writers compare. (And upon which Karl Rove modelled the 2000 election.) But all it got me was paranoia: if the late 19th century was initially full of promise -- based on its communication technologies and worker practices -- for invigorated citizen civic participation but then went down in flames because of the turning of private potential toward corporate ends, the lesson for now would be that any communication technology that enables the conditions that lead to developed participation are going to be shut down (or regulated out of their raucous potential).

I was thinking specifically of blogs, and of the messy and enlivening openings they provide for citizens to develop a sense of self and connection. (In the talk I looked not just to 19th century communication and work practices -- quickly -- but also to 19th century theories of how political participation requires first the development of sense of self with agency and then development of self as communicator with others).

But all of this reinforced for me why I may not want to use blogs in teaching. Or, rather, if I use them, I know that I am using them in a very limited way, as a technology that can lend itself well to very focused directed reflection and highly useful record-keeping; I know that others use them very well as development writing spaces. But where I see blogs being most useful, politically, is in their potential to excite participation, to support us in reading and responding to each other's musings and rantings, and to provide wider perspective on events than we get in traditionally reported news media. And I know from experience that the fastest way to cool off a potentially hot medium (I am using the temperatures not per McLuhan) is to assign it as homework.

If I were to develop this presentation into an article, I think I would want to focus on that quandary, and how it relates to the relations between the public and the private Habermas argues are necessary for there to be a public. If a public can only happen because the private (for Habermas, the realms of drawing room and diary) is at least in part a nursery for a sense of self, then one way to diffuse the public, should you so want, is to break the possibility of the private opening into the public; at the end of the 19th century, that meant diffusing private potential within corporate-provided structures. And a classroom can so easily be that, no matter what we attempt otherwise.