anti-intellectualism is not a virtue

I woke up this morning thinking that on some levels, the state of our nation is due to rampant anti-intellectualism. So let me just say this: It is not OK to have a president who says, “This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating”  (23 April 2002) and “Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?” (11 Jan.  2000). It is not OK to have a vice presidential candidate who thinks Africa is a country and not a continent or who believes the First Amendment guarantees the press will not criticize her. Our educational system continues to slip further and further into a pedagogy that fails to inspire and challenge our students. Reform tends to focus on K-12, but I think our colleges and universities need to be rethought — fundamentally. The teachers who work in the K-12 system graduate from these colleges and universities. Why should K-12 change when the places that educate the teachers and administrators keep up the status quo of mediocrity?

double-entry journal

I just finished writing my double-entry journal for Kenneth Bruffee’s article, “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind,’” one of the readings we’re doing tomorrow in Writing Pedagogy. I asked everybody to do a double-entry journal for one of the Cross-Talk articles and then to do one-paragraph reactions to the remaining three articles we’re discussing.

And it took me probably three times as long to read the article doing the double-entry journal as it would if I just highlighted and penciled in marginal comments. Agh. Of course it takes longer. That’s important information! And I don’t use that information effectively. That is, I’ve taken to using  double-entry journals to ensure that students do the reading in my 102 classes, but I think I’m really wasting their potential to build that community of knowledge-makers that Bruffee’s article discusses.

Strange to read Bruffee AND write a double-entry journal AND be aware that double-entry journals can be a hugely effective tool in the Bruffeeian enterprise — and I need to think how to do that. Give enough time. Use journals as part of class conversation. Use journals as springboards for writing. More conversation.

This I Believe

We’ve started the “This I Believe” section of my classes, and so far, I’m inspired by students’ readings of essays they’ve selected from the This I Believe website. Yesterday, folks handed in homework on which they listed three essays they selected: one from the contemporary essays group (these have been recorded on NPR), one from the 1950s group, and one from the essay database organized by topic.

Our discussion in class and a good deal of what students wrote on their homework seemed more substantive, more real. I don’t know how to explain what I mean by that. Maybe — it’s because we’re talking about things that matter.

to twitter, or not

i didn’t think i’d like twitter… really not. but i do. i’m still curious about it. i like posting. i like that i only have 140 characters. the limit makes this a genre. the twitter-post. nothing else like it. so cool how some folks make it poetic, others mundane — still others, a mish-mash. kinda like a photo with words — these quick shutter flashes that capture one moment, or a small slice of time or thought. fleeting. but pinned down. just for a sec. i’m still trying to figure out a classroom application.what if? what if i don’t figure out the application and just say, “let’s twitter.” and see how students come up with a classroom application. how cool would that be… 

great class!

Last night we had works-in-progress presentations in the Writing Pedagogy grad class and I was energized by all the good work: Heejoo’s curriculum for teaching writing in a multilingual, multi-level ELL classroom; Angel’s investigation into how teachers’ comments on students’ writing (grades 6-12) affect students’ attitudes towards writing; Ginger’s lesson plans for portfolios in senior high school English using literacy autobiographies; Brad’s analysis of effective teaching for adult learners at a technical college; Amber’s lesson plans and tips for incorporating writing in math, social studies, and science in grades 9-12;  Kate’s research into memoir and her writers’ decisions as she constructs her own; Coko’s work on how to help teachers use poetry to teach writing; Amanda’s research journeys into travel writing; Colleen’s guides on how to write book reviews as a way to make reading-writing connections; Wendi’s field studies on early writers and how to help parents use a variety of methods to encourage early reading-writing connections; and my own journeys into the magical realm of how to manufacture time to do the writing one desires.

I admire my students’ courage

OK, so I do this really tricky thing. At least, some of my students have called it tricky. After writers do their first timed writing practice or freewriting, I say, “Now we’ll all read aloud what we wrote.” There’s sound pedagogical rationale for this practice. In Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff’s classic booklet Sharing and Responding, the first kind of response they describe is “Sharing: No Response.” No matter what class it is, after I say we’ll read our writing aloud, I can hear the collective sucking in of breath: “Oh, no. Anything but that!”

But they read. Those who have phobias about public speaking, those who are not sure they want to be that honest, those who worry their language is wrong or will be misunderstood. They read. They stand behind their words. That takes guts. And I admire them.

classes start & awesome freewriting quotes

Classes at Calhoun and UAH started Monday, and I’m getting back into the groove. In ENG 101 on Monday, the freewriting prompt was to write about something you were afraid to do but did anyway. Bridget read this from her freewriting: “Fear is always a door to a breakthrough experience.” Words to live by. And last night in EH 102 in response to the prompt “literature,” Daniel read this: “Literature can be hard core emo.” This has become my favorite description of literature.

the art of teaching

In the 12 Dec. Inbox, NCTE’s online newsletter, I found a link to a lesson plan on multigenre texts: Using Snowflake Bentley as a Framing Text for Multigenre Writing. The author is Lisa Storm Fink, a third- and fourth-grade teacher in Urbana IL. When I clicked on her name, I traveled to a page filled with creative and challenging teaching ideas. I want to try out so many of the ideas, modify them to fit the college curriculum. Lisa Storm Fink’s page of pedagogy exemplifies the art of teaching — such a thing of beauty.

Taylor Mali’s “What Teachers Make”

So I’m doing a leisurely cleanup of my laptop, tossing files, and I come across “The Impotence of Proofreading” by Taylor Mali. Pretty hysterical poem. I notice there’s a url and go find the site and …wow…read about “What Teachers Make” and the poem’s permutations in cyberspace and popular culture. And Mali’s quest, begun in 2000, to recruit 1,000 teachers by 2006. I like reading the blurbs by the people (total of 155 as of 16 Oct. 2006) who have been convinced to take up teaching as a profession. By Mali’s count, he’s helped to persuade almost 25 people a year for the past 6 years to take up teaching — all through poetry. Now if that ain’t the power of the spoken word, I don’t know what is.

In “What Teachers Make,” Mali quotes the old saw: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” I can’t remember if the following is my revision, or a lifted revision, or a cobbled-together revision of lifted and original words: “Those who can, teach; those who can’t, try harder.”

writing at the end of the world

Is this not one of the coolest titles you’ve ever heard? Richard E. Miller’s book is subtitled, well…it’s not subtitled. Very strange for an academic book. An academic book about academia. So one might assume that this book goes against the grain of academia by ensuring that important daily stuff gets talked about, and one would be correct. In the first chapter, “The Dark Night of the Soul,” Miller takes us through Columbine and dares to talk about the possibility that our jobs as teachers in the university have become irrelevant. He ends the first section of the first chapter with this:

I have these doubts, you see, doubts silently shared by many who spend their days teaching others the literate arts. Aside from gathering and organizing information, aside from generating critiques and analyses that forever fall on deaf ears, what might the literate arts be said to be good for? How — and in what limited ways — might reading and writing be made to matter in the new world that is evolving before our eyes? Is there any way to justify or explain a life spent working with — and teaching others to work with — texts? These are the questions that animate the meditations that follow. Those who have never felt the inner urgency of such questions need read no further.

He’s kind of an academic kickass Lemony Snicket, who prefaces all the books in his Series of Unfortunate Events by warning his readers to venture no further, especially if they’re looking for happy endings: “Dear Reader, I’m sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. … It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing” (The Bad Beginning).

Richard Miller’s preface starts with Chernobyl. The book’s cover has a photograph of a deserted classroom fractured from the effects of Chernobyl. There is a bleakness that starts it all…but the bleakness won’t remain. Otherwise Miller wouldn’t have written the book. He does feel “the inner urgency of such questions” and he’s got something to teach us about the meaning of teaching, reading, and writing. At the end of the world.