blog doldrums

Well, this is just silly. I haven’t posted in over two months. Why have a blog? Eh? I haven’t written because I don’t think I have the time. I don’t have the time. Doesn’t matter. I still need to write. I’ve had blog-thought moments. You know the ones: “Wow, I gotta put that on my blog.” Then I go grade papers, or prep for class, or worry about health insurance. So, let’s see if I can short-circuit that direct path to not-blogging. Let’s see.

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.

essay envy

OK, so Cathie English, the teacher with whom I’m collaborating on the This-I-Believe-Nebraska-Alabama exchange, shared her essay on gDocs yesterday, and I totally love it. It’s gorgeous. And now I want to completely change the topic of my essay, and I don’t like my essay at all…and, and, and….this is a pretty typical writer’s response, I’m thinkin’, when the writer has not been working on her essay… Ahem. But I may change my topic. Maybe. We’ll see.

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.

introversy

the serendipity of the web blows my mind…i love how hyperlinks take me places i could never imagine. so, for instance. i’ve just finished reading edmundo paz soldán’s Turing’s Delirium cuz Paz Soldán is giving a talk at UAH this thursday, and i’ve got two of his novels in english translation. and after i finished Turing’s Delirium, i kept thinking of neal stephenson and mostly of cryptonomicon, which i haven’t read but was pretty sure would be relevant…especially since paz soldán includes an epigraph from stephenson’s snow crash, which i have read. so i went to the novel’s website and read a good portion of the prologue and there’s a great section that includes alan turing as a character. but i also went to stephenson’s website (which has a well address…very cool [The WELL started as one of the earliest online internet communities -- almost a decade before the world wide web]) where he links to “Why I am a Bad Correspondent,” a piece that explains why he doesn’t answer readers’ email or usually accept speaking engagments:

The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.

sage advice for writers — and on his website, stephenson also points to an article by jonathan rauch in The Atlantic Monthly Online that explains stephenson’s personality, that is, as an introvert. “Caring for Your Introvert: The Habits and Needs of a Little-understood Group” was published in march 2003 and still receives more hits than any other article. there’s a follow-up in a feb. 2006 issue (“Introverts of the World, Unite!“) that’s also worth reading. rauch suggests that internet could be re-coined intronet, since it’s such a perfect medium for introverts.

introversy is the term the atlantic monthly online uses for rauch’s article and the ensuing discussion (see the april 2006 piece “The Introversy Continues“).

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.

another slam dunk by Frank Deford

[thanks to Kevin Wilson in his comment for the link to the full Deford article at Sports Illustrated]

Here’s the radio host introduction to Deford’s “Sweetness and Light” 10 Jan. report for his weekly column for NPR: “When Birmingham Southern gave up athletic scholarships, freshman applications increased, more students tried intercollegiate sports and alumni contributions soared.” I love this report! Deford talks about how a board of trustees member asked the president of the college if they really offered 116 athletic scholarships at about $30,000 a piece for a total of about $30 million and precisely one academic scholarship, and the president replied in the affirmative. The board of trustees then got rid of athletic scholarships. The result was all good and Deford tells us exactly how (freshman applications increased 50%, African American freshman student population rose from 6% to 14%, the college was finally able to establish a football team, more students were involved in sports).

As a prompt for the freewriting in my English 101 class yesterday, I read the last two paragraphs in the “Bits & Pieces” chapter from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well that advise writers to “Go with your interests.” I like these ending sentences of the two paragraphs: “If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers,” and “No subject is too specialized or too quirky if you make an honest connection with it when you write about it.” I talked to students about how I never watch sports, don’t read about it. But I love listening to Frank Deford, because he teaches me so much about the world through sports and because he just writes so blessedly beautifully.

The writing prompt was, “You’ve just gotten a contract to write a book. What book do you write?” I love this prompt. I’m 97% sure I made it up, but as with many teaching ideas, it could be recycled or quilted together. Writers talked about books on how to find a car for your sixteen-year-old son without breaking the bank or endangering anyone’s life, a grandfather’s life, how to test and find a mattress, life stories as a way to help others, knowledge and power.

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.

beth thames’ column

Just read a bunch of Beth Thames’ columns in the “Living” section of the Sunday Huntsville Times. I am now a fan. Why? Because Thames packs a lot of insight, complexity, and humor into that small space. See her piece on the Katrina emigrant family, for instance. Or check out the one  proposing New Year’s resolutions for the state of Alabama.

We’ve got great writers in this little pocket of the world, and I want to read more of them.

ultimate chippers

Tonight was the final for ENG102 at Calhoun Community College. The final was a self-reflective essay. Here’s the assignment:

Begin preparation for this essay NOW by going over ALL your writing from this semester. By “ALL your writing,” I mean everything: emails, blog postings and comments, class notes (from all your classes), grocery lists, doodles, bills, papers and exams from all your classes. Choose pieces of writing that mean something to you and think about their relationship to each other. Bring these pieces of writing to class for the final. Your essay will give you the opportunity to reflect on yourself and your journey this semester: 1) How does your writing illustrate your growth, challenges, frustrations, joys? 2) What do you learn from reviewing your own writing? Be sure to quote from your own writing as support for your points.

I learned about the self-reflective essay from Julie Jung, who has a discussion of it in her book Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts.

So David #1’s wife gave me a jar of cookie makings because, as David reported her saying, anyone who can get him to like Shakespeare deserves cookies. Here’s what the jar of Ultimate Chippers looks like. I love this idea of cookie fixins as art.

And here you see the finished product, next to some coffee. I’m about to sit down and read the essays that writers handed in this evening. I already almost teared up in class when I read bits of some, so I expect to tear up more as I accompany my reading by coffee and these sinful cookies.