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.

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. 

I don't want to think that any of my students will fail at any of my assignments; but I will admit that I think my students might struggle with the podcast assignment on Monday February 15. I would expect my students to write out their response to the critical questions in essay form, and then they would have to adapt it to speech. This would require students to be able to fluidly shift between the written word and the spoken word.

I think with the assignment, I would require my students to turn in their essays with the podcast, and if I wanted to make it even higher level thinking and more challenging for my students, I would require that their essays and their podcast are not the same. What I mean is, I would require my students to write a formal essay to turn in, and then produce the podcast without simply reading off the paper.

I think this assignment will force students to learn the difference, and have hands on experience with, using different modalities, shifting between written and spoken words.

As for using a teachable moment, I would acknowledge the fact that students may struggle with alternating between writing and speaking, as well as formal and informal writing.

I also think that having the podcasts available for all students to listen can create a larger discussion of the texts on Blackboard and in class. I also think using podcasts will help students learn the rhetorical power of voice both in writing and speaking. 

This idea stems from our conversation in class regarding using "I" in essays. Our students can easily convey their voice and opinion when speaking, so I want them to learn how to use "I" correctly in their writing, and take notice of how "I" is a flexible term.

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

List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list. Next identify three in other students' blog you do know how to define, and comment on them there in those blogs.


Obviously I know definitions of some of these keywords, but I'm having a hard time putting them into 140 characters.

1.Stephen North
2. Dialectic vs. rhetoric
3. Intertextuality
4. Making of Knowledge
5. Genre Theory 

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?

I was really inspired by Selfe's article for two reasons: the first being that it was written in the early 90's and how it so easily transfers to today's culture, and the ideas she puts forth for technology use and integration.

I am drawn to Selfe's comment about linguistic utopias (Pratt), and how "students [can] speak without interruption, and marginalized students can acquire more central voice" when using technology (2). This reminds me of our blogs for this class, and the forum section in blackboard that I use for Research Methods. This is a place where I can hide behind my computer screen and ultimately write whatever I want to without fear of being interrupted, where I can edit and revise my words to make them come across exactly how I want them to, a place where I can write and think freely without the judgmental looks and comments from my peers. Now, obviously, I'm still aware that what I say here is attached to my name, my face, my body; but in other spheres of the Internet, it doesn't have to be. I can create an entirely new persona on Twitter and say whatever I want to, where no one knows it's Meghan Self. The only way it could be traced to me is through my IP address on my computer.

I think the awareness of the speaker and the anonymity of the speaker and vital, especially in a classroom full of young FYC students. I remember in some of my undergrad courses where I would have these great ideas that I really wanted to add to the discussion, but would sit silently instead and not share my thoughts and ideas for fear of rejection by my peers. Even now, I somewhat censor what I say on this blog, you don't see me dropping F words every third word as I sometimes do when I'm speaking out loud to my friends (it's just diction mom; some ladies do have the mouth of a sailor and I use it for rhetorical purposes. :) )

I am going to integrate the use of Blackboard forums in my syllabus. I like the way Blackboard is one place where all the students come together to write and respond. While I think blogs are a great idea because this is my "personal space" that reflects only ME, I have to go to a separate webpage if I want to go look at everyone elses blogs, as opposed to Blackboard where everyone elses comments are unavoidable.

So I would like to follow in the footsteps on Dr. Couch for this. I will have several different forum threads available. For example: I will have a "general questions, comments, concerns" section where students can post questions about the course that are not specific to any week's reading or assignment. I will have another thread for each week that will cover the week's reading and assignment. This is where students will post specific questions about that week's reading or assignment (perhaps I will require students to be weekly leaders and post questions about the reading for their classmates to respond to). Then I will have an "Ideas" thread. This is where students can continue conversations from class discussions, can post new ideas or questions, or look for clarification on theories, ideologies, etc. Sure it can pertain to a specific week, but it is designed more for "general ideas" in the sense of "I have to write a research paper and I'm struggling to formulate an idea for the "so what factor," so they will post it there and their peers can respond accordingly.

I find great value in this, particularly the "general ideas" thread because it allows students who are maybe too shy or too nervous to speak in class to have a voice. It also allows students the opportunity to think about, edit/revise their ideas. There's been plenty of times when I leave class still thinking about an idea that was discussed and while I didn't have an answer in class, I finally found one after class and I don't want to waste it, so this is where I could post it to the "general ideas" thread.

Having forum abilities creates this "linguistic utopia," a place where I can hide behind my computer screen to write and think freely, a place where "gender, race, and socioeconomic status are minimized" (2).

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

You're what's wrong with the education system, not me. Blaming, name-calling, pointing fingers, deflecting, what are we five years old? Apparently so, if we, as teachers, think that it's 100% the students fault who make the educational system fail, or inferior. I could go on a wild rant about how it's actually not the student nor teacher, but rather the politicians in office who rightfully deserve 99.8% of the blame for what's wrong with our education system, but I'll leave that for another time and another place.

Mina Shaughnessy's essay Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing really hit me hard this week. She says, "This system of exchange between teacher and student has so far yielded much more information about what is wrong with students than about what is wrong with teachers, reinforcing the notion that students, not teachers, are the people in education who must do the changing" (319). I reread this sentence a couple of times to really let it sink in; and she's right, absolutely right.

While I don't have college teaching experience, this easily transfers to high school students. The term "basic writer" is transparent across the board, the idea Shaughnessy suggests, that we need to STOP categorizing our students, "eighth-grade, fifth-grade, developmental, remedial, etc." as if they have some malady is crucial. How would you feel if at 18 years old if a teacher walked up to you and said, "your skills are about the same level as a fifth grader." I'm pretty sure you'd be like "what the...." and be even more discouraged than you maybe already were about the subject.

Shaughnessy provides four categories for teachers:
GUARDING THE TOWER- this is when we protect the academy, this is being more concerned about test scores, student feedback at the end of the semester, about making sure we hit all of the TEKS we need to in one lesson, and ensuring that the State, School, and Student is happy with our performance. Our performance, as if we are actors, we have a certain list of to-do tasks that we must accomplish each year, and if we don't accomplish them, because let's say we spent more than the two days the state alloted us on how to write thesis statements, then we fall behind on our to-do list and come the end of the year, we are told that we have failed our students and have not fully prepared them. So, we guard the tower, we stand at the front of the classroom as if we are Generals going into battle picking our front linesmen, singling out the weaker ones, the ones that might fall behind, the ones that we automatically think just by a pre-test performance that they need specialized learning, so we remove them from our classrooms, because God forbid we let one child make us lose the uphill battle against the State Standards.

But then, "Examined at a closer range, the class now appears to have at least some members in it who might, with hard work, eventually 'catch up'" (321). We've chosen the students we're willing to go to battle with, now it's training time. We've put our students through rigorous pre-testing examinations and lessons, to narrow down who goes in what position on the battle field, and after we have gotten rid of the obvious weaklings, the ones that we knew from the start would lead to our demise, we've chosen a few students who we think might actually be capable of holding their own on the battlefield, we're just hoping now that we can train them well enough to perform well and successfully when the time comes. This is CONVERTING THE NATIVES.

As preparations for battle and rigorous training begins, we stop and look at our students and say, " I dont understand what you dont understand about this? it's easy." As Shaughnessy says, it actually "only appear[s] simple to those who already know them" (322). So we stop and take a step back and try to see what it is that we know, and what our students don't know, and we must now approach a difficult concept from a different angle. This is called SOUNDING THE DEPTHS. We must figure out what and how to teach something that seems so easy to us, in a new way so that our students can grasp the concept. This might be the most difficult task for the teacher because we have to take what is natural to us and turn it into something else, something that may seem foreign to us but that might actually help our students learn the concept. "The experience of student hood is the experience of being just so far over one’s head that it is both realistic and essential to work at surviving" (325). As teachers, we must figure out and do whatever it takes for our students to succeed, to survive the uphill battle of learning, because with out student success, we, as teachers, fail.

Lastly, DIVING IN, this is when as a teacher we must become a student to ourselves, we must become one with our students. We must "become a student of new disciplines and of his students themselves in order to perceive both their difficulties and their incipient excellence"(325). How are we to succeed in the battle if we don't fight ourselves? If we don't be come a student, and learn too? We aren't learning what the student's are learning, but rather we are learning how the student learns. This is essential, if we can't view the world through the eyes of our students, then how are we to teach our students successfully? We must dive in, head first, into our students' learning.

The difference that Shaughnessy points out at the end of her essay, the crucial difference between high school and college, is the the very first notion of Guarding the Tower. As a high school teacher, we are allowed to move students to different classes, we can ask our administrators to remove to students and place them in remedial courses. But in college, we cant, we get what we get and we have to work with all of the students. We must make choices in our teaching and learning styles to help ALL students succeed.

As far as this essay relating to our class discussions, we've spent hours discussing how to help the struggling students who just might not be "up to par" with their peers. While I don't think there's a universal answer that will work for all, I think it depends solely on the students and the teacher. We must make a choice, do we spend an extra class day reviewing grammar rules for the five basic writers in our class and watch the other 25 student sigh and roll their eyes, or do we skip the extra grammar and push onward and focus on the 25 students who will succeed and just hope and pray the five other students will one day, "catch up"? I think the answer is obvious, at least it is for me, but I've had teachers in the past who have chosen differently and in the end, the 25 students helped win the uphill battle, while I and the other four students struggled measly along behind the crowd just praying for a C in the course, so I could just move on to the next required course.

Responding to Nancy's Extended Anaylsis Project

Nancy, 

I particularly enjoyed your last paragraph when you say, " Research has shown that students who identify as readers are more empathetic, and have a larger referential knowledge base.  Reading is certainly a way to experience many lives that do not belong to us, and is thus enriching beyond measure."

I  think this is crucial as a part of defining your teaching philosophy. I would like to have read something similar to this at the start of your philosophy. While I haven't read hundreds of teaching philosophies, I've never come across one that references another source the way you did. I think this really makes your philosophy stand out among the hundreds of others that a school would receive when looking for a candidate. 

But as Dr. Rice stated in class last week, schools read hundreds of philosophies in a matter of minutes, and will typically read the first and the last paragraphs and maybe skim the rest. This is why I'd like to see you add the sentences I mention to the beginning of your paper too.

It's difficult to comment on your values, because, well, they're YOUR values. I don't disagree by any means, and I would say that your values align with mine, but if I had to choose just three major values, I can't say if I would use the exact ones you do, not because they're good or bad, just different. But that's really the point of a teaching philosophy, to tell others what YOUR values are, not what they want to hear. 

I want to focus on your second value:  Writing and reading as a way to connect, both to the internal (self) and to the external (the outside world).    

I really like this idea, as well as the way you word it. I've thought about this idea myself, but I've been unable to put it into such concise and clear language as you do. -- I might have to steal this. :)

You say, "Writing and reading allow access to our most private selves, and much of the curriculum of creative nonfiction operates on the belief that we don’t truly know what we believe until we try to write these beliefs." This is so true. I can really appreciate this value and idea, because as you said later, writing can be therapeutic. I would however, liked to have seen a bit more on writing and reading as a way to connect to the external. You mention it in your last sentence:  " we connect to people we have never or will never meet in person" but I want to know MORE! Why does it matter if we connect to the external world? Long ago, I was taught that writing is personal, writing is for my eyes only, unless I want to share it with others. But in my creative writing class as an undergrad, I was told that no one would read what I wrote, so I opened myself up and poured my heart out. But then my professor duped the class and made us share. With no names on papers, he read aloud our writings. I felt violated. embarrassed. terrified. But I was the only one who knew that what was being read was mine. My professor didn't even know. While many students felt the same as I did, my professor explained to us that we first needed to learn to write freely and without constraints before we could write something that we knew others would read, because when we begin with the idea that others will read this, we consciously, or unconsciously censor our writing. 



We received feedback on our writing from our classmates and professor after he finished reading our work, and the comments my classmates made about the anonymous work presented to them, helped me become a better writer because I was able to hear what other people thought about my own ideas and thoughts. While still feeling violated, I also felt invigorated. I connected with the external world, and I didn't even know it until after I had finished writing. I heard comments such as "wow, I feel the same way," "I thought I was the only one who thought that," "it's like the writer knew me!" 

This is why I'd like to see you add a little bit more to emphasize how writing and reading help student connect to the external more. Sure I can see how reading helps us connect to the external, reading newspaper articles and such, but what about writing? How does my writing help me connect to the external? 

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your philosophy, and I am encouraged by it.