"Brilliant!"

This BBC3 video comes via The Garance.
What if Facebook was our real life? What if it already is?

Graduation

Most people wouldn't think that I'm a formal-event-type person, that a graduation ceremony would be something I'd attend. After all, why do we have to get gussied up and parade around with mortarboards to acknowledge what we've earned when *we* know what we've accomplished?

But this ceremony is one that matters, I think, as the concrete manifestation of our educational achievements.

And it's almost always a good celebration, even if ours is held in a hockey arena and feels like it: graduates and faculty down in an almost-pit, family members and friends on wooden bleachers without backs jutting out of concrete numbered steps. Even without regalia (didn't do the paperwork required since I'm just not on campus), I'll attend tonight, sitting on those bleachers, mingling after to shake students' hands. I expect to see some of my favorites -- I've been missing them this sabbatical!

It'll look/be different

Coming back after sabbatical, I will be part of a department that I will only partially recognize. The number of leave-takings surprises me, and I hope everyone who's moving on is going to something good/better.

P.S. Speaking of "different," I found this blog article called "Blogging: Content is King" full of definitions, tips, thought-provoking assertions. Not sure, yet, what I think of it. You can find it on a blog called "one cool site: wordpress blogging tips," which may be a sponsored blog created by the folks at wordpress, I don't know for sure.

Online tools for writing

In the wake of my reading the Pew Internet and American Life study called "Writing, Technology, and Teens" (press release is here; PDF of the whole report is here), I've been thinking about what kind of online tools could help students write. I've learned about a few -- I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to tell students about them.

Dr. Paper: not free and originally developed for high school students, supposedly formats APA style correctly

Paper Calendar: free, will make a schedule for your paper-writing tasks

Late Night Writer: free, will ask questions to take you from topic to thesis to supporting paragraphs to finished (if disjointed) essay

yWriter4: free, writes a novel for/with you

Google Docs: free, create, collaborate, share documents online (I'm thinking of using this for class)

Buzzword: free (for now?), like Google Docs but an Adobe product

More to come, perhaps.

Backlash is Back (Did it ever leave?)

It's been a while since feminists I know have felt compelled to use the word "backlash" to talk about the current dismal and disturbing misogyny all over the place. The term felt too dated - remember Susan Faludi's book?

But now there's a fabulous article by the brilliant Katha Pollitt in The Nation that brings us up short: she calls it "Backlash Spectacular" and itemizes some of the most egregious messages our culture regularly dishes out about the female gender (teaching pole dancing to children? mass consumption of a video game that asks players to have sex with prostitutes and then kill them to earn points?), not to mention a most recent outrage: white supremacist and anti-Equal Rights Amendment activist and lunatic Phyllis Schlafley being awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Washington University. Makes you think a doctorate isn't worth much, isn't really about intellectual capability if it's awarded to someone who thinks that the Virginia Tech massacre can be blamed on the English department.

Now more than ever, feminism needs to be promoted, taught, insisted upon: the kind that Rebecca West called "the radical notion that women are people." One good source for helping us analyze media messages about many things is Media Education Foundation.

Retirement

How can it be that a colleague from MCTC is retiring? I was there when he was hired, Steve Kaufman my office mate and friend, father of Maddy and Chloe who're the same ages as Stefan and Zoe.

Tonight's gathering to honor him with energetic English instructors made me long for the days when I was younger, linked to the boundary-pushing folks who had a campus full of diversity, unlike my own campus where I'm the oddity, extremity, weird one.

Meeting folks I'd heard about for years was another plus: Morgan Grace Willow, Michael Seward stayed until the almost-end. And of course I saw pals Kathleen Devore, KateLynn Hibbard, and Linnea Stenson. Bonding over bourbon makes for "buy in" doesn't it?

But reminiscing is fine, too: remembering the old guard, angry and bitter, gone to make room for the twenty-first century. I'm glad we're in the new millennium.

"Apostrophe to Man"

For some reason, this Edna St. Vincent Millay poem is on my mind.
(This photo is of her gravesite at Steepletop Cemetery in Austerlitz, New York.)

Apostrophe To Man

(on reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacateria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.


I guess my student Matt is right: I should prepare and teach a seminar on Millay.

Another Good Book

Louise Erdrich's new novel, The Plague of Doves, is getting good reviews. I heard her read from in on Friday at Birch Bark Book's reading space, Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church -- powerful and intriguing.
While waiting for her to sign my book, I watched her gracious greeting of every person: a kind professional.

Not New, Still True

And funny! I've posted this video before: The The Impotence of Proofreading by Taylor Mali.

Facebook Surprise

Today I found out that my brother-in-law, who teaches art at Mercyhurst Prep in Erie, PA, has a Facebook group devoted to him: it's called "I have a shrine to Dr. Borowicz in my closet."

Pretty awesome.

Good Book

Friday night's reading at Birch Bark Books: Nine of the 21 contributers to Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. The book's edited by a community college colleague and pal, Kate Kysar, who's done a marvelous job bringing together lots of Minnesota writers, many of whom I've met either as acquaintances, teachers, colleagues, or because I've read their work: Jonis Agee, Barrie Jean Borich, Taiyon Coleman, Allison McGhee, Heid Erdrich, Wang Ping, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, Morgan Grayce Willow.

I love them

That's all I can say about this batch of students: I plain love them. Quintilian would approve: he says good teachers love their students.

Tonight was the last class meeting, turning in reading journals and final essays, having a discussion about what should be on the final exam (I keep telling them my philosophy about exams, that they're opportunities for them to show me what they know -- so I ask for their input about what they'd like to be asked), having a "wrap up" discussion.

The discussion went well, prompted by a listserv debate going on right now about the value of a literature survey course (the kind I teach): one fellow thinks they're a waste of time. I asked the students what they think, which is that a "buffet style" as I like to call it allows them the chance to find folks they really connect to and read further. Plus, as one student said, she now knows the answers to some Jeopardy questions!

This semester, I modified my "closing activity" so that it didn't involve matzo. Instead, we used tickets (everyone took 32, the number of students and me) and wrote their names on the backs. Then I asked them to go around the room and say something to every single person, something they remembered or noted or got from this person. Then exchange tickets. As my Somalian student said, "I didn't understand why we were doing this, then I got it: we're saying goodbye." Yep, and thanks.

Many students complimented each other in a way that was heartfelt, I think, and I got a chance to say something positive to everyone as we departed. Also, students commented positively on the class structure (and me, which was nice to hear). One said his parents were both English professors, and this course was one he learned the most in. Another thanked me for "keeping it light." Another said I was the best reader of his writing he'd ever had in college. Another said she *wanted* to come to class every week because of how it was run. Another claimed to have never thought English was "for me" but now wants to read a book a month.

And then some folks went to Gabe's for food and drink and more discussion of the course texts (Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" and Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" all struck nerves). Josh came, too, our guest speaker who made a good impression on a sizable minority of students. The fellow who's off to Iraq in June bought an appetizer platter and wished us all well, hugs and handshakes all around.

What a good bunch.

Cross-College Colleagues

I spent the afternoon yesterday with a couple of tremendous people: Steve Kaufman and Kathleen Devore over at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Kathleen graciously allowed me to sit in on a class -- and even chime in with a story of my own, no matter a bit off-topic -- and observe her teaching, her students, her milieu. I learned about a book I'd never heard of: Contemporary Plays by Women of Color.

These kind of conversations and collaborations are absolutely essential, I think. It's so easy to get caught up with the issues on our own campuses, with our own colleagues, in our own classrooms. A simple visit to another college, to another colleague's classroom opens that trap we'd been "caught up" in.

It's risky, though: most of us don't like the idea of someone else observing our space, our interactions with our students: why is that? The ever-present fear of evaluation? Most of us have been graduate students where evaluation was personal, or so it seemed, and had serious ramifications. Others of us have been observed by deans and supervisors, folks whose job it is to grant us better or worse working conditions. Others of us are just private, I suppose, although a truly private person probably doesn't go into teaching much.

The biggest thing I learned, though, is something I keep learning over and over from my colleagues: that good teaching and learning happens in so many ways, through so many small and serendipitous events/acknowledgments/comments, with so many different kinds of people/artifacts/questions/constraints.

One teacher's plea re. plagiarism

"Plagiarism at Uni: An open letter to students by English teacher Suzanne Linder" by Katherine Allen.

Suzanne Linder teaches English at University Laboratory High School in Urbana, IL. She writes calmly and sensibly to ask students to quit plagiarizing, to think for themselves and create original work. What good ideas.

Be sure, too, to follow the comments thread: more good ideas there, especially about the limits of certain kinds of assignments and the benefit of consistently re-examining our pedagogical practices. Also, click on the audio link to hear Linder explain what prompted her to write the letter.

I received the link to this article from Jennifer Veltsos's message on a wonderful listserv I read, TECHRHET, a space/place I've mentioned before, a place/space for great discussion about technology and teaching composition/rhetoric. It's a list hosted by InterUniversity.org.

Join the discussion. Find colleagues. Educate yourself and others.

Period Trick

I found this trick on Steven Krause's teaching blog (found to the right on my higher ed. blogs), entry for April 8, 2008.


http://view.break.com/232903 - Watch more free videos

Perhaps this lesson will be a "public service" to my colleagues and a reason NOT to specify page-lengths with essays/papers. Word counts might be a better way to let students know how much depth you want them to go into.

What I did . . .

. . . last night so that everyone could contribute something to the discussion when not everyone had read everything:

I asked each student to read aloud from one piece they'd read for class (they'd had some choices about what they could read).

I gave them some time to choose 100-150 words (a paragraph or two, a stanza or two), and then we simply went around the room (in alphabetical order based on their middle names) hearing everyone's voice.

I asked each reader to tell us page numbers so we could follow along, author's name, and selection name. After each read, I asked them to explain why they chose this passage, this author, this selection.

Results? What a fabulous discussion we had, and I heard extended speech for the first time from a couple of very shy students who almost never say more than six or seven words. The whole exercise took about an hour with my 28 students.

One more (unexpected) benefit: Many students chose the same selection (Adrienne Rich's poem "Power" came up more than once, as did Audre Lorde's poem "Power," Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" and John Updike's "Trust Me")

This repetition, hearing variously accented student voices, allowed listeners to find/hear different things in each new reading: for example, the Power poems became incredibly powerful when read by a range of readers: middle-aged white male, young African American female, young Asian American female, not-so-young white female.

I will definitely do this activity again.

What to do . . .

. . . in class tonight: too much reading to "cover" adequately because we cancelled last week's class meeting. Students have prepared something for their "facilitation," but I fear it'll consist of "here's research we did" rather than any real facilitation of learning.

And then there's next week's class, the last one, originally scheduled as the final exam. But I think I'm going to make it a required meeting to tie up loose ends, come to some closure, and make the final a take-home exam.

Thoughts?

More Morrison

It's a complete cliche to say that Toni Morrison's novels stun and jolt and amaze the reader -- I mean, she's a Nobel Prize winner -- but it's completely true: the early two, The Bluest Eye and Sula, are teachable (and frequently show up on reading lists, in online paper mill repositories, in Cliff/Sparknotes) because they're more-or-less chronological, focus on young people, and have a clear, if unsatisfactory, ending.

The next two, Song of Solomon which I read in college and Tar Baby which I reread last week, are less . . . what: I wrote "tidy" and realized that's not accurate, then "packaged" which gets at what I mean a little bit (they're not "coming of age" novels in the way the first two are), but ultimately the next two are not as concerned with youth. And I like that: I'm tired of the first two, having read each at least four times so that I can teach them well each semester I teach American Women Writers. But let's see Morrison's progression as an artist.

Then we get to Beloved, the novel that knocked me out for two days after I read it; I was such a wreck emotionally that I'm afraid to read it again, but I suppose it'll impact me differently this time since I don't have young children any more.

To follow Morrison's chronology, Jazz is next, which I just finished this week for the first time. What a perfectly-named novel. And I'm thinking I'd like to teach it in conjunction with Gatsby: same time period, basically; same city (Harlem vs. Long Island); same iconic American story, author, genius. I should have paired them this semester, but I didn't know Jazz. Next time.

Next is Paradise, which I'm currently rereading having forgotten I'd read it, a lovely set of chapters like beads on a chain but brutally broken. Brutally. Then I see her next novel is called Love, and then this year's A Mercy. If these titles are any indication, we can expect more intense emotionality. Pathos in spades.

Listen to her read - and to her friend the poet Reynolds Price - at Duke University. I heard her speak once at the U of Minnesota, in Northrup Auditorium. She wasn't sweet, was strong and brave and irritating. She made us uncomfortable and energized. We need these voices.

Media/Genre

I've been thinking about the difference between media and genre ever since Friday, when Geoff Sirc mentioned the distinction at a workshop I attended. He was making a point about digital literacy, that digital writing may be a different genre of writing altogether, not simply writing with new media.

I'm going to have to think about this distinction, one Satrapi mentioned last week, too, when she insisted on being known as a cartoonist, someone who creates comics, not a graphic novelists: her medium is ink, and her genre is comics.

What's the relationship between genre, media, and then the electronic interface with with we readers/consumers engage with words/images/ideas/others? These things all blur/blend/bleed more quickly and widely now that the speed-and-reach of the Internet is here. (How can anyone even articulate anything without the virgule these days?)

Marjane Satrapi

Last night, heard Marjane Satrapi at Century: what a treat.

She's such a wonder, such a good speaker for our campus: intelligent and funny, worldly yet approachable, creative and opinionated. She sat and talked to us, a ready-made "speech" delivered extemporaneously with grace and good humor, genuine thanks.

Here's a trailer from her movie Persepolis made from her two books: