What's next?

With one semester finished, I'm thinking about the next semester, when I'm teaching a course that I haven't taught in about five years. I'm looking forward to it because it's such an important course: Engl 90, our "Introduction to Writing" course that helps not-quite-ready writers become college-writing ready. Years ago, I taught it using the Utne Reader magazine as a text, crafting all the assignments as responses to the short current articles there. I'd end the course with a Letter to the Editor assignment that I actually sent to the mag. That method was fun for me because I never knew what topics we'd be writing about.

But the magazine's editorial vision seems to have changed, and it's become increasingly less fun/ky, so I've switched to a textbook this year. I'm rueing the choice, though, thinking it's more than the students can handle. We'll have to see what happens -- or how I can make something happen.

Portfolios Finished!

Whew - reading such good (huge) portfolios takes a LOT of focused time. Why do I do this method, I ask myself every semester, but ultimately the work seems to be worth it: I read good work. Most students seem to learn quite a bit, for the most part.

Funny sentences, do emerge, however. For example, these:

• "Preparing for the portfolio was the most changeling thing I had to do in our English class."
• "Writing has always been my weakest strength but I know this class has helped improved me to become a better writer."
• "Many call the gays bad, evil and other crazy names, but how many of us actually know an evil lesbian or a bad gay man."

Second and Third Final

Second was FYC with the M/W group: not as strong, let me tell you. The level of cliche and vague generalization hasn't diminished far enough over the past 16 weeks, even though we've practiced and practiced and practiced. Some students even resorted to the "5-paragraph theme" with its "three points," a genre we've repeatedly discussed as inadequate for college-level thinking. I guess a pressure-situation like an inclass final essay brings out the worst in us: stress is like that.

Third was the Intro to GLBT Studies students: I asked too much of them, relying on their input when they said they wanted to write about how they connected this course to their lives. They wanted to reflect rather than memorize: I get that, but the exam took too long. Some of them will just skip the second part and double the point values of the first part.

Okay, now to do more grading: 15 portfolios left (with 8 essays in each!), 15 final exams (all online), and 21 final essays/projects to read.

The end is in sight.

First Final

This afternoon, my T/Th FYC students took their in-class final, an essay exam. I had three options for them, and 16 out of 18 took one of the options, 2 chose another (the option no one chose at midterm), and none chose an option that I thought might be fun (discuss the relationship between words and images -- we've been Wordle-ing this semester, and I've given them a few talks about visual design).

Exams weren't terrible (I've graded them already). I wonder how the M/W class will do tomorrow. They've struggled all semester. We'll see.

So far, I've graded 13 of 36 portfolios (eight essays in each!), 18 of 52 final exams, and none of the 21 final projects I have left for this semester. This week is grading week, can you tell?

After grading comes grades calculation: I've begun that, too, with the accumulation almost accumulated. Only a couple of Fs for plagiarism -- not bad, I suppose, out of 64 students -- and some really lovely work, essays that I want to copy and distribute to future students. It's wonderful to read heart-felt expressions of indignation, pride, enlightenment. It really does happen.

Kill your babies

I've been telling my students that as they revise, they must get rid of some of the things they love (because they have written them) so that their essays are more focused, unified, organized. Now I find myself in a similar situation:

Going through files to organize before final portfolios come in, I'm clearing out all the old assignments and extra paper that accumulates during the semester. I'm finding essays/assignment that I've graded, commented on, and that weren't returned to students because those students disappeared. I have a hard time recycling these papers with all my carefully crafted penciled comments, all my conversation with the student.

All my hard work down the drain! I think to myself. Why do I *do* so much commenting? Why do I write so much on their essays? How can I possibly throw away all the evidence of my hard work?

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) coined the phrase "murder your darlings" in 1914, which came down to us as "kill your babies." I suppose he's right. Here's the full quotation:

“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetuate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – wholeheartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” In 12th and final lecture “On Style (given at Cambridge on 28 January 1914 in a series published as On the Art of Writing).

So I have to take my own advice already! Dang.

Worst Meeting Ever

On Friday afternoon, I attended a planning meeting for the upcoming MnSCU English Discipline Workshop (April 3-4, 2009). Although we had a detailed agenda and superb attendance, we didn't get even a third of the way through the agenda before people started leaving: mainly because we'd reached the scheduled ending point of the meeting, 90 minutes after it'd begun.

Oddly, the person in charge of this workshop, who'd created the agenda, doesn't seem to have *any* grasp of time, of prioritization, of audience. S/he spent an unnecessary amount of time on minutiae, which gave random others the opportunity to chime in with additional unnecessary minutiae.

By 5:00, a full two hours after the beginning of the meeting, we were getting to the agenda items that needed committee member input (real decisions, real consequences). Only six of the original eighteen attendees were still present, and most of us had to leave. So we still don't know if the workshop's topics are still the same (how *does* "Assessment" differ from "Accountability" as one member so wisely asked).

Even my best students . . .

. . . can't work with sources. I've just read the most *horrendous* source-based essays that I've ever read in my life. Seriously, in my twenty-plus-year teaching life. Not even my own elementary school children wrote essays this terrible: disjointed, inaccurate, pointless, rambling, copied, unclear. Now I'm curious about where my previous students bought their essays.

I'm stumped: I stepped them through the process, with tour of the library and its databases, required annotated bibliography, conference with me, pre-research-paper essay persuading me that they had a reasonable research question and some idea of where to go to find their answer(s), rhetorical analysis of a sample student essay, three in-class workshops on drafts (for content [a variation of Elbow's Believer/Doubter exercises], for structure, and for citations).

I don't know what else to do. Are students that stretched that they can't do any work outside of class? We spent almost five weeks on this "unit," five weeks to produce a "researched essay" based on a question that they had related to our college common book.

The saddest thing is that I won't be teaching FYC again for at least a year. So what do I do with my terrible job this semester?

Excellent Movie

I highly recommend Gus Van Sant's Milk. See it immediately. Tell all your students to do so, no matter what you teach (hey, you remember that you teach *students* don't you?).

The film's content still resonates 30 years after Harvey Milk's murder. His message of hope is familiar to us, of course, but so, unfortunately, is the message of hate spread by some "religious" people. What I especially like is Milk's insistence that he wasn't the important thing: the movement was the important thing, the simple force of the simple *rightness* of the simple equality of all people. It's a simple, powerful, necessary message.

What's to learn?

I received a forwarded email, containing an article called "Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy: Stunning Break with Last Eight Years." No attribution with the email, no author or originating website or source. These absences made me suspicious, of course, and I suspected that the article might be a spoof.

But the article cited a University of Minnesota professor of presidential history, Davis Logsdon, not a name I recognized, so naturally I googled him.

Turns out the entire article was written by Andy Borowitz, a writer who skewers politics and popular culture. Like Stewart and Kolbert, Borowitz's satire asks us to be critical, to see stupidities, to think.

How can I use satire with my students to help them think critically? I have so many students who don't want to read to learn, who instead want to be told. They ask, "What's the point?" and "What am I supposed to learn?" and "What do *you* think - you're giving me the grade?"

Something to work on, as usual.

BOT Awards

How to get the word out? That's the challenge in any large institution, like our college or the system within which our college exists, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Such a communication challenge is especially difficult when the intended audience holds strong preconceptions about the message, as MnSCU faculty do about a terrific program created by the MnSCU Board of Trustees: the BOT Educator of the Year Award.

The preconception about this award is that once nominated, a faculty member must go through an onerous process of putting together a portfolio to document that excellence. However, the process doesn't have to be onerous at all: perhaps the (sorta cheesy) video below will motivate folks to see that?

Additions

So I thought I'd already ordered my books for next semester -- through the college bookstore's website, which is multi-layered, multi-stepped, multi-confusing.

A few days ago, I decided to add another book to my Engl 90 course, a terrific textbook called Considering Literacy by my most-excellent colleague Linda Adler-Kassner. I haven't read the entire text, but it seems perfectly suited for the course, which is supposed to help students develop college-level writing skills.

As I logged into our bookstore site, I found out that my previous order had never been processed: I don't know where the information went. I don't know why my previously ordered books did not appear. I don't know why.

Maybe I need to develop some "literacy" skills myself when it comes to reading/navigating websites, especially those designed without any consideration of users!

Curious

I received an unexpected email from a student today, a student with whom I spent 45 minutes in conference on Wednesday talking about the research question for our course's final research essay. I was actually looking forward to what the rough draft would be like for today's class workshop, but the student was absent. Now I know why:

email in total:
I wanted to inform you that I am dropping your class. I have felt that ever since you told me that it is undetermined as to whether or not I will pass this semester, it seems pointless to take that risk and have it affect my GPA. I have spoken with a number of students about what has happened throughout the semester and have found out that I am not alone. I am very disappointed with my decision, but I feel that I am left no other options; which you proved to me more thoroughly on Wednesday with our meeting when you said that you can’t guarantee that my paper will be successful because you don’t understand my viewpoint - I left your office feeling very disappointed and very frustrated. Since then, I have had time to think about my decision over the weekend and still did not know up until a few minutes ago, but I plan to meet with a counselor this week to discuss what has happened and I will let you know if there is further information that I need in order to drop.

I suppose it's good news that the student is talking with a counselor. Perhaps it's required since it turns out that my office mate has had this student in class three times before, and the student has already dropped FYC twice: my class was the third attempt at taking the course. Perhaps the student is on probation or something.

I'm especially curious about the "guarantee" language: I wonder how many other instructors ever guarantee that a student "will be successful." I wonder if there's a "money-back" clause now in applications.

The New Age

Associated Press writer Beth Fouhy has an excellent, thought-provoking news piece in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Obama to pioneer Web outreach as president."

The opening lines begin like this:

"Transition officials call it Obama 2.0 — an ambitious effort to transform the president-elect's vast Web operation and database of supporters into a modern new tool to accomplish his goals in the White House. If it works, the new president could have an unprecedented ability to appeal for help from millions of Americans who already favor his ideas, bypassing the news media to pressure Congress."

Despite its seeming cheesiness, I like the "Obama 2.0" catch-phrase for all it signifies: the soon-to-be-leader of the free world recognizes the age in which we live, the ways in which we are connected, the media within which we exist. It's about time.

Here are a couple more quotations, perhaps offering teachable moments for us rhetoric profs:

• Obama's team is determining how best to convert his army of online activists into a viral lobbying and communications machine. Staffers are reluctant to discuss specifics, but Obama clearly is poised to become the first truly "wired" president of the digital age.

• The transition operation has a new Web site, www.change.gov, designed for anyone who wants to post a message of congratulations, offer suggestions for the new administration or apply for a government job. People are invited to submit their names and e-mail addresses, with the goal of creating a new list for the president-elect to tap when he wants to communicate directly about a program he's promoting or seek help urging members of Congress to support legislation he's proposed.

• [D]irect online contact with voters could . . . present a challenge for reporters covering Obama, since the new president will in many ways be able to bypass traditional media while also taking advantage of it to reinforce his online messaging.

  "He can do a half-hour YouTube address every Saturday, addressing millions," [Joe] Trippi said. "The networks would never give the president that much television time each week, but the press is still going to have to cover what he says on YouTube."

  Aides say the Obama team will staff a robust "new media" operation out of the White House and plans a complete overhaul of the White House Web site to make it more interactive and user-friendly. On the campaign trail, Obama promised to use the Internet to make his administration more open, such as offering a detailed look at what's going on in the White House on a given day or asking people to post comments on his legislative proposals.

How about a writing assignment that asks students to analyze the changes to the White House website? Or to post a comment and track the responses it generates? Students could write to the *President* of the United States as a writing assignment! It's amazing.

Didn't do it

Of the twenty-two students in my afternoon FYC class, only two came with the completed homework today: a ten-item annotated bibliography. They'd had a week to do it.

Some said they didn't understand what "annotated" meant (okay, didn't hear me talk about it in class, didn't read their textbook). One said she didn't know what "item" meant (okay, I should have said "ten-source bibliography" I guess). Four hadn't been in class a week ago to get the assignment (indeed, have missed the last two weeks and so were woefully behind in our whole research process toward the researched essay).

As a result, I had to completely revamp what I wanted to do in class. We did *look* at this rubric for evaluating sources, but we couldn't *do* it or *use* it with our own sources because folks hadn't prepared.

How are they going to do their essays in the next two weeks? The past two weeks were supposed to be about finding and reading sources.

Grading, Grading

Grading never ends: conferences tomorrow to hand back all the essays I've graded today. Some of the conversations are going to be tough because it seems to me that I've done more research/writing on some students' research questions than they have. Not good.

What do I say to someone who dismisses out-of-hand Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe (and admits to not understanding it) yet embraces whole-heartedly Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle?

Good news

Courtney's doing okay - considering. She's got friends and family around her, and as she said: with the hospitalizations and illnesses these past few years, she's been preparing for this end all along. She's amazingly philosophical.

The memorial service is Saturday. My colleague Brian and I will attend for sure.

Another death

One of the students I'm closest to at Century is Courtney, the current president of the Q&S Club I advise. This morning, I was on campus at 7:40 to pick up Courtney and possibly another student in order to drive them to the Minnesota OUT! Campus Conference in Mankato.

After waiting almost 20 minutes for the uncharacteristically tardy Courtney, I called her cell and got her sister: Courtney wouldn't be attending the conference because her father'd died that morning. Courtney had gone in to wake him for a ride to campus and found him.

I'm devastated. I'd met him once -- he'd tried to hand me a $20 for gas money when I drove Courtney home from Pride this June -- and he was a kind, odd man. The two of them lived together, and I can't even imagine how Courtney is going to cope. Her family is fragmented, so I just can't imagine. And I have so little knowledge of how to act in this kind of situation.

Just for fun

Any cat fans out there?

From my colleague Brian.

What a week

I have to say that I've been nervous since my last post: I wasn't sure about the Presidential election outcome. I still remember the shock of 2000, of going to bed confident that Gore would be our President and waking up to the horror of Bush. Some friends had asked what I would do if Obama didn't "win"; I would joke about moving to Canada, but seriously I started quaking when contemplating a non-Obama future.

(This week, I've had a seriously hard time focusing on work, and I'm behind grading student assignments. I haven't talked with them at all about the election specifically (too many students with huge McCain Palin stickers on their notebooks), but we have had many discussions and exercises about detecting argument moves, conducting rhetorical analysis, uncovering logical fallacies. That's the most I could manage; I suppose I was fearful I'd have to engage in some kind of argument with a person whose strongly held values come from their parents.)

This year, I watched the formerly-red states turn blue on the big screen TV at my friend's house, watching the numbers roll in with my politic son and his smart friend (masters degree from Brown in public affairs and public policy). It's terrific to see history happening with smart, like-minded people, to watch a Harvard law grad give a calm, intelligent speech that suggests the calm, intelligent decision-maker and leader he will be.

Logical Fallacies, again

I'm always challenged when I teach logic in a composition course. It's not strict mathematical syllogism that the philosophers study/teach; it's the rhetorical syllogism Aristotle lays out for his students -- he calls this the "enthymeme."

I'm thinking of that kind of rhetorical reasoning as I read an article entitled "The Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid," which points out faulty causality. The writer is a smart blogger, Kathy G. of "The G Spot: Politics, Economics, Feminism, Labor, Culture, Ideas." She's responding to a Wall Street Journal article called "Vote Republican if You Want Equal Pay." The writer of that article "looked at Census data on women's pay relative to men's in every presidential administration from LBJ to the present. And lo and behold, he found that women's relative pay increased far more under Republican presidents than Democrat ones."

The cause? Well, you'll have to look at the article yourself, but let's just say that more than one thing can cause a statistic to rise (pay increases can show up in one group because another group's pay *decreases*). Kathy G. rightly points out that men's falling salaries during Republican presidents can make women's salaries appear to rise.

Uh huh. I like smart women.