Rhetorical sophistication?

This semester, I have had to apologize to my students about getting behind with grading: it seems to me that honesty is a good policy, and I wanted them to know I was working on their writing, but I wasn't finished with assessing/evaluating/grading everyone's work at the same time.

Now I have two students who are using my apology as a weapon by telling the dean that they "didn't know how to improve" because I "didn't give them any feedback." *Sigh*.

Aristotle defines rhetoric as "finding the available means of persuasion." I guess I've made a means available to these students. This morning the dean called to tell me what arguments my students are going to have "against me" when we meet later this afternoon. The dean counsels me not to say something like this again . . . maybe she's right?

It's that time in the semester

Some students are finding out that they've learned a LOT this semester, and they're surprised (and impressed!) with themselves. I, too, am proud of the strides they've made as they've taken the opportunities I've provided for learning.

Some students are feeling stressed, pressured, unhappy: various reasons, of course, but most of the reasons seem to be related to something I've done wrong. One needs me to meet with the dean *and her mother* to get her money back because somehow I didn't "treat her fairly" in the course.

Hmmm. This student got a job midway through the semester and stopped coming to class after spring break. Last week she contacted me . . . surprising me with her email because she'd dropped completely off my radar. Evidently, though, she's on her mom's radar!

We'll see how Monday goes . . . !

Not ironic

Found at the bottom of an email announcment/solicitation from a colleague (and I don't think s/he was being ironic):

"Please feel free to print this e-mail - it provides jobs at nurseries, the forestry department, logging companies, and paper mills and it can be recycled!"

At least the *font* was green.

Logical contradiction

I am SO TIRED of the crap spewed by the political leadership in our state: the current state education commissioner Alice Seagren (who has a degree in marketing, not education) is speaking on MPR right now, and she chastizes teachers and students for not being able to do what they need to do, such as meet standards or evaluating sources.

Yet she does not examine her own logical contradictions: in one breath she says that "students need more time on task" because it will improve students' "performance" in some way, presumably on tests. In the next breath she says that Minnesota has one of the "shortest" school years in the country. Her logic is that Minnesota has to lengthen the school year because other states have longer school years.

HOWEVER, here's the logical flaw: Minnesota is at the TOP of the national rankings in terms of education (on many, many measures, including number of students who graduate from high school, test scores, etc.) So if we're at the top but we have fewer class days than other states, why would students need more time on task?

There's not a positive correlation (or maybe there's a negative correlation!) not to mention causal relationship between the length of the school year and the educational achievement of students as measured against other states.

One big caveat: in some national rankings, Minnesota has *slipped* during the Pawlenty administration. For example, in 2005-06 MN was listed as #6 on the "Smartest State" ranking by Morgan Quitno. By 2006-07, we slipped to #13! So perhaps we can see that the policies by our current conservative, education-punishing administration are really condemning our state's educational system to a lowest-common-denominator: yuck.

On a related political note: this website correlates state's educational rankings with the "blue/red" characterization. Although the website doesn't say when these rankings were made, it *is* curious that the highest educational rankings correlate with blue/Democratic states. Hmmm.

More student writing

What is literacy these days? I'm wondering as I read emails like this one a student sent today (copied *exactly* as I received it, the big chunk of text that you see below) (P.S. I think "flustrarted" should be a word!):

hey Julie, ( i ment to write back but some how i sent it to myself? im not to good with computers, so this messages is actually from last wednesday april 15th)

I dont think im making sense threw email for you, Im really sorry. The essay project i picked out of the syllabus under the "essay project options" im not sure if thats what we were suppose to do now because i read somthing saying you had to sign up for a topic ( which i never did) so i became very confused. And now today i seen a list under content for topics that didnt match the ones in the syllabus and only had four peoples names in it. Another thing is i turned my essay in online under late work i dont know if you seen that or not and i read in the syllabus that you wanted our name on the back of the paper and of course i followed Mla standards like i do for my composition class. what worries me is not following what you wanted because it says here i will earn a zero. Im very flustarted with myself and want to achieve a good grade. I bombed the Test and will hopfully redeam myself on the final. For the quizes will i just be out those point thats say zero out of zero.. or is that just my computer that is saying i got zero for the first three? im crossing my fingers but i have bad luck so i wont be surprised if they just say zeros for you as well! im sorry i just wrote you a novel i hope i make better sense now then i did before. see you tommorrow

A Colleague's Work

My colleague and friend Phyllis Ballata has published a book based on her years of teaching and being one of the most ethical people I know. The book's called Living as Though There Is a Tomorrow: Creating the Future by Choice Using Reason, Duty, Love, and Belief. A Practical Handbook for Moral Growth

It's a super-long title, obviously, but it points out all the important aspects of the book. You can buy it at The Nest, Phyllis's fair-trade gift store in White Bear Lake. But you should ask your local *independent* bookstore to order it and/or stock it, too.

We need to get more people to read the book! It's important and useful.

*So-o-o-o* last election cycle

Will anyone even get the jokes in this video any more? Do we remember what these candidates said, stood for, did?

Student sentences

Any advice about how I (or anyone) might teach something useful about writing to students who write sentences like these?

Opening line of a student essay that's called "Women's Place Over Generations":

• Over many decades, ever since anyone can remember, women have been around.

In an essay that's supposed to identify and analyze campus barriers to people with disabilities:

• There are also many flyers and post boards which are pretty easy to read for anyone with hearing impairments although if you have vision I don't know how well you will be able to read!

In an essay titled "The Woman is Born":

• Today the woman stands strong with many different adversities and hurtles to prevail over, and yet they grow together with the rights of education, work, and choice.
  

Important video

I've been trying to figure out how to embed this video in Century's Q&S Club Facebook page. If anyone can help me, that would be great.

It's made by a gay teen in northwestern Pennsylvania, an area I know well, documenting the torment he and another teen endured in high school. They both decided to do something about the harassment.

Feeling more hopeful

I’ve just finished with my squirrely group of Engl 90 students, the ones who made me so depressed last week.

Last Wednesday's class almost made me cry with the “progressive story” assignment (the one designed to teach the skills of “unity” and “organization” by passing a paper around and having everyone add a sentence to a story). This class of 15 (3 women) made the characters commit crimes – assault, drugs, stealing, rape – visit prostitutes, get AIDS, flunk class, get drunk (many stories had this plot device), lie to teachers, “turn” gay, eat cockroaches, call the cops (many had this one, too), give lap dances, puke, walk into the wrong class and see an “attractive lady” (two stories took this turn), etc., etc., etc.

I was appalled. Here’s a sample:

“So after class one day, Student One would stalk and beat up Student Two for no reason better than the fact of her enjoying the class. Yet, the next day they were all run over by Student Three and his big truck. Student Three went to prison for vehicular manslaughter on three accounts. No one has ever seen him again, until he was found out in the prison yard wrapped around a big man named, Bubba. Student Three was wrapped around him like a fur coat. But, sadly that would be the last anyone had heard from Student Three. One thing is good, at least he provided Bubba with warmth.”

Some stories I couldn’t read to the class. Here’s an excerpt that stopped me in my tracks:

“Soon, the entertainment got out of hand. Their entertainment with poems soon turned into entertainment from strippers. Sooner or later their entertainment got boring, and they decided to do volunteering work. They gave their free time to the local whore house. They would clean out the girls, lube them up, and clean the ‘creative juices.’”

Students knew that these stories would be read in class, but each sentence was more-or-less anonymous after the story got back to the original writer. A little sleuthing reveals the writer of the sentences above – let’s just say that “Student Three” is the author of the terrible parallel structure that ends the preceding excerpt.

Today, however, in writing workshop four students read their new assignment, and three were very, very good. Feedback was encouraging and responsible, too. With accountability (we go around the circle after the “Featured Writer” has read, and everyone must offer some comment), the students –for the most part – pay attention to writerly things, imagining ways to make their classmates’ writing better. Students are kind to each other.

I need to keep organizing my writing classes into these writing workshop: smaller groups of 8-12 students show me more of what they're capable of and what they've learned. I like them SO much better.

Makes me cheerful

This video reminds me to be committed to the idea of collective action, art, and civics

I just love the energy and collaboration.

Student Writing

I've been thinking lately about the effect on a person -- me, perhaps -- that the continued reading of student writing has. I mean, what happens to expectations about coherence, fluency, style when one (me?) is inundated with novice/student/practicing writers? What does this immersion do to one's (my?) sense of the possibilities and polish of writing?

Maybe it makes me more compassionate, although I think I see a LOT more ridiculously unprofessional writing coming from my college's employees (don't ask). Maybe it makes me more pliable, able to make meaning out of discontinuity and sincere attempts at communicating. Maybe it makes me stuck, unable to recognize written prose as a communicative artifact instead of a thing to be graded. Maybe it makes me stupid. (That's truly what I worry about: that I lose a critical edge and then find any half-way coherent, innovative utterance to be impressive when it's merely pedestrian because I'm so used to seeing practice prose.)

Sometimes I think I should just quit reading all the writing my students produce (because I ask them to do so!), and indeed I don't read everything. But mostly, I want to know what they think, want to witness thinking on the page/screen, want to help them make sense of their own senses and sensations and sentience and sensibility. I really do.

4Cs

San Francisco is beautiful -- not that I've seen much of it. I'm inside the Hilton listening to thought-provoking and inspiring talks: Mike Rose, especially. I'm having good conversations, too.

That's what conferences are for, right?

For those who insist that we don't . . .

. . . need to share (AKA increase revenue AKA raise taxes): the National Center on Family Homelessness just released a study that says one in 50 children is homeless in any one year.

How can we live in a country that has allowed this fact to exist?

For those who insist that we don't . . .

. . . live in a patriarchy: consider this recent article in Slate.com.

Japanese video game that simulates rape: called RapeLay, the player/perpetrator stalks and attacks a young girl on the subway. Various endings include the player/perp being stabbed by the victim or the victim becoming impregnated.

I'm sickened. I can't even bring this obscenity into my WGST course.

Bill Holm, RIP

Bill spoke at Century -- and Lakewood -- more than once. He, like I, hated the name change, saying it sounded like something a committee of executives would make up, not a college name at all. He's right.

Here's a photographic tribute of him by the photography Jonathan Chapman, courtesy of my pal Cullen Bailey Burns.

Strong Bad writes an English Paper

This cartoon about writing a paper is probably funnier to others than it is to me -- am I right about this? Will my students think it's funny?
Received via Michael Day on <techrhet>.
P.S. Who is Strong Bad?

Snow Day

Many, many inches: classes cancelled! Now I can do a tiny bit of catch-up.

Why? That's a good question

I've decided to post another student message to my blog because my readers are offering helpful ways for me to understand my students.

In a night American Lit course at a local "urban" university, one student has me puzzled. S/he and I have already had conversations about the class, specifically about the student's lack of participation, and these conversations (both in person and via email) have gone fairly well, or so I thought.

But yesterday I read something on the course discussion board (under "Q&A about Course Policies, Procedures, Features"). Here's the complete post:

"Why the focus on group work? It doesn't illuminate anything. Closed, selective groups do not provide for open debate. It is a miserable experience to come to class every night and have to suffer. Nothing was said in a group that an individual couldn't do as well.

"It's a waste of time. What happened to good old-fashioned writing in response to literature. I get nothing out of the group experience except a headache. I resent that my grade is based on group participation. No one in this course helped my pay my tuition and book fees, so why is my grade based on group participation?

"I get the feeling that the lessons are not planned but made up on the spot."

Many other students responded to this post before I saw it. Those students all said that "group work" was valuable. Only one student acknowledged that such work was hard for her/him, too, and encouraged the unhappy student, "Don't give up on it!"

I, too, wrote a long response, which I may post in a separate blog entry. But I'd be curious to know what my colleagues would do in this situation.

How to help?

Sentence from a student's essay:

"I find out for the potential concept from reading to encourage my ability of learning."

I don't know what this sentence means. Can anyone help me?