Summer Reading 2008

How far is everyone into this book? I am really enjoying the readings in the first section. The questions are provocative and several debates on teacher/student responsibilities/roles sound VERY familiar. Unfortunately, I see my current district stepping away from the full development of the student toward data collection and detached responsibility in forming the future citizens of America, regardless of whether they pursue higher education or not. Thoughts?

I’ve just returned from south-central Illinois, deep in the heart of river and corn country. I dropped my eldest off at a weekend retreat called “Emmaus Days.” It is an opportunity for him to discover further and reflect on the role his faith plays in his life and where that relationship will lead him. It is alot to ask of a sixteen year old, I think. And yet, I am in awe of his willingness to engage in such mature and meaningful reflection. This brings me to my question: Is reflection a skill we assume all students have? Or as teachers can we somehow do a better job in preparing our students for meaningful reflection? I have stated elsewhere that reflection is an integral part, from my perspective, of the writing process and yet it continues to be an area students either rush through or attempt to skip altogether. Is it because they simply don’t know how to do it? When we teach reading, we encourage our students to ask a series of questions that will help them assess their own comprehension levels. Through practice, they eventually learn how to do it on their own without any particular formula. Do we need to do the same practice with writing and reflection?

In Ann George’s “Critical Pedagogy,” I have found the fundamental answer to my questions: What is the purpose of my course? What is my main function as the teacher?  I inherited much of what I teach my seniors from my predecessor, and yet have looked to make the course more personal, more my own in hopes that my students too would make their writing more their own. In essence, I believe I am striving to stimulate a greater critical consciousness in my students.  George refers to Paulo Freire quite often and I will add him to my reading list. I want my students to really connect themselves to their writing and hopefully invest themselves through action. Perhaps it is my liberal arts background motivating me. It seems what is missing for many of my students is their ability to envision something different, to be inspired to address possible alternatives, and to be the ones responsible for growth and change. We all strive to empower our students with knowledge, but do they know how to convert that knowledge into active participation and leadership? How do students learn to value their own educational experiences without seeing a practical application in their own lives? This is where reflection can connect the learning with experience. But in considering the reflection, students need to first know what they value. They also need to know what the moral implications of their actions may be and possibly should be. This is where ethics education steps in and where the focus of my project begins.

I was also attracted to the principles of community-service learning. Finding opportunities for students to put their critical thinking to work by way of solving community-based problems and “to engage them as subjects of intellectual inquiry” (137). Writing becomes a tool for understanding their own role in society, based on first-hand learning experiences. The idea of securing students service-based opportunities to research their own inquiries into areas of their communities is exciting. Their learning becomes relevant and has to infuse their writing with greater depth and elaboration. For instance, my juniors read a novel titled Our America, recounting life of two teens in the Chicago housing projects. Although the students enjoy reading the novel, there is a gap between appreciating what is written and making it relevant to their own lives. Adding a service-learning opportunity in conjunction with the novel may be the way to make it all more relevant and engage the students in their own community needs.

Again I ask how I can make learning more meaningful for my students? In a time when skill sets and test results drive the curriculum, how can I step away from the statistical requirements and truly focus on the development of the conscientious young adult? George and Julier offer some attractive alternatives to the traditional pen and paper. They offer enrichment opportunities for individuals to really think about their words and their purpose.

Interest in Topic:

It seems I have never had to work collaboratively with people more than I did this past year, and the amount I learned from others still astounds me. I was myself a student who dreaded “group work,” and while I have assigned group projects with clearly defined roles, I certainly have never assigned a group paper. Thus, my experience with collaborative curriculum and assessment writing this year as a teacher contradicted previous, poor experiences. My interest, then, is in what made my experience work and how I can provide similar experiences for my students.  Specifically, I would like to create a collaborative writing assignment for my College Writing class, complete with rationale for each step based on research and theory.  The format will demonstrate my understanding of collaborative writing issues and practices as well as become a practical and useful assignment for future use in my own classroom.

Research Questions:

What are the benefits and drawbacks to writing collaboratively? How can a teacher capitalize on the benefits and reduce the obstacles?  Specifically, I would like to address the following questions:

• Why collaboration?
• How should groups be formed?
• To what extent should the teacher be involved in controlling the process?
• Should collaborative projects be given group or individual grades?  What are the benefits/drawbacks to either method?
• What happens when things go wrong?  How can a teacher and students prevent and/or fix problems with unequal student participation?
• Logistically, what are some ways students can write together and edit together? (Google Docs, wikis, etc)

Working Bibliography:

Boling, Erica, et. al.  “Collaborative Literacy: Blogs and Internet Projects.”  The Reading Teacher.  2008: 504-506.  Ebscohost.  Western Illinois University Library, Moline, IL.  30 June 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com>.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. A Short Course in Writing: Composition, Collaborative Learning, and Constructive Reading. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollinsCollegePublishers: 1993.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge. 2nd ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1999.

Eapen, Bell Raj.  “Collaborative Writing: Tools and Tips.”  Indian J Dematol Venereol Leprol. 2007: 439-41.  Ebscohost.  Western Illinois University Library, Moline, IL.  30 June 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com>.

Hurd, Sandra and Ruth Federman Stein. Building and Sustaining Learning Communities: The Syracuse University Experience. Bolton, Massachusetts: Anker, 2004.

McKeachie, Wilbert J. McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. 11th ed. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2002.

Noel, Sylvie & Jean-Marc Robert.  “Empirical Study on Collaborative Writing: What Do Co-authors Do, Use, and Like?”  Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 2004: 63-89.   Ebscohost.  Western Illinois University Library, Moline, IL.  30 June 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com>.

Speck, Bruce W.  Facilitating Students’ Collaborative Writing. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Sutton, Mark.  “Collaborative Writing at Work: Theory and Research.”  Composition Studies.  Fall 2007: 101-116.  Ebscohost.  Western Illinois University Library, Moline, IL.  30 June 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com>.

Tate, Gary, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.

Research Prospectus-Writing Studies

Katie MacLennan

June  18, 2008

Teaching Ethics and Composition in the High School Classroom

Statement of Topic:  Choosing ethics as my focus for the writing studies course provides an opportunity to explore a growing area of professional  concern.  I have always been fascinated by the discussion of ethics and the development of sound reasoning for debate.  In teaching a college writing course, I have found many of my students are ill-prepared for the critical thinking necessary for research and response.  I have also found many of my students are preconditioned to narrow their own perspectives in order to reduce the workload or to simply regurgitate direction instruction. Teaching high school students to think for themselves has become my personal goal and a surprisingly challenging one as well.

My intent in this study is to discover how to merge topic exploration with critical analysis within a framework of ethics. I do believe many of my students are quickly lost when they are not provided with a personal guide throughout their research.  I am hoping that an ethical framework will provide the necessary guidance without limiting the personal development of the students. As their teacher, I have become very cautious in expressing my own opinions because my students eventually choose to mirror my opinion rather than develop their own. In developing their own voices, many do not stop to consider the foundations of their values. I believe providing a framework of ethics in which the students can continually question and solidify their own opinions will result in a willingness to explore more broadly and to write more confidently.

My qualifications for teaching ethics are limited.  I have explored internet sites and used materials which offered ethical dilemmas that my students struggled to discuss in class. While this was rewarding on some levels in that they had to think, respond, and support their positions, I found the students responded in more practical ways rather than through their personal convictions. Without the personal connection, their support was very shallow and did not transfer well into their written responses. 

Main research question: I would like to find out if there are specific methods of teaching writing which incorporate an ethical framework as a preliminary step in the writing process.  How can I combine the development of self expression with awareness of ethical responsibility?  Perhaps it is a matter of merging the two disciplines; and if so, then I hope to learn how to facilitate an enriched writing environment.

List of materials to date:

Mayers, Tim. (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

Pemberton, Michael. The Ethics of Writing Instruction: Issues in Theory and Practice. Stamford: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 2000.

Shaugnessy, Mina P. Errors & Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Tate, Gary, Amy Rupiper and Kurt Schick. A Guide to Compositional Pedagogies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Tobin, Lad. Reading Student Writing: Confessions, Meditations, and Rants. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 2004.

Zemelman, Steven, Harvey Daniels and Arthur Hyde. Best Practice: Today’s Standard for Teaching & Learning in America’s Schools, 3^rd ed. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2005.

Just to get started, I’m going to toss out the following prospectus. Bradley, please let me know if I need some other format or more information. The bottom line is that I see a valuable connection between writing center pedagogy and WAC programs. I had to write this at work without the benefit of having my sources at hand, so I have not quoted any experts. But, as you can see from the bibliography, there are lots of theories on the subject.  I will appreciate any ideas on direction or scope for my project.

Thanks!

(Incidentally, as I write this, the sky is rumbling with at least one Blue Angel practicing for the coming show).

Nan

Prospectus

Title: The Partnership of Writing Center Pedagogy and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs

The discussion of writing center pedagogy has been around for many years, with much of the resulting scholarship peaking during the 1980s and early 1990s. Similarly, writing-across-the-curriculum scholarship has been prevalent since the 1960s. Less, however, has been written specifically about the benefits of combining writing centers with writing across the curriculum. My interest lies in how university writing centers—and perhaps the Western Writing Center—can play an integral role in the success of a WAC program, including Western’s WID requirements.

As a novice tutor with little experience with university politics or writing center theory, I hope to bring a fresh (although perhaps idealistic) perspective to writing center pedagogy. A writing center’s “classroomless” atmosphere promotes a unique relationship with faculty, students, and administration, making it a neutral, safe harbor for writing on all levels and in all curricula and a natural environment to support writing across the curriculum. In the purest sense, a writing center should be a crossroads of exchange for knowledge, writing skills and styles, and various discipline pedagogies in order to enhance all curricula and to benefit a university’s personnel and academic goals.

In Strengthening Programs for Writing Across the Discipline, the author says that “top down decrees” to establish WAC programs are often resented by those called on to carry them out; however, the opposite is often true if WAC programs are created at the grassroots level and eventually supported by upper faculty and administration. In that vein, the writing center could serve as a impartial liaison among curricula, personnel, and students in the development of a WAC program.

Not every expert agrees, however, on the strategic role of writing centers or on the value of WAC programs, let alone the practicality of combing their pedagogies. Therefore, I am interested in exploring various perspectives surrounding the issue through my own experiences as a tutor and by the scholarship of experts who have juxtaposed writing center pedagogy with WAC programs and conclude that writing centers and WAC programs can form a beneficial partnership.

Bibliography:

Burnett, Robert W. and Blumner, Jacob S. Writing Centers and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. 1999.

Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford Press. 1973.

Gillespie, Paula; Gillam, Alice; Brown, Lady Falls; & Stay, Byron. Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2002.

Holdstein, Deborah H. “Writing Across the Curriculum and the Paradoxes of Institutional Initiatives.” Pedagogy 1.1 (Winter 2001)

Kreth, Melinda L. “Comments on and Addenda to Holdstein’s WAC Paradoxes.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 1.2 (Spring 2001): 287-295. MLA International Bibliography.

Martin, Eric. V. “WAC Paradoxes Revisited: A Program Director’s Response.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 1.2 (Spring 2001): 275-286. MLA International Bibliography.

McLeod, Susan H. (ed). Strengthening Programs for Writing Across the Curriculum. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. 1988.

________ & Soven, Margot (eds). Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 1992.

Mick, Connie Snyder. “Little Teachers, Big Students: Graduate Students as Tutors and the

Future of Writing Center Theory.” The Writing Center Journal. Fall/Winter 1999. 33-50.

Myers-Breslin, Linda (ed.). Administrataive Problem-Solving for Writing Programs and Writing

Centers. Urbana, IL: National Coucil of Teachers of English. 1999.

Sheridan, Jean (ed.). Writing-Across-the-Curriculum and the Academic Library. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. 1995.

Spiegel, Dixie Lee. Classroom Discussion. New York: Scholastic, Inc. 2005.

Katie, Nan and I had a nice lunch yesterday at the Skyline Inn; I was too busy having a good conversation to say that the food was pretty darn good. (I had a grilled tenderloin sandwich: yum!) And looking out the window and seeing a Blue Angels F-18 zip by at 300mph was pretty cool.

Katie turned in a prospectus focusing on ethics; I’ve asked her to present it here (as a top-level posting) so we can comment on it. I’d like everyone to do the same so we can move to the next stage of work, which is finding texts to complement those we’ve already read, given your specific areas of interest. Given that I want to be done with everything by August 20, July 10-15 should be your time frame for a rough draft. That would enable me to look at a second more complete draft if you like.

Also, I’ll be in the QC Wed 07/23, Fri 08/01, and Sat 08/09; on those days I could meet to hand over and/or talk about drafts &c. I think we’ll want to meet again before that, perhaps the week of 07/07. What does everyone think?

After reading McLeod’s essay, I am reminded of how much I don’t know about teaching writing.  When I was teaching in Indiana, I took a one-week workshop on how to teach students to write across the curriculum within an English class.  We used the Bedford St. Martin’s text Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum so as to provide students with non-fiction texts they might encounter in non-English courses.  While I was able to identify for students the differences in the content of the reading material, it was still hard to identify the unspoken and unwritten rules for writing within each discipline.  

McLeod’s argument that we often fail to see beyond our own training rings true, and I experienced this first-hand last year while working collaboratively on a writing assignment with a history teacher.  He came to me with the idea, for he wanted students to write in his class but felt he needed my support in doing so.  I jumped at the chance to work interdisciplinarily.  We acknowledged that we came into the writing assignment with different expectations, so we communicated early and often about what we were asking of the students, how we would comment on the drafts, and how we would eventually grade the final product. 

Interestingly, the history teacher commented more on grammatical issues than I did, just as McLeod found to be true in her work.  The content of the papers was historically-based, but I was still able to ask students to expand on particular issues that I didn’t understand.  I suppose in that regard the paper assignment was more “authentic” in that the students believed they knew more than at least one of the teachers (me) . . . many actually did not as I was a history minor in college and they were only 15 years old.  However, they didn’t know my background, so when I asked them to write in such a way that explained their position in more detail than their history teacher required, they did so for my sake.  Further, students were able to see cross-curricular expectations–what they did in history mattered to me, and what they were learning in English about topic sentences, transitions, and citing their history teacher also cared about. 

Besides creating a more relevant writing experience for students, this project was extremely insightful for both teachers.  I learned a little about historical writing and a lot about the content, but my biggest lesson was in how to identify and communicate to others my own unwritten and unspoken “rules” for writing, rules with which I’d wrongly assumed most other disciplines shared.  My history counterpart afterwards spoke about how much he’d learned about how to communicate on weaknesses in organization and elaboration, as well as a few comma and citing rules.  Highly worthwhile, but a lot of work! 

I was very lucky to work with a teacher who desired and respected writing, but many non-English teachers see WAC as a chore and don’t take the time to communicate common expectations and methodology.  Often what happens in high schools is teachers of other departments are told they must teach writing, but they are not trained in the pedagogy nor do they have a vested interest in doing so.  For example, our PE department agreed to require writing of students, but they provide little instruction (not that we English teachers would relish relinquishing this control).  Further, the assessment is often haphazard at most . . . students claim some of the teachers don’t even read the papers, others deduct points for grammatical issues we in English wouldn’t, and some contradict what English teachers teach as basic organizational structure.  Who can blame the students for being confused?  This is not WAC, for students are not truly learning or communicating through writing. 

I am meeting this summer to further discuss interdisciplinary teaching with two members (science and social studies) of my freshman academy team, and I will certainly bring forward some ideas for journaling and double-entry notebooks, both of which I use in my own classes.  I will have to rely on them, therefore, for teaching me their expectations within their own disciplines.  For one, the science teacher and I are going to work on teaching kids how to write a lab report, something which I haven’t written since high school.  I know now that I have a lot to learn, for I couldn’t successfully teach this particular type of writing tomorrow if I needed to.  We as teachers need to read more outside own own disciplines, talk with other teachers, make visible for students unwritten expectations, and acknowledge the rules we teach are not steadfast in every discipline.  I’m interested to pursue this in my own teaching, for I know I’m failing my College Writing students in this regard . . . I’m only teaching from my own perspective, based on my own college classes, and using my own expectations and biases.  Scary.

Hey, after Katie’s question, I found a plugin which sends email every time there’s a new post on the blog. I added Katie’s email and mine. Nan and Katherine, are you interested?

Hey folks, I will be taking Erin and Madelyn to the airport on Wednesday, June 18. Would this be a good day to meet, have lunch, talk about Guide and Errors, etc? Their flight is at 12:30, so I’ll be dropping them off ~11:00, which would allow plenty of time to make a noon lunch.

Sound good? If so, where should we meet?

I just left this as a comment to Nan’s initial post for A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, but now I’m thinking I was to create an original post.  Is this what you want, Bradley?  Or would this informal response be more appropriate left in the comment/reply section?

I was really drawn to Howard’s essay on collaborative writing.

Collaborative writing: Howard references Charlotte Thralls in claiming all writing is collaborative if the writer accounts for how the audience will react to his/her writing. In this sense, I wish my students were more collaborative, and my brain is swirling with ways to increase collaboration in class. Too many of my students write for me alone, not considering any goals of their writing beyond a grade. They do not seem to consider or care about how their writing will make others feel or how the writing process itself is a step towards personal understanding.

As of right now, I use minimal collaboration in my College Writing class, some invention and some peer-response. I’ve found that the most successful form of peer-response is not the written peer-editing but the method of having students read aloud their essays in hopes of illiciting comments from the class. Howard’s essay presents this approach as more effective than the typical peer-edit, where the student takes on the “teacher” role, determining right and wrong, rather than the role of the reader. How, though, is the teacher/student to react when the answer to the question “How did the writing make you feel?” is “Bored”? How does the teacher facilitate a safe community where students can balance honesty and sincerity with respect and empathy?

I absolutely believe that to work together leads to understanding. I have never asked students to do any collaborative writing, mainly due to my anticipation of the problems Howard suggests, but I’m willing to give it a shot. My experience in writing curriculum this year within a larger academy of teachers presented the same issues collaborative writing presents: we had difficulty with equal work loads, with bruised egos, and with emotional attachment. However, the process was certainly worth the risks, and the product in the end was by far better than what each of us on our own would have created.

I have a lot more to say, but my laptop battery is dying . . . I think I might pursue collaborative writing as a potential topic for this summer. I have much practical experience with how I and other teachers have attempted collaboration through writing, both successfully and unsuccessfully, and the study will help me in developing curriculum for next year as well.

Battery’s dying . . .