Eating Grandma

I think we should eat Grandma! Why not? I mean, if a piece of student writing lacks purpose, development, structure, and meaning, then maybe we should put a fork in sweet ole Grandma and just eat her. Does anyone read the sentence “Let’s eat Grandma” and really believe the writer is intending to send the message that they want to eat their grandmother? This focus on correctness without consideration of context is what fuels grammar nazis, Bic’s red pen factory, and produces error avoidance in students. Let’s widen the scope a little. What sentences come before and after eating Grandma? As a reader-responder, we might want to respond to this piece on a more global level and in context to the writing assignment. For instance, we may comment, “It sounds like you enjoy eating with your grandma. Do you have any special memories over dinner with Grandma, maybe a specific time and place that might be worth discussing in your paper? When you think of Grandma, what comes to mind in terms of reading and writing? Are there any literacy memories that you would like to explore? What do you want your readers to think, feel, and take away from you eating with Grandma?” This inquiry can force the student back into their text to figure out what they are trying to say about Grandma.

There are times when we don’t want to eat Grandma. I get that. However, those times come after significant student reflection, revision, peer feedback, and teacher commentary. Then we might want to look at sentence-level issues. It is my opinion that when a student writes “Let’s eat Grandma” it is not a break in logic. Rather, it is either an extremely easy mistake to make where the mind doesn’t see a missing comma or it is a simple error in punctuation. As astute writing instructors, we can wait and see if eating Grandma becomes a pattern of error. If so, certainly the entire class, including us as teachers, could use a refresher on commas. However, if enforcing rules is your motivation for saving Grandma’s life, I say go ahead and break out the barbecue sauce.

What is in a Degree?

What can you do with a Rhetoric and Composition degree? Well, you can hang the diploma on your wall to enhance your décor. You can use your specialized degree as a conversation piece. When people ask, “What is rhetoric?” reply with an existential, sophomoric response that challenges the existence of truth… Say it promulgates many truths… or be esoteric and provide a simple, deconstructive response, “I am an expert writer. How may I help you imperfect your writing?” Even better, make something up! People with degrees in Rhetoric and Composition work in classified fields examining and deciphering meaning from texts transmitted from intelligent life beyond our galaxy. Maybe such a job exists? I mean, isn’t this what we, as teachers, are attempting when we are trying to figure out what another being [student] with a unique set of cognitive plans and rules is “trying to say” in a piece of composition? Although getting inside the head of a writer may sound like a task performed on a CSI or X-Files episode, it is certainly not the only cool thing one can do with a degree in Rhetoric and Composition.

I have been rereading a book titled Rewriting Success in Rhetoric and Composition Careers. The authors challenge the traditional route: go to grad school, jump on the tenure track, research, publish or perish, teach others to do the same. As a card-carrying member, I am certainly no enemy to academia. However, it is interesting to see scholars pulling back the curtain to introduce nontraditional pathways. Have you ever thought of using your Rhetoric and Composition degree for a technical writing firm, legal writing, corporations, or advocacy? Whether writing instructors teach middle school students or lawyers how to write, it is worth redefining and valuing the knowledge we are making.

At a job fair recently, a recruiter from a state agency remarked, “Man, I could really use you. Our officers don’t know how to write their reports. We need someone to teach them writing.” Then there was silence. No such job exists at his agency and there is no funding for a writing specialist. So, it is our responsibility, the Rhetoric and Composition community, to educate the universe about our field and go beyond writing across the curriculum, the campus, and the community. We should boldly go where no man has gone before. Maybe one day we will write across the galaxy.

Creating a Space

By being a little flippant and presumptuous, this illustration forces teachers to think about how we might perceive our students within a classroom space. Within your classroom you are creating a learning space, a discourse, an identity made up of you and your students. How is this space created? Does it connect to your teaching philosophy? How much control do your students have in constructing knowledge in this space? Do you see yourself as the authority or as a facilitator? You are constructing a unique, tiny universe where you and your students will learn from each other. What is this planet like? What materials are on this planet? How do you use computers, electronic devices, laptops, whiteboards, spiral notebooks, tables, chairs? How are these materials arranged in relationship to each other? Are your students standing and writing at the whiteboards? Sitting? Where are you? Behind a table? Hiding underneath it after returning their papers? Standing on top of it championing your students to think outside the box? Seriously though, consider your space. Are you moving around your students? Are you lecturing or posing questions to your students? Do you or your students guide the direction of the class period in this space?

The Milk and Eggs

While rummaging through a grocery store cooler this week for a carton of eggs with the best expiration date, I spied a former student of mine gripping on to a gallon of milk. We both said, “Hi!” He said, “How have you been?” I said, “How are your classes going?” I thought back on this chance encounter and reflected on the tenets of individual, authentic assessment. In what contexts do we know our students? The composition we ask our students to create lives throughout their written words, the classroom, and the grocery store. It is a manifestation of their lifestyle, identity, culture, perceptions, experiences with writing, and maybe whether they drink whole or skim milk. It is interesting. When I ask students whom I see in a context outside of class, “How are your classes going?” they almost always answer with how their life is going. Is this where the writing lives that students drag into the writing classroom? Literacy seems far more amiable to our everyday moments. We read narratives, tell stories, remember childhood folklore, and build literacy initiatives within our communities where we buy our milk and eggs. On this particular day, with this particular student, in this particular context, student and teacher were interacting differently. I wasn't my teacherly, inspiring self. I was exhausted, worn-out, and unhappy that I couldn't find a dozen eggs that weren't expiring in three days. He wasn't talking as a student about his classes. He was venting about everything around him that was affecting his writing and his classes. As a writing teacher, I realize that there isn't one single context that determines how I assess, read, and understand my students and their writing. It is the glimpses of knowledge in between the contexts (the milk and eggs) and how milk and eggs make their way into student writing that is worth exploring.               

Critical Reading, Creative Responding

One of my favorite aspects of teaching is responding to student writing. Customizing a response to each writer with different modes of commentary is like crafting a solution only the writer can discover and act on. Commenting allows me to act as a reader-responder, a mirror that asks my students, “Is this what you are trying to say?” The resulting self-reflection and inquiry forces students back into their texts to revise and clarify their purpose. Some students need more praise and open-ended questions to further their writing. Other students may need a more directive response that addresses a particular pattern of error in their writing. Throughout this assessment process, I am trying to negotiate the amount of control I exert over each piece of writing. Careful, thoughtful response is always my aim. There is so much to consider when responding to student writing! If you feel bored, focus on an area of composition that you feel like reading. Maybe it is introductions, conclusions, transitions, searching for style, or praising paragraphs that sound confident and have a clear purpose. Be critical in your reading, but creative in your response to student writing. Have fun!

Check out more tips on how to make grading fun. :) 

Exchange Rate of Meeting Student Learning Outcomes

Classroom activities that get students writing on whiteboards and tables offer multiple opportunities for engagement in peer feedback, collaboration, invention, and revision. However, do f2f classrooms engage this learning at the same exchange rate of a digital learning space? How are SLOs for f2f classes translated when a course moves online? How do we increase students’ confidence when we aren’t f2f? Is praise when responding to student writing enough? Does a :) work as well as a real smile?

Mapping a Digital Tradition

I wonder if alternative paths in composition can be paved through a variety of digital forms (modes, assignments) with specific purposes and a better understanding of audience. When interaction between audience members (peers & instructor) is limited to communication through composition only, then each interaction (post, comment) is a rhetorical opportunity that requires a student to quickly consider and negotiate audience in an unpredictable composition environment where any audience member or members (peers or instructor) can appear in a conversation at any given moment—forcing the student writer into immediate writing choices, which practices and improves their rhetorical skills.

Be Still, Focus Your Eyes, and Type

I have been thinking a lot these days on how digital learning is different from f2f classrooms. Throughout this exploration, I am allowing myself to make some lofty assumptions as I jump down a few rabbit holes. Maybe digital learning bypasses the social interaction in f2f and immediately engages the cognitive. This may make digital learning a more efficient way to learn with more learning opportunities (clicks versus movements) within a given time and space. In a traditional f2f classroom, the student may divide their attention between social interaction and using in-class technology. However, the online student sits solely in front of the computer screen, and is therefore fully engaged in clicking, composing, and metacognition. Rearranging desks and chairs may change the rhetoric of the classroom. However, these options are restricted to movement in a limited space. For instance, movements and positioning between student and teacher when conferencing or collaboration within peer feedback groups construct a reality based on physical interaction. These f2f interactions create cognitive schemas, stereotypes, and judgments that can be hidden or manipulated in a digital environment. This masking of identity changes the use of rhetoric within the online space. With a click, time can be controlled, and perception of audience, purpose, and situation can perhaps be manipulated to create knowledge that produces alternative and hybrid discourses.   

A Digital Laboratory for Learning

Pish Posh. That is what I used to say about online classes. You know. Those fake classes, not the real ones where you have to get out of bed, shower, and gather at the agora to toil over the ideas. Online learning. Pish Posh. Then I had a hybrid online class and realized there is some rhetoric floating in these little boxes on the computer screen filled with composition. Maybe this seemingly artificial classroom is the perfect laboratory to create a new discourse.

I wonder if the intersection of ideas in a digital environment—a space void of physical materials where ideas are being born into a type of blank slate space—can create new alternative discourse. Context is essential to rhetoric and composition. Rhetoric applies knowledge of audience, purpose, and writing situations to create the framework that makes an argument or message a reality. This framework is crafted from knowledge of an audience: their values, beliefs, and background. Composition also relies heavily on knowledge of identity and situatedness. In order to more accurately assess and teach students, they can be individually and locally assessed. Multilingualism, writing experiences, homelife, lifestyle, heritage, and literacy profiles of students are understood through complex interactions with a physical being in relation to classroom space, materials, teacher, parents, community, culture of a geographic region. How do online spaces prohibit or impair students and instructors within those spaces from acquiring knowledge of each other? Moreover, how can this impairment of identity and lack of context be negotiated, even manipulated in a digital environment, so traditional knowledge-making created in mainstream classroom environments are subverted through new alternative discourse created online?