Overdue post

Good Teaching…
♦ Is knowing the subject to the point that you can still recite it after a night of Irish Car Bombs. You never know if you will run into your students at the pub. In all seriousness, you owe it to your students to be competent and knowledgeable of the material presented. If you aren’t giving it all, why should they? Move over, lackadaisical teaching is destructive to the student’s future. One bad professor can impact their entire educated future, including all forms of education not just the ‘higher.’

♦ Requires empathy on your part. Not the emotional definition of the word, more an ability to sense or ‘feel’ the classroom as a singular being. It’s vague explanation, yes, but without this skill you can and will lose your class to their inner monologues. Another aspect that the educational empath should strive for is the mastery of “that’s enough for today.” Too often lecturers (new teachers are especially guilty of this) try to fit excessive amounts of info into their presentations. This swamps all but the most masterful of note-takers. When students feel that they are not able to keep up they give up. Quiting’s easy for college freshman we revel in it like a two-year-old who just discovered “No!” For most, this is the first time they are allowed to choose their academic path and some even look forward to receiving their first ‘W.’ It’s your job to change their minds.

♦ Being a mentor and not a friend. Another novice teaching mistake is to recall all the hard-arses you learned under and vow to be the teacher that Robin Williams always plays. Besides running the risk of being trampled by your students’ herd mentality at the first side of weakness you endangering the teacher/student dynamic. They need your help and guidance but they don’t need you to be a chum, that’s why they have peers. Despite the disruption this will cause in class, some students will fearfully act as friends out of perceived grade preservation. You could even lose your teaching post if this amity is seen as anything but platonic.
♦ Listening. The magic of music lies not in the notes but the silences in between them. Learn to know when to shut-up.

(Overdue-Post) My Teaching Philosophy (or Lack There of)

The term ‘philosophy’ bothers me. Perhaps I’ve seen too much of it in conjuncture with theory. It seems to be searching for something singular which would cover all aspects of teaching. I’m being picky, I know, but I would prefer a more fluid word. I want a word with a sense of openness and adaptation. Something flexible, a reed in the wind sort of thing. My Teaching Bamboo, that’s just stupid. Maybe strategy but that’s seems to emphasize winner/loser dynamic. Oh well, I’ll take the Russian novelist approach, My Teaching ________ consists of an adaptive approach which is completely situational. I view the classroom as a place of interaction where dialog can be developed on the subject. Now I’m not disavowing structure, the more open a discourse the more cohesion is needed. I do believe that there needs to be a skeleton to work with, something to support the viscera. I just want to avoid using the same skeleton when there are so many vertebrates out there. But what parts to take for my Frankenstein’s monster? An Elbow seems useful to add movement. It can’t all be pre and free writing though, Composition isn’t a Grad course.
You can expose on ideas for the practice of Teaching ________ but how do you tell what’s working. When do you know to switch which theorist’s flag you’re flying? Body language. Over seventy-percent of the communication between to people is non-verbal. Humans respond to some visual cues on an unconscious level. I watch my class for prompts. I look at their posture, gesturing, eye movement for signs of minimal involvement, which for some students seems to mean attendance. Your eyes are the litmus test for the Ph in the PhD (couldn’t resist) use them at all times. If traditional lecture isn’t working try some humor but not teachery humor, they have heard that for twelve years. Don’t, under any circumstances, try to appear like a friend. Students, like wolves, view it as a sign of weakness and will circle in for the kill. You are the alpha of the classroom. Remember to rule with a just hand, teacher evaluations can be brutal for a dictator.
A set of suggestions wasn’t what I had in mind for my Teaching ________ but that’s what grew out of the self-dialog. Possibly, when I’m creating my own syllabi I will come upon my definitive structure but at the moment instructing has too many variables to e solved by one equation.

Elbow and Irigaray: A Shotgun Marriage

Feminism has long been equated with expressivist in the Composition realm of the Ivory tower. If this was such an easy correlation then, Elbow, one of the most notable proponents of “free-writing,” would be a viable academic match for an acclaimed feminist like Irigaray. Besides the singular similarity of self-discovery through writing, what do the two have which can create a relationship of parallels which would allow for Elbow to be cited by feminists are Irigaray to be read in Comp?

In addition using choice works of the two authors’ (namely, Writing with Power and Embracing Contraries by Elbow and Irigaray’s This Sex which is Not One) I will be pulling from texts such as The Writing Teacher’s Source Book and Nothing begins with N and writings by Elizabeth Flynn, Amy Spangler Gerald, Cindy Moore, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Susan Brown Carlton, Nancy Chodorow and Susan Jarratt.

So what’s the point to this discourse, exactly? If a style of Compositional writing is receptive to feminist slant it would have to be the “free-writing” school but it is institutionally flexible enough to incorporate literary feminism and still be a core college course? More over, can Feminists accept the compositional classroom, in any form? Even with firearms, a wedding between Elbow and Irigaray is doomed but perhaps a truce can be found. If compromise is even an option.

Overdue Post-The Keyword is Feminism Here, Folks.

I chose this topic because I have an active interest in Feminism, both as a theory and a social movement. Growing up in a Matriarchal household certain key feminist concepts make sense in my paradigm. As an undergraduate in a Shakespeare class I was told that I would not be allowed to use a feminist lens, “As a man, you can never understand what feminism is.” Despite the ban I wrote the paper and eventually had to drop the course. In my graduate career I’ve tried to apply feminist theory when it is conducive to the class. I even ended up marrying a feminist, my wife is a past co-president of the now defunct Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance. I simply wanted to give some of my personal background on why I went with this keyword.

My multi-mediated PowerPoint presentation, or MMPPTP, will function as an interdictory classroom tool that both introduces and elaborates the similar titled chapter of the Keywords for Composition Studies and creates a segue for the viewers into the multi-mediated presentation, “Elbow and Irigaray; A Doomed Union?” The standard format PowerPoint covers the main points of the Keywords chapter as well as some discussion over French Feminism when applied to the Compositional realm. The overlaid audio track goes into more detail on the subjects but, unfortunately, is narrated by the creator. The Francophile in my household was too busy. I was inexperienced with the use of this Office tool and will be the first to concede that it is mediocre, at best. My goal is to improve my MMPPTP skills for future institutional endeavors.

Overdue Post-Who am I as a Teacher?


I prefer the term instructor over teacher for a purely personal reason. I grew up with a teacher for a mom so I always swore to never become one. Silly me. The term teacher is often relegated to the elementary world of 2+2=4 and re-drafting “The Night before Christmas” on a lined tablet. If you can’t wear the raiment of teacher what other outfits are there? Until QUALS come around you can’t consider the title of Professor and instructor sounds better applied to the application of spot welding and EMT training. But what is in a job title, much less than the accumulation of duties.

I would like to think that I am able to spawn conversation over a text from undergrads, not like the poetry professor I once had that would take points if you were uninvolved in class discussion but talked incessantly about how her life related to Walt Whitman’s. I would hope I could get them to laugh. In our entertainment-based culture it is taught the humorous of the tribe will hold the focus of the group. If I can keep their minds off texting for a few minutes I might be able to lead them willing down the gnarled path of classroom discourse. When focusing on the act of fostering an undergraduate creative writing workshop one lesson is paramount, content is never wrong. Grammar, syntax and sentence construction can all be incorrect—and usually are—but if a fledgling is told his poorly veiled copy of last week’s CSI: Savannah is, in any way, definably wrong that student will shut down completely. Content may be vague, stilted, lacking, unbalanced, confusing, off-track, over-the-line, out there, encumbered and even pregnant with potential (good idea, poor writer). All these terms are negative but have the potential for improvement. They tell the student in more instructional friendly terms that his writing does indeed suck but there can be improvements. The ‘writer’ may never reach his goal as the next “Grisham” but at least he will understand that commas do not denote the reader taking a breath. Although it might be desirable to squelch the leprous writers as a Workshop Chorographer (there’s a nice career title) it is not your place. The role of dream killer is taken by the jaded first-readers of university journals; they will do it with brevity and no lack of wit.

Overdue post-Scholar, Teacher or Something Else Entirely?

No matter how we attempt to balance our lives we will always have priorities. One aspect of life/work/recreation will always dominate the other alternatives. Out of the two options given to us (scholar or teacher) I would like to offer up a third priority, writer. A writer is how I see myself first in the academic circuit followed by teacher and in a close third, scholar.

My non-class related reading materials are usually divided into 70% fiction and non-fiction with a little poetry sprouting up here and there, 15% of theoretical books that are of interest to me and/or can be applied to my own writing (one I am currently reading is called Curiouser, on the Queerness of Children) and the final 15% encompassing texts relating the instruction and examination of creative writing. Writing is not something that I choose to do like buying wheat bread instead of white.

If I wasn’t putting stories down on paper—or at least the digital paper-like background of a program on my pc—they would still occur. I would still wake up to the greyness of 3am in my bed with the idea of a man who discovers that his curse words can cause literal, immediate curses. Can a person control his words or thoughts if the mere utterance of the phrase ‘fuck you’ could cause a rude bouncer to be mysteriously pummeled? The Germanic root word of fuck means ‘to beat or strike against’ just so you aren’t confused. Even if I didn’t write about them I would still hear the conversation between a recluse and a uterus wearing killer as they discuss the merits of stick gum. I would lose sleep over the application of pre-oedipal female constructs if they were applied to the grieving mother, girlfriend and emotionally alienated father of the 20ish girl who killed herself with a note.

I do have some flaws that are not conducive to writing as a career, such my addiction to regular meals and my reliance on shelter. I can be pragmatic, though with no lack of chagrin. Having taught literature before I know that being a teacher can be quite thrilling even if you only see a few students ‘click’ with the texts. Though it’s hard to get personal work down while instructing multiple classes, it is possible, most of my professors seem to accomplish it. My greatest challenge could potentially be how to get hired to teach creative writing. If I don’t end up teaching then there could be a place for me on the trashy genre shelves of Barnes & Noble.

Viva la smut fiction!

Glenn Russell’s treatise on the possible loss of human empathy when student/class interaction is limited to electronic based education intrigued me. Harboring a similar concern, I approached this article with a different sense than my usual trepidation. I was interested in how Russell would approach a topic which addresses some issues I have mentally cataloged but not voiced. Russell’s focus is not on the quantitative aspects of a virtual education which have been toted as equal or superior to the traditional classroom. Russell’s focus is not on the quantitative aspects of education which have been toted as equal or superior to the traditional classroom and more on the quality and comfort level which the student has with both the material and the medium of their education. In Russell’s words, “notions of empathy and responsiveness have not been sufficiently explored in classrooms where online computers mediate the geographic and temporal separation of students and teachers.” The main, hard to gauge, focus is on what negative impact a completely distant education would have, emotionally, on the students. Russell draws upon Hume to push the point that empathy for one’s species degrades at a comparable rate as the distance widens. Hume, though, was speaking in a time which modern technology was still being potty trained. Is virtual distance comparable to the traditional geographical one?
While beginning this blog and wondering if it could grow from usual graduate student tactic of quote, misdirection, rebuttal quote, facsimile epiphany; my wife commented that the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, had died.
“How?” I asked, curious on which viscous creature had gotten the best of the aussie who single-handedly pushed ‘crikey’ into the American lexicon.
“A stingray killed him. The stinger pierced his heart.” She said. “Isn’t that awful? They said if he hadn’t pulled the barb out himself he probably would have lived.”
I was disappointed, honestly. A man who wrestled the largest reptiles on earth, wrangled venomous creatures of all kinds and taunted creatures we would run from was killed by a largely docile fish. I made some joke about the incident then went back to reviewing the texts on my screen. I kept going back to the Croc hunter, though, and found myself checking the BBC news reports. The online paper quoted Irwin’s manager, who viewed the footage of those final moments, “It was a hard thing to watch because you are actually watching a person die.” It wasn’t an Animal Plant creation pulling a nine-inch poisoned barb out of his chest; it was a man who then bled out on a boat.
It took me around ten minutes to go from apathy to sympathy and I’m not sure if I will suffer any signs of empathy. I share in Russell’s concern that his; “students and I have too quickly accepted the constraints of the technologies involved, forfeiting the affective domain for the sake of convenience and achievement,” more so now than ten minutes ago.

In, Reexperiencing the Ordinary: Mapping Technology’s Impact on the Everyday Life, Latterell waxes about the tactic of awaking students to the subtleties of their daily experiences. In a sense it’s removing the copse of trees for the woods to be viewed. This awakening word in the text has the negative pre-fix ‘de’ which negates the culture collective ‘socialization’ thereby individualizing the subject; the wedge which cleaves them from their norm so that it may possible to evaluate the environment in which they have resided unconscious, complacent. For a much briefer explanation of the subject Latterell pulls from Ira Shor, “desocialization is a practice of critical dialogue in which “students extraordinarily re-experience the ordinary” (Shor 1992, 122).”
You can lead a student to enlightenment but you can’t make them create. Just because you offer the red pill some would prefer the blue and therein is the quandary. How to move them from the passive act of listening to the active pursuit of understanding? Latterell offers up one of her approaches to the Alter of Peer Critique. Her strategy was to divide the assignments for the course into a trinity surrounding the subject of technology as it pertains to the students’ daily existence. The first task assigned to the students is to keep a techno journal in which they are to jot down any sign—but not signifier—of technology that is affecting them. She lets the individual student define their subject. Taking into account that student perception is varied the challenge of the assignment can range from daunting to unattainable. Latterell acknowledges this, “I am fully aware this is am unrealistic, even impossible, task.” Though infeasible, it is the process, not the product, which is the desired result. By establishing the boundaries themselves, the students own the task, even if it is doomed one. Twofold, all there journal jotting is akin to the free-writing mentioned by Elbow which can lead to the construction of a clear and distinctive voice. Not to say that someone can starting singing in their first semester but with practice they can clear their throats.