MJ's January 30 Class Recap

January 30, 2008

We first turned in essays and wrote quick responses to our essay processes.

Talked about the process and how the process felt to everyone.

Broke into groups to discuss the different essays

We next discussed the composing process as they related to the articles to be discussed for this class period:

TO COMPOSE

1) Under. Composing--Visions and Revisions—felt/sense

a. Liked it

b. Seems abstract—how do we explain it to students

c. Can use sports analogy—you know you made the basket as soon as you let it go, it felt right, or yoga pose—as soon as you do it right you know and then you have it

d. You know the word you but you can’t think of the right word but you can almost “feel” what the word is and you know when you have the exact right word.

e. How do you teach this and how do you evaluate it?

i. You will have to come up with your own standards

ii. Still have to be within the guidelines for your school

2) Language Across the Curriculum

a. Communication/Writing Across the Curriculum

b. Show them no matter where you are in life you must be able to write

i. Jobs

ii. Job application

c. But, how do you do this?

i. Show them how writing can help you learn

ii. How is what they are learning be utilized in real life right now

d. The English teacher will be considered the expert in initiating and coordinating WAC or WID

e. It helps the teacher see where the disconnects are

f. How can you make IDUs work with this concept?

g. SIU Website—writing across the curr. Site

h. You have to show ways that WAC can be easy/pain free

3) Implicit Rules

a. This is how you DON’T want to teach

b. This is what many of your students will have experienced

c. These kind of rules make classroom management skills seem good

d. But…do students learn?

e. Collaborative work can make it look like learning is not happening

f. Model the skills of dialogue and collaborative teaching practices

g. Things are so ingrained in us as students

h. We need to find a way to help them feel comfortable in interacting

When talking about this topic I had the idea that maybe I would have students write a letter to someone with whom they were mad. I would have them put the letters in sealed envelopes and read them again in a week and them have them write a short response to how they felt after viewing the letter a week later to demonstrate both the idea that writing helps us to better formulate our thoughts and that going back to read and revise later has immense benefits.

We next discussed the No Smoke, No Magic article. This article discussed the issues that implementing WAC engenders to teachers.

• Hard for teachers to admit that they do not always know the answer
• It is a matter of how you control the "learning" process
• look for answers as a whole class
• have part of the students look
• have students go home and look for extra credit

• Fossilization
• not black and white
• lots of interpretation
• learners come a things in different ways
• need to teach the lesson that recognizing what writing is necessary at which times is important
• we do not have to always hold students to formal standards
  
• But we need to know when we need to do it
• reader engagement can affect grading
• we need to provide rubrics when we want a specific product and so students can know our expectations

We next broke into groups to discuss the Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories article by Berlin.

Our group

• Post/Current Traditon
• writer and speaker are the same person
• reader and speaker experience the same reality
• world is rational but discovered through experimental methodology
  
• language and thought cannot be divided
• rhetoric becomes the study of all forms of communication
  
• ABOUT THE END PRODUCT AND NOT THE PROCESS

OTHER GROUPS

• Rhetoric
• communication driven
• we make the truth
• we have to have language to create truth
• Arist/Classicist
• language is truth
• interchangeable
• we create reality through language
• meaning over style
• determine where your audience is
• Neo-classicism
• Expressionists
• truth cannot be communicated
• everything is based on perspective
• audience is the writer themselves
• self-discovery is truth

I thought this was a very interesting class. The last article was weighty and I am glad that we worked on it in a collaborative learning environment.

WAC certainly seems like it would lend itself to IDUs.