Week 5: Research and Revise

Tuesday:

20 min: Paragraph building with They Say, I Say

5 min: Research spiel

10 min: Intro Paper 1

20 min: Sentence Revising

10 min: Guide to my margin notes, both handwritten and in Word (gold star teacher moment)

5 min: Bring up Revision clause in syllabus, warn them that the average is about a 22/50, tell them not to have a nervous breakdown, they'll be fine, and don't attack me at the end of class. In fact, don't attack me at all. Read my notes. Take a walk. A long walk. Read them again. Begin revising, based on what I've said. Go to the Writing Center. Then come see me next week.

This was a really good day. The format was different in that they didn't get into groups, possibly for the first time ever so far (they get into groups on Day 1, too). This may also have been the first day (really?!) that we spend solid time on in-class writing (not freewrites) that had a clear purpose: based on the homework they'd just read, the exercise I designed should have been pretty familiar to them. The task was to build a paragraph based on the source they had brought to class (note: this was a Tuesday class, meaning we hadn't seen each other in five days. There is always a risk on Tuesdays that they will have totally forgotten something they were supposed to bring to class. Thursdays are fine. Tuesdays are risky. I could tell that several of them flaked and didn't make a big deal out of it; I just said, "Take out your writing notebooks and the source you found to bring in today. Some of you have these bookmarked on your laptops; if so, go ahead and take those out. Those of you who forgot to do this, go ahead and fumble around in your backpacks a little bit, pretending to look for it, and just stumble through for the next fifteen minutes."

The heuristic was to build a paragraph that included the essential information to thoroughly introduce a source, which they'll be doing for all of their main sources for the first paper. There were six sentences:

1) how you found your source and why you chose it (this was part of their homework; they [ostensibly] wrote this information on their wiki pages

2) Full rhetorical context: author, author title/ profession, title of article, where/ when published (the other part of their homework that they wrote on their wiki page)

3) Main point of the article

4) Direct quote, with appropriate tag, i.e., "According to Tannen, "blah blah" (215). Good moment to remind them of in-text citation FORMAT, one of my pet peeves.

5) Say it again in your own words. This is a big hurdle for many incoming students: not only moving past drive-by quotes (and, by the way, calling them "quotes"?! What is that?? It's not a quote, yo. It's an actual person who said something worthy enough of repeating. You're quoting a person, not using a "quote." Anyway--getting a handle on that is step 1. Saying it in your own words is another huge hurdle. "Even if it's redundant," I say, "say it again. Use one of the templates in They Say, I Say: "In other words, Tannen claims that blah..." This assures that your reader is getting what *you* are getting out of the source.

To be continued...

Week 4: Redemption, continued

I know that we did the scholarly/ popular exercise, which I modified so that the three articles were about the recent controversy between the Havasupai and ASU.We talked about argument as inquiry, about beginning with a strong research question, about finding sources. That's about all I remember. It seemed like a productive day; once again, they used the wiki pages. But it didn't wasn't anything to write home, or here, as the case may be, about.

Week 4: Redemption

Day 6: Group work on Henrietta Lacks. Come up with research questions (2 good ones, so at least 6 per group) and then figure out which academics might ask those questions. Match the questions to the academics and post them on the wiki page.

The point here was to redeem the previous day, reinforce the stasis grid, and talk more thoroughly about different academic discourse communities and the subfields within them. I had them bring in their laptops, if possible, and it worked perfectly for all three sections: each group had at least two laptops in it, so one student could pull up the "experts" page on the UMD website for Henrietta Lacks and the other student could pull up the class wiki site. Prior to class, I had created 7 different pages, A-G. Once the groups were formed "group up in such a way that every group has at least two laptops. You may need to move around a little" (N.B.: this is after a couple of days of "get into groups of 3--just clump up in your neighborhood" and a couple of days of counting off from 1-7. The "get together by laptop" is ideal in that it's practical and gives them autonomy to choose their groups, to an extent. I pay close attention to this piece, the balance between managing the whole class and enabling it to be student-run. Forming groups may sound insignificant, but it's not--it's quite the opposite, actually. Basically, if I'm going to make an executive decision about something (forming groups) that they are perfectly capable of doing by themselves, I need to earn the right to do so. I do want that executive decision in draft workshops, so worrying about who is working with whom in class every day would be a) lame, b) a waste of time, and c) needlessly controlling.

Anyway: they did this on the class wiki page, which was the other main point of today: to get them working on the wikis in groups so that they could teach each other how to use them. They all made their individual wiki pages on the first day, so they figured it out, but I gave them step by step directions for that. Here, three weeks later, they could now refresh their memories in class with their peers as a precursor to lots of wiki work in the next couple of weeks.

After this, which took about 20 minutes, we came back as a full class and each group offered one question that I put on the board in the appropriate stasis column. Actually: most of the time, the students told me where to put it. Some were right. Some were right-ish. Some questions, as always, can be put in a couple of different categories, depending how the question is worded. After this, they took out their 3 topics memos and passed those around to their group members (same groups) for feedback/ brainstorming.

This was a tight day, for I had a tutor from the Writing Center come in and chat with us, explaining what happens in there. That took about ten minutes off of the day, so we had just over an hour to cover everything above. Just enough time so that they weren't too rushed but not too much time (ha--as if there is *ever* too much time in my classes!). Redeemed.

Day 5: Epic Fail

Discuss Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Walk in having read the prologue, which explains the origins of Skloot's interest in Lacks, and chapters 1-3. This is a perfect book to use in freshman comp classes: it's current (2010), it's braided, so we get to see Skloot the researcher, Henrietta Lacks and her family, and the history of HeLa and what those cells have done for science. We get race, class, history, rural poverty, urban poverty, public health, biology, immunology, bioethics, journalism, nonfiction writing, the works. A book teeming with rich, exciting discussion topics.

Or not.

The task was to discuss the text in groups and as a class, then use that to jump into stasis theory and academic discourse communities. This was pretty much repeated on Day 6 (which I'll refer to as Week 4 now) and was much better. What happened on this day, though?

To be continued...

Day 4: To the Wolves

How much can one do in 75 minutes?

First of all, I must confess that I am still thrown off by the fact that we started the semester on a Thursday, so "Day 2" was during Week 2, and days 4 and 5 comprise Week 3. There. I'm over it.

Task list for Week 3:

* workshop summaries Tuesday, hand in Thursday

* Discuss Henrietta Lacks

* Issue v Information Questions

* Intro to Discourse Communities/ Academic Disciplines

*Intro to Stasis Theory

*Linked Papers Overview

* Three Topics Memo

*Kuo

*Beliefs About Writing

Okay. The first three items were to have happened Tuesday (Day 4), the rest on Thursday. Not so much. First of all, remember when I asked what had I missed regarding preparation for the summary? How about the distinctions between summarizing and paraphrasing, whether or not to incorporate direct quotation in a 250-word summary, and whether or not to include in-text citations? Hmmm. Yep, that would have been helpful. On top of that, we had not even remotely discussed workshop expectations, though that did not seem to be as much of a hindrance.

We started Tuesday with the standard workshop day freewrite: what questions do you have about your drafts? What do you want specific feedback on? I often ask, for the first workshop, about their anxieties/ hopes for the workshop, too, but I didn't this time. Then, I brought up the two student sample summaries I had posted on ELMS last week and we went over those together, looking at what did and did not work--good thing to do right before they start to look at each other's drafts. I emphasized three things to look for in the workshop:

1) Rhetorical Context. Is it clear within the first couple of sentences? Who is the author/ title/ publication, authorial purpose, etc?

2) Main idea. What is the main idea the author is dealing with? Thesis? Central question?

3) Active verbs. What is the author doing? Not just saying (subject)--doing? Don't write "Tannen writes..." That tells us nothing. Is she asserting? Arguing? Deriding? Suggesting?

4) Funky stuff. Mark unclear areas with a question mark (ideas not clear); circle or underline weird wording.

Count off to 7, then find your people ("Fives? Fives over here...) and group up. Go.

In my first class, everyone read everyone's complete summaries, so each student read four summaries. That took too long, so in my second two classes, we did it so that A would read B's first summary and C's second summary, B would read C's first summary and A's second summary, and C would read A's first summary and B's second summary. (The assignment is to write two summaries, one of Deborah Tannen's "Agonism in the Academy: Surviving the Argument Culture" and one of Gabriel's "Plagiarism Lines Blur in the Digital Age.") That seemed to work out pretty well. They read, marked up the drafts, and talked over them carefully with each other. I walked around. They stayed on task. After the freewrite (five minutes) and the samples (15 min) and the logistics of getting into groups (5 min), they had about half an hour to read and respond to each other's drafts. That brought us up to 60 minutes of a 75 minute class. Add in some overall reminders about formatting and remember that we have reading to do for HW as well as this assignment, and that was class.

Tuesday was fine. It was a fine class. Practical, useful (one can only hope), and straightforward. This left everything else: Henrietta Lacks, Kuo, Stasis Theory, Discourse Communities, Linked Papers Overview, and 3 Topics Memo to be handled in Thursday's 75 minute class period. Mm-hmmm. Stay tuned for my recap of Day 5: Epic Fail.

Day 3: Expectations

One thing that I love about the top of the semester is that students will actually do what is asked of them, without grumbles, wide eyes, fierce protestations. We started on a Thursday, September 1st. The next class meeting, we started with a quiz. On day 3, I handed them an assignment description for their first formal assignment: The Academic Summary. They are to write two summaries, one of each article we read last week. Write them over the weekend, bring them to class Tuesday for a draft workshop, then revise them and hand them in next Thursday, 9/15, one week after they received the assignment, two weeks after the first day of class.

No one batted an eyelash. I heard a couple of whispers, but they were mild, something to the tune of "they're just drafts." "Yeah, but then the final is due two days later." They'll manage. They've all written summaries in their day, and, provided they've been paying close attention to the readings and to the class discussions, they know what we're specifically looking forward in this college setting: summary is as much about what the author is doing, not just what she is saying. Don't tell your readers what the article is "about." Tell us what Trip Gabriel is doing as he writes it, the rhetorical choices he is making.

They should be solid. One thing we haven't yet done--that I really need to, now that I think about it--is gone over a student summary sample. I posted two on ELMS for their edification. I'll pull one of them up in class on Tuesday and we'll go over it together in advance of their draft workshop, for which they also have had zero preparation. This may sound like poor planning on my part; "while this be madness, yet there is method to it."

First, I've found that when I don't make a big deal out of an assignment, they won't, either. They may not like it, but they're not going to kvetch. This is simple, standard issue sociology, or group psychology, or whatever: you get what you expect. If I expect them to receive an assignment (and, by the way, this is a *really* straight forward assignment. We're talking 500 words, and we've gone over both texts carefully in class. Moreover, the assignment description gives them a step by step "how to write this" guide. They'll be fine.) like mature students, they'll accept the assignment like mature students. If I expect them to freak out, they'll freak out. This is straight out of Brock Dethier's First Time Up, and I believe he's echoing Don Murray [N.B. he cites Susan McLeod for this on page 115. I still think the example of this is Don Murray's, probably in A Writer Teaches Writing.]

Now. If they weren't prepared, this would be a problem. Where are they underprepared? I'll find out quickly next week when I begin reading these summaries. We may, for example, have spent more time in class annotating a text, which we really didn't do at all. I spend more time on this during weeks 4 and 5, when they begin to gather sources for their first paper. Better annotating would probably be helpful in this, er, critical reading module. Well. We'll do our best. I also didn't assign the peer review expectations readings. I don't look at this first draft exchange as a formal peer review; I intentionally don't prepare them for this one. They've been working in groups since Day 1. They know they're going to be in groups to go over their drafts on Tuesday (peers = automatic stakes = better writing). And we're going to model how to constructively critique a student summary in class on Tuesday before they get into groups. I'll keep it simple, give them three distinct tasks, and make sure that I leave room for a quick, three to five minute writing reflection at the end (but not at the end of class--ever!--or they'll get too antsy. Before they can ask last minute questions on the assignment).

Ultimately, all of this works because I'm not apologetic, which I always become at some point, which is the fastest way for them to resent the class at best and lose faith in me at worst. I tend to worry about scheduling, the rigorous pace of this class, all of the things they have to do in here, and then I apologize for it, and then they of course complain incessantly for the rest of the semester that this class is overwhelming with far too much work. So: by these words I hereby vow to remember how capable and professional my students are and that each one of them deserves the same from me. High yet reasonable expectations keep them motivated and on track; when they do well--which they will--they are rightfully pleased with themselves and confident that they can do more. May it be so.

Day 2: Clarity

Reading the first chapters of the two main texts is the most direct way to answer my questions from above. From Ramage: "What is Argument?" and from Graff and Birkenstein: "Entering the Conversation." They also read Deborah Tannen's "Agonism in the Academy."

And then I pop quizzed them.

Aw...but I seemed so nice on the first day!

I am nice. I am letting them know what to expect and reinforcing what I said on Day 1: that the success of this class is contingent on their preparation and willingness to engage with the texts and with each other. Going over the quiz allowed me to clarify the readings, particularly how we define argument in this course and what the differences are between "truth-seeking" (or inquiry) and persuasion. Next, they did Bruce Ballenger's "Beliefs about Reading" exercise. Individually, they picked two skills out of a list of twelve that they believed "good readers" have, i.e. "Take notes while reading" or "Read with specific goals or questions in mind." Next, they wrote for five minutes about the skills they had picked and whether or not they thought that they were "good readers." Doing this exercise right after a reading quiz works well.

Then, they got into groups, discussed what they'd written, and came up with a group consensus on two qualities for them to share with the class when we shifted into the class discussion. This worked in all three sections. In my first section, we had time to talk about the Tannen essay in groups; in my second two sections, I had to cut that and give them the nitty gritty on the board, the foreshadowing for their homework on Rhetorical Context. This tied back very nicely to the "questions to ask before you start reading" skill from the activity. What is the genre? Who is the author? What is the author's purpose? Main claim or idea? Who is the intended audience? When was it published? Where was it published--something I push incessantly in an age in which we articles are often read without knowing where they were first published.

Tomorrow: summarizing by paying attention to what the author is doing as well as saying...

Day 1: First Impressions

The first day of the semester is always a big day, one filled with hope, excitement, a healthy degree of nervousness. I have 75 minutes to create a welcoming environment, to get students talking and writing, to talk about writing and students' own expectations about this course, to give an overview of the course, the things we will do and learn, the objectives, why they're here.

I have seven seconds to establish their first impression of me and about seven minutes for that first impression to develop into their initial estimation of what this course will be like.

The stakes are high: I am to make them comfortable, yet I also must warn them that this is a rigorous course, one that will require complete dedication on their part. They must stay on track; it is too easy to get overwhelmed, to fall behind, to resent the course altogether. Yet at the same time, I must create a safe, productive learning environment, one in which they will feel supported and seen. And I must do all of this in the context of a required course that most of them not only resent having to take, largely because the course is oriented around teaching them how to do what they believe they already know how to do: think and write.

How do I sell them on this course? How do I generate excitement, or, at the very least, how do I convince them that taking this course is a worthwhile endeavor? How do I explain to them that the abstract goals of the course--learning how to think critically, how to ask the right questions, how to approach and interpret complex ideas, how to interrogate their own assumptions and synthesize what they know with what they learn--are intertwined with the concrete one that they are most interested in: improving their writing?

To be continued...

And So it Begins

At the close of every semester, after I've posted final grades, emptied the recycling beneath my desk, and shoved the high heels from my bottom drawer and the suit jackets from the coat rack into a reusable grocery bag, I scan my bookshelf to grab the books I'll likely use next semester along with a few runners up and jam them into my wheeled briefcase along with my overstuffed file folders, my padded portfolio, and my grade book.

I pretend I will pore over my teaching materials early in the break, while everything from the semester is still fresh, particularly the last few weeks when I jotted down less "notes for future semesters" and when daily agendas began to look less like stimulating lesson plans and more like desperate to do lists. During the latter third and especially quarter of each semester I begin to stare at the students who come to my office to go over revisions and wince as I realize aloud: "Known-new. Known-new! We still haven't gone over the known-new contract!" I will then rush to my scanned .pdfs and hastily throw the four pages from the old department handbook onto the class website and pray that at least a few students will read and digest it.

They won't.

Nor will I pore over any of the contents of my briefcase until long after the semester has ended. I will instead open everything only when I am within hours of the deadline to order books for the upcoming semester.

I seem to change books each semester. I have good reasons. I am balancing an almost impossible load of objectives. The program's objectives--the learning outcomes, as they are blandly known--are enough to fill three semesters. Everyone knows this. And everyone knows there is nothing we can do about it. I have my own objectives, which isn't to say that I have different ones than what the program demands; I simply prioritize certain things a bit differently (N.B.: I've given up on visual rhetoric. Of course it's important--it's vital in these times. But in a battle against the clock, when forced to choose between deconstructing an ad campaign and revisiting FANBOYS, I yield to the latter. I don't care if my students should have mastered comma placement by the time they started high school. They haven't. If not with me, then when?). And, of course, I my students': cost and credibility.

When my students get to the bookstore and go to the long aisles with books for English 101, they will see that most sections have three books: the main rhetoric/ reader, the handbook, and They Say, I Say. The first two will be packaged together in many instances, a special gift from Pearson Longman. My students will move past these piles, though; when they see my name, they will see a different rhetoric and a different handbook. They won't be packaged. They'll be more expensive. And this will be their first impression of me.

Regarding the reader: the program has for years had its own main textbook. Years ago, it was spiral bound with perforated pages. All of the assignments were explained within the first few pages, then large sections on rhetorical skills, arrangement, and style. Since I've been teaching here, this textbook has grown up and is bound like a normal book. It looks more professional. The content is basically the same, but more sophisticated, with lots of good material excerpted from other textbooks incorporated throughout. Everything that I am supposed to do in my classes is laid out in this book. For this I should be grateful.

I'm not. The book's strengths--that it's a special book specific to the needs of this program--are also its weaknesses: grabbing material from several other textbooks invariably leads to some repetition and a lot of confusion. That there are countless ways to approach, let alone teach, rhetorical theory and composition is, I believe, one of the biggest downfalls of my entire discipline. It's just too much. I know this firsthand; too often, I supplement the lesson or the chapter or whatever it is we're working on with another online handout, another way to approach something that's a little bit easier, more clear, I'll tell my students. "This is from a textbook I used to use," I said far too often last semester.

So, why didn't I assign that textbook?

The reasons I didn't assign it boil down to my program's preference. It's not one of the favored texts; it's not one of the six or so texts borrowed from for the program's custom book. I didn't want to stray too far from my boss's preferences; I am, after all, a humble adjunct. But the eighth edition of Ramage's Writing Arguments is too good to ignore. Argument as inquiry: check. The core of argument, Toulmin style: check. Rhetorical appeals: check. Rhetorical analysis: check. Stasis theory, here simplified to "claim types": check. It's all here.

My choice to adopt the DK Handbook over Diana Hacker will be explained in another post. Keywords: accessibility, visual aids, organizational logic, student feedback.

As I sign off here to finally order these texts, I nod my head in deep appreciation to my former students who let me know, directly and indirectly, what was wrong with the texts I used to use and look forward to meeting my new students who will likely never know how much thought goes into textbook adoption but will reap the benefits nonetheless.