Response to "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy"

Nothing in this article surprised me, really, and I was a bit annoyed by it, to be honest. I didn't feel like it really offered any practical advice for my teaching and its content was pretty obvious: students write all sorts of stuff, whether inside or outside of school, and sometimes they perform what they write. That seems like the gist of it, really, though it was said much more eloquently than this, of course.

I guess I'm used to viewing writing as performance: whether its reading at cafe night or talking about writing stories or teaching composition. They are all performance. Life is a performance. Yesterday, at the coffee shop, I knocked over my tea and then I cussed. That was a performance, though one of which I wasn't particularly proud.

I'm being sarcastic today. I feel moody.

One thing I thought about while reading this article was the way in which some innovative people are making writing into performances unlike what has been done before, for example, Opium (a literary magazine) puts on these performances across the country called Literary Death Matches. They know that typical readings where you go and sit in uncomfortable chairs for a long time and listen to someone read in a monotone voice aren't very fun or interesting. The new format turns stories into performative art, pitting two writers against one another to read for short bursts of time. There's a winner. People get creative, competitive. They don't read their most boring, plotless story. Damian did one a while back, in Denver. Maybe he'll talk about it in his post and I can read it.

It was kind of fun reading that "I'm Daaaaaaat N*!!" poem in College Composition and Communication. That was the best part, I think, the incongruence of reading that in this context.

Response to "Everybody Has Their Own Ideas"

I loved this article. I know I'm guilty of underlining cliches in my students' writing and then writing "cliche" above it, which isn't very helpful. This article helped me understand why. Students use cliches for all sorts of reasons, and to assume that they're just relying on familiar language to avoid insight and meaning isn't accurate (or at least isn't always accurate). In the future, when I see a cliche, I'll look beyond it to see what the student might be trying to say, and how I might help him/her say it differently, or more clearly.

Cliches bug me. I can't help it.

Great quote, which sums up the article for me: "I want to make clear that I do not think we should celebrate errors in pronoun agreement and cliches as if they were our students' most brilliant utterances. But I would like us to consider that the places in our students' essays that most annoy us because they seem so uncritical are also places where individual students (much like their teachers, as I will argue in the next section) are working hard to make sense of a world in which they are always both insiders and outsiders..."

One thing I found really interesting in this article was how students were using the conclusion to express their own opinions. Conclusions are funny little creatures, and it seems like no one really knows what to do with them. (Side Note: I was always taught that the conclusion should contain no new information, that one should only sum things up by reiterating their thesis and main points. After reading the chapter on introductions and conclusions in the Norton Field Guide, however, I realized that there are a number of effective ways to conclude a paper/essay. After reading Skorczewski's article, it's clear that conclusions baffle many of us).

Many freshman made A's in high school by writing essays full of cliches and commonalities. Analytical thinking still isn't particularly encouraged, so this is a big change for them.

Response to "Understanding Visual Rhetoric..."

I wasn't crazy about this article. It seems like a lot of fancy language to say some very basic things, and the previous two articles we've read on a similar topic (incorporating technology into the classroom) offered me more as far as useful information.

While reading this article, I kept thinking about this:
Last week I tutored another student in the Writing Center who barely knew how to use her e-mail account. I had to show her how to attach documents and save files, in addition to using the library databases. This is not an uncommon occurrence, and it's really started to worry me. Most of these students are young, 18-20, and I wonder how they've gotten to this point knowing so little. Didn't they have computer classes in high school? Don't they have computers at home? It's also not uncommon to work with students who bring in their own laptops who don't know how to cut and paste and do other very basic things. How is this possible? I don't really know. All I know is that having students design websites is probably out of the range of many of them. It's also out of my range. Of course, this is also what makes it a great idea. The best way to learn how to do something, of course, is by doing it.

I think I'll bring my students back into the Writing Studio before this semester is over. I'm not sure what I'll have them do, but I want to make sure that none of my students are the ones coming into the Writing Center without basic computer skills.

I liked the examples the Hocks used, particularly "The Ballad of the Internet Nutball," which was the first hypertextual dissertation accepted by Rensselear Polytechnic University. It's pretty awesome that the author, Christine Boese, has been updating it since 1998. I also really like the idea of taking a show like Xena and making it literary--analyzing episodes, etc. A lot of academics are kind of snobby about this sort of thing. I think it's great.

Response to "Thinking about Multimodality"

I really liked this chapter, and thought it went well with last week's reading, which is still on my mind. The authors, Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia L. Selfe, did a good job addressing all sides of the issue--including laying out the various hesitations and fears that composition teachers might have in regards to incorporating digital and other media. I want to read this book now.

I really liked this quote by Mary Hocks: "A student-centered pedagogy asks students to work within their own cultures and discourses by using experimental forms to learn actively from one another and to engage with the world around them" (5-6). I feel that students now, more than ever, need to engaged on their own terms. There are so many distractions, so many other things that are competing for their attention. There are times in class when I can literally see my students itching to check the internet from their phones, to send a text, or to put in their earplugs. In order for them to write the best papers they are capable of writing, and to think creatively, they have to be engaged.

The structure of this chapter, with its side-boxes and numbers, its subheadings and check marks, worked well for me. It was clear and easy to read, and it laid out all of the pros and cons in a straight forward manner (and many of the cons were things I was thinking about, so it was good to see them addressed so directly). I also liked their suggestions of starting small, with one assignment, and making even that optional. I think this would work well for those teachers who don't feel comfortable with computers and other technology.

I'm also loving that "driveway effect" quote by Hugh Fraser. NPR's This American Life could make me stay in my car forever. It would be amazing to see my students so engaged that they didn't know exactly what time it was, at all times.