A Young Rhetorician's Conference: An "After" Thought

        With the conference almost a month past, it is surely time to discuss the various ups and downs of my first experience attempting "professional scholarship" in my field. Let me set this up for everyone:

        As a current grad student at San Francisco State, I wanted to do something incredible, something to make me feel like I had a voice in my field; albeit a timid and quiet voice. So, when Jennifer Trainor (aka Comp Professor and all-around critical pedagogist) asked for volunteers to TA with her in her Sophomore, or GWAR, Composition class that experimented with student motivation- hell yes I volunteered.

        Cut to a month or so after I have begun my experience in her class. First, let me just say that I loved my group of four girls whom I, for lack of a better word, "mentored" throughout this crazy experiment. There I am attending a 'brown-bag' lecture series that our lovely CRAFT members put together. Mark Roberge is at the pulpit discussing the benefits of publishing and mentions something along the line of graduate students attempting to be published..... Wait, WHAT!?

       I never really thought about how this whole academic collective could be something I could actually participate in. So, I talked to Trainor, to make sure I wouldn't be stepping on toes, about writing an article on our experiences in her class. We then opened it up to the public, and voila- immediate interest garnered.

       "OK", I thought. We have a semi-plan. After our semester ends (because anyone in Grad school knows you can't do anything mid-session), we will officially get together and attempt publication. Whoa!

       Finally, we are nearing the end of the semester. I am worried about two hundred different things at that point, most of which manage to be maintaining some semblance of sanity. Sitting in my favorite class of the semester (an internship class that has actually earned me a position at a community college-yay), my professor starts with announcements; including notice for extended proposals to the YRC conference.

      Before I could even think about my courses, the extra work, and my flying back and forth to San Diego for some wedding attendance (blah), I found myself intrigued. Anywho, since I am noting a definite trend of rambling, I will try to cut this short. A colleague of mine and I decided to present at YRC.

      We did great and the conference had some really interesting workshops: bio-regionalism, and some rhetorical writing practices I loved. We even met a super star: Sheridan Blau! His article in "College-Level Writing" on commentary development totally inspired me. All in all, I would say I had a successful entrance into our academic field. If only the CCCC's still had room for us.


Click Here to check out our presentation

Ode to the Syllabus

Oh Syllabus-

You, machine of destruction and chaos-

Ever-changing,

you toss me around in your stormy Seas,

Land of discovery

seen from afar

Yet, as I doggedly and earnestly move towards that safety

You drag me

down into the unknown and the shockingly, awe-inspiring        

new

Stopping, Sinking

                         mesmerized by your underwater wonders

But

                                                                          -cough-

I can’t contain you

                      Grasping Gasping

You toss me around

And the shores of certainty are lost to me

                                             forever

15 Ahas

1. There is a sort of violence in learning. 
2.  When responding to student writing, only focus on one or two global concerns 
3.  Tutoring sessions should begin and end with the students questions and concerns
4. Grammar instruction can cause intense emotions in our students, we need to keep grammar learning low-stakes to prevent negative associations to writing
5. Grammar mistakes are closely tied to language, which is closely tied to cultural identity
6. Conventional grammar rules can confuse students trying to proofread out of context 
7. While not an “aha” per se, I am comfortable with the knowledge that I have conflicting feelings about grammar instruction and language integrity
8. Some groups of students have real tension with academic language 
9. Tensions with academic language occur because of cultural ties to language. We can’t teach writing ignorant of this connection 
10. The cultural ties are laced within bigger power struggles
11. Many of us, in service to our students, play the blame game when we identify issues connected with student learning. Instead of blaming teachers, counselors, etc., we need to collaborate and work together for student success.
12. Re-reading is a simple strategy that benefits everyone in the class. 
13.   Assess only what you teach 
14. Grammar concerns need to be taught rhetorically and in context
15. Most importantly, if you are going to be a teacher, do it for the right reasons: the students!

Ready for Agency? My Tutoring Experience

This semester is my second tutoring with ETC. My first semester I had two students who had their own unique struggles, but also seemed to have stronger backgrounds in writing knowledge. This semester has been much more difficult. With one steady tutee and some drop-in tutoring hours, I felt like I was situated to dedicate myself to Student K, my tutee. Unfortunately, I feel more lost than last semester.

Student K is a sweet kid who is super polite and genuinely seems to appreciate tutoring. On the other hand, he is a commuter who misses class frequently and procrastinates with his assignments. He seriously lacks confidence in his abilities as a reader and writer, as evidenced in the tutoring slip he filled out himself. Instead of the instructor filling out the suggested topics to cover in tutoring, Student K filled out the sheet, checking every single item. Dishearteningly, Student K has never had any perceived success as a reader and writer.

To utilize the evidence at hand for some of the conclusions I have made about Student K’s literacy, let’s look at a few of his sentences from the writing sample in his tutoring folder:

·         The first time I had yellow cake was when I was a freshmen and it was in the summer at one of my neighbor’s birthdays.

·         Knowing that you have people that will be there as you grow and learn more about life is an incorrigible thought.

·         Eating the Amaretto yellow cake symbolizes our many past memories and proves that we will never forget each other through our lives.

·         The bond we share will never be broken because we are our own little family and we were the best of friends growing up playing games and walking to the local seven eleven formed the bond that we share today.

Clearly, there are some serious structural issues that continue to be a persistent problem during tutoring. Rushed thoughts, scrambled on the page, are the stylistic trends I associate with his writing. Having the context of working with Student K on a weekly basis, he does have some weak student skills. Often having to cancel tutoring with random make-up hours, he leads a chaotic life that is minimally influenced by school. As priorities go, attending class and finishing work on time and well, are just not up there. I know he wants to do better, but I struggle getting him to spend more time getting things done before we meet.

The good news, I think, is that we have been working on his confidence as a reader and writer. What I see from his writing is an individual with the ability to make connections and is attempting to build the bridge from his own discourse to the academy. He takes risks in his writing and makes complex connections to things. Unfortunately, improvement is slow-going due to the nature of his obstacles. If he spends one hour typing up a well-scaffolded essay last minute, this is the type of writing we get.

My biggest challenge with this tutoring scenario, the thing that I have ‘learned’, is that maybe some students are not ready. While I want to help Student K and I am willing to make up tutoring and provide my support and help, I do think he is not ready for college. If he suddenly dedicated time and care to learning this material, I think he is certainly bright enough to tackle the tasks at hand. However, I do think doing the work and taking an active role in your own education is a necessary component to success. Will I ever give up on someone in my class? No, but maybe I will be better at allowing students to fail (I have trouble with this and take it on as something I did wrong).

Lesson Plan

I am mostly interested in the teaching of rhetoric, as a grammatical construct. Micciche’s article, “Rhetorical Grammar” really highlighted some of the problems associated with traditional grammar instruction. Belief that students will only become better writers through the frequent and varied acts of reading and writing, Micciche makes the case for rhetorical awareness in place of a grammar lesson. Specifically, we will be looking at the rhetorical situation in readings to better analyze our own writing.

The lesson will be designed for a 104-105 English class at SFSU. I believe that many of these students will be Directed Self Placed into this class, essentially recommending themselves for a class that gives more time to Freshman Composition. These students likely view themselves as weaker students in English, thereby placing themselves in a longer program. The class itself will be diverse. Likely, there will be students considered late and early arrival Gen 1.5ers, racial and gender diversity, with students who have had different learning backgrounds. Likely, the population will consist of several learning types (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc) with a few students who might have learning disabilities

As mentioned earlier, there is likely to be a pretty wide mix of students’ ethnic/racial backgrounds. Some students in the class might be more comfortable with AAVE, or Chicano English, or some other discourse not traditionally given merit in the academic discourse. The gender mix of students is likely to be mixed relatively close to 50/50. Due to the location of the school, it is more likely that students will be liberal minded, but a few conservative voices will likely become a strong undercurrent of tension in the class. Because we will be dealing with varied purposes and audiences in our reading for this lesson, this diversity is a special consideration as the diversity in he class has the ability to cause further tension in our work.

Thus bringing me to some of my lesson ideas. With the Trayvon Martin case causing immense debate among a wide variety of media contexts to the random outspoken individual, this is the perfect opportunity to develop a lesson on rhetoric. At another time in history, I would choose some other piece of intrigue nd debate, but for now this works well.

I am going to take blurbs of writing about the case and give them to the students. They will try to identify, with limited information, who the writing is written for, who it was written by, and we will begin to identify some of the techniques each writer utilized to persuade their reader.

While I am not exactly sure how I am going to frame the lesson, I know I want to get the students to talk to one another (not depend on teacher as lecturer), I want the students to do some writing afterwards, but also to look at some of their writing as a comparison of the lesson we are doing. I also want this lesson to come early enough in the year that students will be expected to think of these things for every future reading and writing experience. This lesson is a good segue to develop commonplace books, if I decide to assign them in class. *Commonplace books ask the students to copy, word for word, writing that stands out to them and analyze why they chose these passages. Supposedly helps students to become better readers and writers as they acknowledge the style created in each writing piece.

Essays: An Analysis

The first thing I have to acknowledge when talking about placement is my strong belief that most placement tests are extremely flawed. Not to say that there may not be some credence or suggestion about our students, but the high stakes assumptions that are made about students can often lead to higher costs for students and institutions. With that being said, if my task was to designate two different categories, I would place all of the following essays in Freshman Writing:

“Homelessness”- Has some glaring errors, but the ideas are developed well. Clearly, some critical thinking skills are here, including a personal connection.

“Responses to ‘One College Writing’”- Also has glaring, conventional errors. Had more difficulty with development of ideas, but will probably be very successful in a FYC. Still, seems to understand the way examples work themselves out.

“Spelling”- While significantly smaller and less developed, if read as one paragraph as opposed to three, the writer presents some good ideas. With concrete, informational statements combined with an analysis of this information, this student has potential.

“The Importance of Dance”- The teacher notes seems a bit ridiculous and hands off, but the essay has passion and interest. The writer connects some grand concepts “culture” with this passion. Using some examples and interpretation of them, I think it would be a Freshman Writing placement.

“Cell Phone Usage”- This essay was particularly well-written. Analysis seemed deep and the voice was mature and professional.

“Stress”- Overall, interesting. My biggest concern is understanding how to form sentences, basically paragraph focus would really help this student come a long way. No reason to go to developmental.

“A Special Party”- Understands what they are writing and takes the reader through the story well. Has some possible ESL mistakes, but nothing that should keep this student from Freshman Writing Level courses.

“CGV”- Even though this essay seems simple, there is a nice development of thinking involved. With more writing opportunities, I am sure this student will be a fit in FYC.

“Sample #1”- This student writer evolves her thinking through a process. She starts off general and adding more specifics. Just as she noted, she might need more help learning to construct paragraphs and expand on some of her ideas, but a GYC will do that just fine.

“Sample #3”- This student’s language use is surprising and fun to read. He has some mechanical issues that will need to be addressed, but he certainly appeals to his audience well. Especially with the first line.

“Student A”- Understands pieces of a paragraph really well. Can almost see PIE situated. Uses examples, humor, and voice, to help the reader.

“Student D”- Even with some construction issues, makes some clear arguments about their topic. They will need to work on expanding on these, but pretty god start.

“Student E”- While I disagree with his points, they are there, clearly stated, with lots of opinion. He would need to work on including facts, but that is something we could certainly work on.

“Student F”- Even though I struggle to understand what he is saying, he is clearly taking risks and has some complex thinking going on his writing. With a tutor and some time articulating what he wants to say, he could have passable FYC writing

On the other hand, I would place these essays in the developmental, but only with the knowledge that many of them would probably be able to pass FYC:

“Weird Friday”- Strong details, but nothing was really being said about these events.

“Pot Legal”- The author has trouble sticking to an idea and expressing those ideas. Topic sentences make no sense connected to the paragraphs, and ideas get mixed up. I am weary about just placing them in this “class” though, there is clearly an ESL thing going on; making me hesitant to place them here.

“Green Tea”- This student struggles with giving the reader a reason to read. Very simple, basic sentences make me believe this student would do well to work on development.

“Sample #2”- I am hesitant to put this student here, but the writing comes off a bit cliché because of the thank you. He might do better in FYC, but I would need another writing sample to confirm. He does evolve his thinking, but simplistic.

“Student B”- While the writing is something that could easily be worked with, this student does not say very much, repeating the topic over and over again. Lacks depth.

“Student C”- Another writer that does not say a lot. Just lacks some good old fashioned development of these ideas.

I see the developmental class as a window to some possible missing understanding about developing ideas, paragraphs, or sentences. Not in a concept dealing with minor errors or basic correctional needs, but on stretching the ideas further.

The two courses: developmental and Freshman Writing; would consist of a lot of similarities. Grammar will be discussed on an individual basis with the context of the student’s writing. If patterns of error occur as a class, we will address those issues on a case-by-case plan and depending on what the problem happens to be.

When discussing rhetorical differences, it is hard to think there would be a difference in the teaching. I think every writing student can benefit from understanding and analyzing the rhetorical context behind their reading and writing and I think all levels of readers and writers are capable of grasping an understanding. Scaffolding these concepts might take more time in a developmental writing class, but all students should be able to succeed.

Again, even with reading and writing, I have to stress that things will be scaffolded a little bit more, but students will be reading much of the same material and asked to write very similar writing prompts. Each class deserves the opportunity to think critically about the way they have built assumptions around being an English student and a college-level writer. I want to knock down these assumptions, especially for those students who have gone through the system in a way that less than “right”. After all, if students are sent to the developmental course, it is possible they have been skill and drilled to death, they do not need me to add to that experience.

The major differences between the two classes will (possibly/depending on the unique make-up of the class) be the time we spend on an assignment and the length required. Or at least some mix of these changes might occur. Not just the writing assignments, but the reading assignments, might be shorter or the students will be allowed more time.  The expectations for quality, though, will not change. I believe students can rise to their own occasion.