Teaching Rhetoric and Composition

Laurie L Bower discussed the motivational style of teaching in the chapter, “In our own voice”. As a teacher how we can motivate our students to enjoy their writing classroom and motivate them intrinsically are the main points of discussion. Now one may ask, why do we need to motivate when students are already in the classroom, submitting assignments regularly and getting out with pass marks? So, here you go with the answer- Because a large number of students enrolled in the composition class because they are compelled to do so. They join the class with a negative attitude towards writing. Though writing is all about practicing, they think that successful writers are born with the blessings of writing power. So, they do the writing class reluctantly. They are completely unaware of the joy of writing. However, encouraging a positive attitude in students may rediscover the joy in writing among them. Man has an innate desire to learn (Aristotle) which gives the hope that we can bring ch...

Motivating students—we’ve talked about it before. We all want to try, and even if we have some success, the students who don’t take to it still make it seem impossible. I’ll admit I’ve become a bit discouraged after having too high of expectations for changing students’ opinions on writing. And a suspicion when students do express enthusiasm—is it an act? Do they just want to put me in a good mood so I’ll be more favorable when it comes to grading? (I didn’t know I was quite so much of a pessimist until I started teaching.) Laurie Bower expressed a very similar idea in chapter seven of In Our Own Voice , “Falling into a Motivational Style of Teaching,” stating that “The idealist in me hopes that, by creating a safe environment, initiating fun writing exercises, and having students evaluate themselves, some favorable writing attitudes are fostered. The skeptic in me argues, ‘You’re being naïve. Students are only trying to impress you in order to get a better grade’” (180). So what’...

This excerpt from In Our Own Voices was highly relatable and provided valuable information, in my opinion. Reading from others with nearly identical experiences to ours is helpful and gives me hope that we can be effective teachers while balancing our own studies. I particularly liked the focus on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Students who are focused solely on “moving to the next thing” or “getting the A” or “getting the degree” get much less out of their learning than students who are intrinsically motivated. As a goal-oriented learner myself, this made me think about how I structure my class. I found that some of my motivation or encouragement for the students are designed to be extrinsically motivated (extra credit points, getting a better grade) and therefore might be less valuable in long-term learning or overall educational value. I should structure my activities, teaching, learning around learning itself. This way, students have less outside pressure and will hop...

Since I'm planning my first online peer-review class, I thought to share it with you. I will highly appreciate your comments and suggestion on it. I'll be pleased to get some more ideas about how I can make the peer review class more effective for my students.  Here is what I planned so far for my students. My students are required to submit their rough draft and post a comment that explains what they need the most help with from their peer-review partner. Peer-review instructions for my students: Give line-by-line feedback to your peer's draft along with any issues the writer asks you to address. Consider these questions below while peer-reviewing: Who is the audience and what is the purpose of this piece of writing? Consider offering a suggestion if either the audience or purpose is not clearly established. What do you see as the writer’s main point in this draft? Which part of the draft interests you the most? Why? Where do you feel you would like more detai...

Ever since we first discussed Hairston's piece in which she talks about the importance of keeping politics and social issues out of the class room, I've felt compelled to bring more social issues into the classroom, and I've been looking for ways to practically do that. While I've come up with some ideas of my own for shifting my course next semester to help my students think about writing in relation to the world, I was glad to read about Herzberg's experience of practically confronting social issues in the classroom with his students. Admittedly, the project Herzberg takes on with his students--studying illiteracy, teaching them tutoring skills, and beginning a tutoring program with them--sounds overwhelming for me as a teacher with little experience. However, I can still appreciate the overarching ideas Herzberg is passing on in sharing his experience, and I can keep in mind some of his learned experiences when working to draw my class out in discussion and cri...

What are everyone's thoughts on service learning? What do you think of the questions posed here?

Thoughts? Are you dropping things from your class?

Tips for Surviving Quarantine:  Today marks the sixth day I have been isolated with my sister in my one-bedroom apartment an hour and a half from the rest of our family. My sister was evacuated last week from the middle east, so we are doing the recommended 14-day quarantine together. With the exception of my fiance, we haven’t been able to see anyone or go anywhere. Productivity was easy in the beginning, but it has only gotten more difficult as time goes on. So, for this blog post, I thought I would share some tips on surviving quarantine in light of the state-wide shut down starting tomorrow until April 7th.  My 104 students are doing their research project on a healthy habit of their choice to where they conduct an experiment in which they are their own test subjects. For example, “how will my energy, mood, and focus be affected by going to bed and waking up at the same time for two weeks?” Quarantine is a great way to experiment with these healthy habits! I plan t...

Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning  Karen Kopelson's article " Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning ; or, The Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considered"  focused on something we've discussed in class at length: the politicalization of the First Year Composition classroom and the student resistance that arises from it. Kopelson argues that teachers that integrate overtly critical pedagogical approaches are ineffective for those "who [are] immediately read by students as belonging to any of the marginalized constituencies listed above" (118). Instead, she proposes that teachers from these marginalized groups should base their pedagogy practices in "cunning performative reappropriation of traditional academic postures, such as authority, objectivity, and neutrality" (118). She argues that neutrality, which is expected by many students, can still be rhetorically savvy, and politically responsive and responsible, therefore minimizing resistance.  What Kopels...

Recently, I have been hearing a lot of talk on all fronts about student motivation. From Camp Teacher, I have heard many people desperately trying to keep morale and motivations up, all while disparagingly combing through their online class conversion for something that they could be doing better on to motivate their students. I, as well as many other teachers, feel helpless as they see students disappear into the ether, their work on Canvas stop coming in, and our emails go unanswered. From Camp Student, I’ve heard complaints of teacher incompetence, no desire to work on classes while their worlds are being disrupted, confusion at how converted classes are going to work, upset at the sudden learning curve, and despair at the semester and opportunities they will be missing. When student motivation seems to be at an all-time low and there are tweets like this circulating: What are we to do? Of course, I am not going to advocate for a mass pass of all students in all courses....

“‘You see what happens when we allow writing programs to be run by English departments?’ I'm convinced that the push to change freshman composition into a political platform for the teacher has come about primarily because the course is housed in English departments. As the linguistics scholar John Searle pointed out in a detailed and informative article in The New York Review of Books , the recent surge of the cultural left on major American campuses has centered almost entirely in English departments. He says, The most congenial home left for Marxism, now that it has been largely discredited as a theory of economics and politics, is in departments of literary criticism. And [because] many professors of literature no longer care about literature in ways that seemed satisfactory to earlier generations ... they teach it as a means of achieving left-wing political goals or as an occasion for exercises in deconstruction, etc. (38). I theorize that the critical literary theori...

I was reminded of the following by something JJ wrote about student engagement. It's worth remembering that most of our students, usually, are still in their first year of college. Many of them are First Generation students. They have little or no experience (first- or second-hand) of university life. They do have 12+ years of "schooling"-- with, that is, education being done to them. It is compulsory, and mostly boring and pointless. Perhaps unfortunately, part of our task in teaching first-year students is simply acculturating them to university life, intellectual life and the habits and expectations that come with it. One way to do this, and (I think) to engage them in that process, is to make Education itself the subject of critical inquiry. There are a lot of ways to do this, in small scale activities and discussions, as the basis of one or more specific writing projects, or even as the larger theme of a course. One of the videos I've often used as the basi...

Inclusive design is something that has been weighing on my mind, especially now that we have transitioned into an online-only space with our own students. In an ideal world, everything would be created within the realm of universal design, meaning creators should be imagining and designing content to be accessible, rather than revising and making accommodations as an after-thought (Dunn & Dunn De Mers). I think this is an important practice for us to get into the habit of doing in our classrooms, especially now that we have moved online.   With the online realm being the one that is easier to both make accessible and forget about accessibility needs, I think it is important to note some of the ways we can make our online courses practice universal design. In terms of online design, things like closed captions and transcriptions can be incredible helpful for any form of audio that may be included in the design of our courses. Visually, we can include things like images and ...

While reading Susan Waite's "Teaching Queer," I was struck by this question: "How do you teach composition queerly?" It's different from teaching what queer is -- and different from teaching queer texts, or being queer and teaching. The Waite reading was the introduction to her book, so it deals with the theoretical, primarily in that teaching queerly is teaching fluidity. However, I wanted practical application, since this idea of sexuality and gender being fluid is not new (at least to me, a queer person - although it took me, like the students in the DiGrazia & Boucher reading, a lot of reflection and recategorizing to come to terms with it). But how to apply that practically in the class room? How would you pull that off? I had an epiphany during DiGrazia & Boucher (whose text was honestly SUPER validating - like Jennifer's anecdote in the beginning, you always worry, especially around other queer people, whether you're "queer en...

As we go through this historic and largely unprecedented event, full of fear about job security, money, family, and health, it seems rather petty, but I've been thinking a lot about the ethics of restructuring a classroom (especially this late in the semester). A few weeks okay, the instructor that I TA for (a non FYC class) told me that it would be unethical to change the point total of an assignment after the students had already completed it (there was a discrepancy between the points on the answer key and the points on the assignment actually given to them, and we were trying to figure it out) and before that, I had never considered something like this to be an ethical issue. Obviously I think constantly changing point values and assignment weights to fit a need is unethical, but I hadn't considered adjusting something on this small of a scale to be an issue (she did). So, when we are confronted with a pandemic like we're facing, and we're confronted with a ...

The first time that I remember I heard about the word  Queer was the last semester in my ID 601 class. At that time, I got the idea fo that concept because of the context of the conversation. However, I didn't pay much attention to it. Likewise, it was curious to see that professors asked students to write or tell which pronouns they would like to go by when called or mentioned in any way. This curiosity was because in my country, or at least at my university, we didn't tend to do that. The first time I was asked to give my pronouns, I thought it was ridiculous. Why should I give my pronouns when everybody is supposed to notice which ones I would adopt by just looking at my appearance? Yet, as we moved on in that class and approached that topic deeply, I understood how important it is for us to recognize people by how they identify themselves and not only by our perception of who they are. Even though I am a Christian person, I have always tended to respect and accept people ...