Teaching Rhetoric and Composition

I was kind of fascinated by the idea that Geiger and Rickard came up - essentially a prompt-based class role-playing (???) game. I played some of those as a kid, along with various other role-playing games, and I'm sure that it was a formative experience for the way I write now. Mostly because it was a LOT of writing - I noted in my response paper to this chapter that often the minimum word count per post was a 1,000 words (role play moderators could be very strict about that!), and sometimes I would write three of them a day. I can't tell you the last time I wrote 3,000 words in a day. I'm not even certain that it really classifies as role-playing, since you yourself are the "character," but it's certainly similar to the way those work. My first thought while reading about the MOO was that it seemed kind of outdated - if I were to envision a similar kind of software now, I think it would be a more visual, with actual virtual "spaces" and avatars.

Recently, I was reminded of the Reggio Emilia Approach to education that combines student-centered teaching with constructivist pedagogy. The approach was founded by a man named Loris Malaguizzi, an Italian early educator, in the years following the end of World War II. While this theory was put to use for early childhood education, such as preschool and primary schools, it can be applicable to the college classroom. I bring this up is because of the possible parallels that can be made from when the early education theory was put into practice to now, with classrooms forced to go online. The approach was used in a time of social and political change in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Malaguzzi along with other Italian educators needed to rebuild their communities. Malaguzzi noticed people building up a school, brick by brick in a town called Villa Cella, near Reggio Emilia. Malaguzzi saw this as an opportunity to build a school that offered more than just a building for students to learn in b

https://www.wired.com/story/question-productivity-coronavirus/?utm_source=pocket-newtab I know that the last thing y'all want right now it something else to read, but Firefox, in all it's nosy, article-suggesting glory, recommended this article to me which was a surprisingly good read. I thought I'd share, because one of the biggest battles I'm having right now is trying to not quantify my self-worth with how much or little I'm getting done at home. Even if I didn't get much done outside of work on my least productive days, at least I used to be able to say "I went to my job." But now, it seems like I'm turned all the way on or all the way off - sometimes I've been working 12 hours days, and sometimes I hit the minimum requirements for the day and feel really guilty about giving up. Personally, I don't think it helps I don't have a desk in my apartment - there's no real way for me to completely separate my work time from my relax

How much power should be given to students is one of the questions we may still be asking ourselves as instructors and students at the same time. How much is too much? I know that we have had this discussion before, but I would like to ask about it from what I read in chapter 4 of In Our Own Voice. I think we had this touched on this a little bit at the beginning of the semester, but I would like to see how our perception may have changed since we are about to finish our first semester as instructors at Ball State. In this chapter, Deletiner cites Boomer when he claims that any teacher who is far from the idea of being a "judge" in the classroom is "devaluated as soft or even slightly crazy" (p. 95) This makes me think of what side I am taking in my teaching practices this semester. At least in my mind, I don't give place to the idea of being a "judge" or as someone who needs to be heard and "obeyed" in the classroom because I am the one

Hi everyone! This week I did a (rather lengthy) 'reading response' (from my own readings) about the concept of "ungrading". This concept essentially refers to the idea of getting rid of all grades in the classroom and, when required to give a grade at the end of the semester, requiring the student to give themselves a grade based on the reflections and work they've done throughout the semester or co-creating a grade in a one-on-one meeting with your student (ideally having frequent reflections and checkins throughout the semester). There's a lot of evidence to support the effectiveness of this, but I thought I'd give you a really cut-down version of my paper to explain why I'm really eager to try incorporating this into my classroom. You can read the full paper here . Ungrading One of the most difficult pedagogical conversations is assessment. Everybody either thinks they know how to do it, or fully admits they have no idea how to do it. We read

Faymonville's article challenging monolingualism in the classroom piqued my interest as my class currently works on their multimodal project. While I agree that introducing students to a wider range of languages is important (as is supporting those who come from languages and cultures outside of our own), there's a pretty large practical concern. It's easy for the author, a native German speaker, to disrupt a monolingual English situation in their teaching. Having students from other cultures and languages in our classroom also helps disrupt those structures (not that we should force responsibility onto these students, but I think their very presence can make our predominantly Hoosier classrooms wonderfully uncomfortable). I have a much harder time doing that disruption as a white dude from Ohio. My question is, then, do our multimodal assignments do enough work to ask the kinds of questions Faymonville wants us to ask? If they aren't currently, can they? One of t

“We write so that a reader can understand. In order to understand each other, it is assumed, we have to speak the same language. But is that really so? … Why do we automatically categorize a non-native writer’s manifestation of difference as an error rather than an experiment in making meaning? Why do we not give the non-native writer the benefit of the doubt that he or she might be trying to convey meanings that cannot be expressed through native, standard usage? …These Sturm-und-Drang questions are meant to provoke readers to question whether a non-native error can actually be an indication of a writer’s confidence in a reader’s ability to follow and understand him or her beyond correctness or to be motivated to understand experience of misunderstanding” (Faymonville 135). I found this passage particularly insightful as I currently have one non-native speaker in my English 104 course. When working through their primary research (duo-ethnography) on mental health as it relates to

When Bartholomae began his basic writing class with a Jean Paul Sartre article and asked, “If existence precedes essence, what is man?” (5), I thought the article was going to be more of a cautionary tale about what not to do as an overambitious teacher, but thankfully it was so much more than that. He took us inside the mind of both teacher and student when he described how the assignment made both parties feel as though they were failing. The line “I lose again” from the student paper was a very powerful moment that seemed to express defeat and irritation aimed at both the assignment and the teacher. But despite this response, Bartholomae didn’t throw out the Sartre article assignment. Instead, he kept using it with his “basic writing students.” I thought this turn in the story was interesting because his motivation to reimagine the assignment came from the belief that exposing students who wouldn’t ordinarily have the opportunity to work with such challenging material is valua

I have very mixed feelings concerning Herzberg's “Community Service and Critical Teaching” article. Though I am fond of universities encouraging community partnerships, I have reservations for their functionality on a practical level.  The cognitive load is worrisome. I get "challenging"...In fact, I love challenging; however, when stretching the mental capacity of students in search of  this  degree of growth, oversight is bound to occur. Margin of error? Exponential. Students who are introduced to the term ‘meritocracy,’ as they are introduced to Mike Rose’s  Lives on the Boundary , as they are to Kozol’s  Savage Inequalities , as they are to Gramsci’s theory on hegemonic systems such as Alger’s “Bootstrap” motif… these students are bound to implode.  Is Herzberg truly convinced that his students have reached an understanding, a firm grasp of the content, the theoretical frameworks, AND the pedagogical implications of their chosen strategies (…that’s right, the

I know it’s a little late, and I know I’m not technically on the roster for this week’s posting duties (just posting early is all), but I felt it was important that we have a little back-and-forth about the Bruffee article. So here’s a few of my thoughts: I felt that one of the most important things that Bruffee was arguing is that we need to teach our students how to communicate in such a way that is as close as possible to the way we would like them to write. I’m gonna step aside here and say that I don’t think that has anything to do with style or grammar or forcing Standard English down people’s throats. I think it has to do a whole lot more with the far more challenging task of getting students to express ideas––to maybe even get to the point of coming to those ideas in the first place. It takes a lot to get from the point of reading a text, to understanding it, to then even being able to analyze it––especially if you haven’t had much practice. (Here I hope you see the connec

In In Our Own Voice Chapter 3: “Starting the Conversation: The Importance of a Rhetoric of Assent When Teaching Argument” David Sumner discusses his inquiry-based approach to teaching argument. Sumner uses the “believing game,” something that we discussed earlier in the semester. As Sumner states:  “To be more specific, the argument as inquiry model I try to use in my classroom requires that instead of doubting until we have reason to believe, we believe until we have reason to doubt. If we don’t believe first, the conversation - and the inquiry - never begin.” (Sumner 59).  In this inquiry-based model, students are asked to “try on” different arguments as a starting point to then moving into thoughtful, critical engagement with the text. This is something that I think I could incorporate more into my class. Specifically, this might be a good exercise in ENG 104...to have students "try on" one another's research based arguments. What do you guys think of this? D