shelbyarmstrong

Paper topic ideas/vague outline...

2006-10-30T17:57:00.000-08:00

Unlike the majority of those I have talked to in this program, I have no problem with the prospect of a life spent teaching basic writers. (Of course, I can say that now because I, technically, have not even started my professional life and, therefore, have only gotten a glimpse of the horrors that that await me as a teacher of first year composition.) But, regardless, it is still the goal that I am currently working toward. I did my keyword video on “freshman English,” and I was really interested in the reactions I got from the students that I interviewed. The students had a very wide range of reactions to the questions that I posed. And while it was highly unscientific, their reactions gave me some insight into the impact freshman English is/ is not having on students. I want to use this paper as an opportunity to explore more fully the ideas that a touched on in the video. I want to explore what the supposed purpose of freshman English is seen to be across a broad number of universities, and what the differences are between the stated goals and what is actually being achieved in first year composition classes. I plan to look at websites for different composition courses across the nation in order to get a feel for the common threads that seem to run through all of the different models (or see how completely disconnected the respective institutions ideas about college composition are.) I plan to begin by looking at the history of the composition course. I will explore the reasoning behind its creation at Harvard and then go on to look at the ways that composition has evolved from this initial model. From this big-picture view of the course, I want to begin to consider the ways that composition has to be adapted to fit the local needs of the student. It would seem to be important to consider how these needs may vary according to the institution and the population it is serving. Because the video is concerned with Texas Tech students and because I do believe that different institutions have different needs, I want to look at Texas Tech students in particular. I want to see what this population is getting out of composition and how/if the outcome matches up with the goals stated for the course. I have not totally figured out how I am going to go about this, but it will probably involve either examining course evaluations or by taking a small survey of students who are or have been a part of the course. I feel that giving students a solid foundation with respect to writing skills is very important, and I just want to know how composition courses are measuring up to that goal. I am sure that much of this will end up being subject to change by the time I get further into the work, but this is just the most basic framework for what I will be doing…musings, if you will.

What is good teaching?

2006-10-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

I think that what can be taken away from The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing is that good teaching is a number of things, but, primarily, good teaching is teaching that changes with the needs of the respective students. As times change and students change, some of the needs that teachers are required to meet will also have to change. If teachers want to continue to be effective, their methods will have to be sensitive to cultural shifts.
“By the end of the 1980s, seeing writing in social and cultural contexts was the prevailing tendency in the field.”
I think that it is of the utmost importance to consider the cultural issues that can effect and surround student writing. We are doing students as disservice if we come into the classroom assuming that all students are entering the course with the same set of skills and the same background by which to understand the skills we intend to teach them. By this I am not suggesting that all students do not have the ability to become proficient writers, but that they must come to this point by different means at different paces. We must be sensitive to the differing needs of our students and try to meet them where they are. Teachers have to be aware of the fact that gender, race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, and other factors can have a profound impact on student writing and interaction in the classroom.
“We need to look not only at the individual writer but at the collaborative situation of his or her classroom, personal and institutional histories, and writers' and teachers' political hopes.”
Beyond just the situation of our students, we must assess our own expectations and limitations upon entering the classroom. As teachers, we must evaluate the expectations and biases we have towards our students, and try to assess how these issues are affecting the classroom setting and our ability to teach our students. We must also consider the pre-existing constraints placed upon writing by the larger culture and consider why we assign certain values to different pieces/styles of writing.

Teaching Philosophy

2006-10-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Billie from Georgia...who would've thunk?
http://www.isd.uga.edu/teaching_assistant/philosophy/2003/Bennett/index.html

I would not go so far as to say that Billie Bennett and I are in complete agreement with one another about all aspects of good teaching, but I thought that she presented some interesting ideas that I did not find in the other teaching philosophies that I perused…

She says that she is focused on becoming and creating “students of the universe.” It is certainly a lofty goal, but I think that the profession requires a certain degree of idealism. We have to believe that we are having some kind of far-reaching affect on our students, or I a pretty sure that we are in grave danger of having cynicism and despair set in. We have to believe in the power of learning and the profound affect it can have on a person’s life. It is also important that we maintain the view that we are also learning from our students when we are in the classroom. We cannot lose our own affection for education. We also have to believe in the power of our respective subject matter to change a human life. The term “humanities” implies that our discipline equips students to be more complete human beings. We have to believe that we are not just teaching them to write for its own sake, but that it will have some kind of greater impact on who they are as people. Perhaps this is an overly-optimistic view, but I intend to continue deluding myself as long as is possible.
I also liked her discussion about the importance of maintaining one’s own passion and trying to pass that enthusiasm on to one’s students. Obviously, I will not be capable of winning-over every student, but, to a certain extent, it is my job to try. If I no longer have a shred of my initial passion for literature and learning, it might be time for me to consider a change of profession.
I also liked the fact that Ms. Bennett put the focus on student interaction in the classroom. I think that the role of facilitator of learning is the best one that a teacher can hope to fill. I, too, hope to foster the kind of classroom experience where the students will feel comfortable to exchange ideas and discuss amongst themselves without the fear of being mocked or penalized (unless one of them says something stupid…then I will have to flog him/her.)
I depart from Ms. Bennett as bit on this last part. While I hope that my role will be secondary, do I think that the teacher has a big role in the success of the classroom experience. In many ways, the instructor must have a more clearly defined sense of purpose and direction when dealing in a more student-centered classroom. One has to work overtime to insure that the discussion that is sparked is productive and conducive to learning. I also believe that there has to be a certain degree of formality, both between the students and teacher, and between the student and his/her peers. I do not think that this has to hinder expression in the classroom but, rather, sets up expectations for appropriate academic discourse.

Freshman English

2006-09-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

My topic is Freshman English. I have been a little unsure as to what I should do with this topic since it does not seem that conducive to traditional instruction. So I have decided (even though I am a technological idiot and it would probably work much better for me to make a PowerPoint) that I am going to try to film a video…frightening, I know.
The idea is that I will make a film that can be used on the first day of a 1301 class to discuss the purpose of first year composition and what students want and expect to get out of the course. I think that it could be a slightly more fun and interesting way to introduce students to the class and to try to engage them in a course that they probably do not want to take. Perhaps if the students could have an opportunity to determine through discussion why first year comp is important and beneficial, they would feel slightly less hostile toward the idea of taking it…that is the goal, at least. It seems that many students go into the course truly believing that it will have little application to their life. Hopefully, the ceases to be the case by the end of the semester.
I think that this could be a really good opportunity to get inside the heads of some students who are taking the class in order to have them explain what they find effective. It should be interesting. I want to go to a few of the dorms and try to get different students to give me their prospective on 1301 and 1302. I hope to enlist the help of my sister who is living in the dorms this year. She will be my “in.” I hope to be able to get some humorous and thought-provoking responses. I am pretty certain to get the former; it is the latter that is a little more questionable. I hope that the camera will scare students into performance mode, so they will be either clever or serious. I want to know what students are getting out of the course and how it differs from their expectations when they first came into college composition. I also want to know what they think about the ICON system and the effect it has had on their writing.
I do not think that I will know exactly where this project is going until I get some footage from the students. I am not sure how they will respond to my questions. There is a chance that I may have a hard time getting usable information out of them. I fear that there will be quite a few who will end up responding with “I don’t know” or not offering constructive information. However, it seems like it is worth a try, if for no other reason than to determine that students are completely indifferent to the course…then I can move forward from there. I feel like this project will simply have to evolve.

Teaching: An Overview

2006-09-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

My mother is a teacher….an English instructor at a junior college, to be exact. I swore that I would never do what she did, not because it would be bad to imitate my mother, but because I knew all that she was forced to deal with. She had many students who were functionally illiterate and very few who were competent writers. She is a brilliant woman, and a large part of me felt that she was wasting her talent in a thankless job. What was in it for her? She did not get to research the Renaissance literature that she has always loved. She spent all her time teaching remedial writing and literary criticism concepts, without any of the prestige that comes from a position at a university.
I, on the other hand, was going to be a professor at a large university. There was no question about that. I would be able to do my own research and deal with students who had a more sophisticated understanding of literature. Then I went to college….I loved the university atmosphere, but I soon came to realize that my career goals did not mesh with my philosophies of teaching and learning. I have found myself to be somewhere been expressive and rhetorical in my philosophy of composition. I want students to be able to react to the material and to be able to truly interact with texts. In my mind, literature has no value outside of the affect it has on the reader. I want students to have the opportunity to be changed by reading and to have the chance to express that change through writing. We have talked many times about students taking ownership of their ideas through writing. I want students to be able to see the process of writing as valuable in that it refines their thoughts and their ability to express their thoughts in any arena of life, not just the English classroom. I want students to feel that it is safe to make mistakes, as long as those mistakes are made on the road to progress.
I learn best through interaction with my teachers over material. I need to have an actual person discuss my work with me in order for me to be able to move forward. I hope to be able to work with my students in a more direct manner. The sort of hands-on approach to teaching appeals to me much more. That is what excites me about the setting of a junior college. Often, the class sizes are much smaller and there is greater emphasis on personal interaction with the students. Students are the focus, not a way to fund research. At a junior college, the teacher tends to have the ability to make an impact in a more personal way than professor at a large university. I want that interaction. I love students, and I am ready to have the opportunity to make their betterment my primary focus.

Balancing teaching and scholarship

2006-09-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

How does one go about creating a balance between scholarly work and teaching duties? In my mind, they feed off of one another. Scholarship should enhance one's teaching abilities, and teaching should be learning experience that aids in our scholarly development. I ultimately plan to focus on teaching as a career, but my current scholarly work will prepare me to enter the field. To me, scholarship has no purpose in and of itself. One can constantly enrich her mind with extensive study, but if that knowledge and reflection ends with her, it was all a waste. Teaching is the ultimate justification for scholarship. It is vital to society to pass on one's knowledge in some form or other, and through that transmission of knowledge one is given a valuable opportunity to reexamine and question what she has learned. Teaching gives scholarship meaning and purpose that is does not have on its own. It is a phenomenal opportunity to be able to introduce a student to a new idea, not just for the sake of the student, but because of the fresh reactions and opinions to which a teacher can be privy. Because this is his/her first exposure to a certain subject or concept, a student can breathe new life into an idea that the teacher had previously considered tired or reopen a matter she had considered closed.

While I look forward to the day when I will be able to have my own classroom, I do think that there is also something to be learned from students via ICON. While DI’s may not be exposed to a specific group of students and come to know them in a classroom setting, we are able to learn from a sort of cross-section of the student body. We are able to gain valuable insight into the talents and perspectives of a generation. I know that while many of the papers I have graded have been far from stellar, many have provided me with ideas about potential audiences for _Proof_ that I may not have initially thought of or argued for had I been required to write a similar essay. I have been pleasantly surprised to find that there have been many times when I have been won over by a student’s argument when I had initially been very skeptical about his/her assertions. While there are many similar ideas that seem to crop up in the essays, it is exciting to see that there seems to be no end to ways for those ideas to be expressed. Even if they are expressed poorly, they are expressed differently. Those differences in students’ manner of thinking should excite and stimulate us. The holes we see in our students’ logic should help us to fill in the gaps in our own work. Their awkward phrasing should help our sentences flow more smoothly. Even poor work has something to teach us. Neither side of the equation can be neglected.

Playing the doubting/ believing game with respect to distance education

2006-09-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

Boo!

It is comical to suggest that a "community" of people can be built via internet. The term "community" implies some sort of connection between those involved. Distance education is not a misnomer…How can students be expected to create meaningful relationships with people with whom they have never (and probably will not ever) been able to have actual physical interaction? The distance created by the computer completely removes any sense of their classmates’ humanity. Students do not feel responsibility to another computer.
On top of that, the distance created by the computer makes some students feel emboldened to take on different personas. Students say/ do things via distance communication that they would never otherwise do. The computer removes the consequences of actions that are in place in the real world. How can students develop a sense of community with a fictional persona?
The best classroom interactions are those wherein the student feels included in a group that will support him/her throughout the course of the class. There is no way for a student to build that kind of personal relationship with the computer as a moderator. It puts a distinctive barrier between students that can never be fully overcome. Even the most positive of distance learning experiences will never be able to measure up to a positive classroom experience. It is a disjointed form of communication that can never lead to a close-knit community.

Yea!

Physical proximity does not automatically lead to personal intimacy. How many of us have spent an entire semester in a classroom without uttering more than two words to any given classmate? In fact, physical proximity to an extremely large group of people often has the opposite effect. The large lecture halls to which many students are subjected make the students feel isolated in a way that distance education never could. On top of that, many of the students that are placed in these huge classroom settings are freshmen. These inexperienced students, who have never been in any kind of college classroom, find themselves being lost in the crowd.
With distance education, all students in the class are included during each session. Students who would normally be too shy to interact in a traditional classroom setting feel comfortable sharing ideas via internet. It is a safe haven for students to freely discuss and interact without the pressure and intimidation that people often feel in a classroom environment. It puts all students on fairly equal footing. Students are able to have time to formulate responses and do not have the performance anxiety that can come upon them in the classroom. The anonymity that the computer gives students allows to them open up to their classmates and express thoughts that many would be too afraid to share in another setting. Distance education allows students, regardless of race, gender, personality type, etc., to let down their guards and truly engage in the learning process with their professor and classmates.

How technology has impacted my life...

2006-08-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

I have never been one of those people who are good at talking on the telephone. Some people are just naturally charming over the phone line…I hate those people. I have the uncanny ability to make any phone conversation horribly awkward. I blame it on the fact that no one can see me wildly flailing my hands over the phone, and flailing makes up about 90% of my communication. Anyway, as a result of my terrible phone skills, I was never one who relished answering the phone. I was a fan of letting it ring until whoever was calling gave up.

However, my interaction with this technological device changed in the 11th grade. I got a car. For this reason, my parents, in typical paranoid fashion, decided that it would be a good idea for me to have a cell phone in case I had some kind of car-related emergency. I was very resistant to the idea of being constantly available to my parents. After all, I had just gotten my first car. I wanted the complete freedom that was supposed to come with that car. Therefore, my cell phone remained off in the glove compartment of my car. I used it probably a grand total of twice throughout my entire high school career.

The big shift in my perception of this device came during my freshman year in college. Suddenly, I was seven hours away from those once-annoying parents and all of the friends that I had previously spent too much time with to have felt the need to have phone conversations with them. It became a lifeline to the friends and family that I never got to see and an opportunity to be in touch with all the new friends that I was trying to develop. I found myself developing a love/hate relationship with my cell phone. I was afraid to leave the dorm room without it. After all, I could miss an important call from a new friend about where we were meeting for dinner or a comforting call from my family. At the same time, I hated my newfound dependence on the device. I could not stand my need to be connected to the rest of the world at all times. Before, I had been able to spend an afternoon alone and not have any interruptions. Now, even if I left my phone behind, I felt a mild sense of panic. What if something terrible happened to someone and no one could reach me? On top of that, everyone I knew now expected me to be available to talk, regardless of when s/he called. If I tried to turn my phone off for an afternoon, I would receive a series of angry voicemails from friends berating me for having turned it off. Their expectations with respect to my connectivity had changed. There was no longer such a thing as solitude, because I could potentially be available at all times.

I am still working out my very conflicted relationship with my cell phone. I have enjoyed the many perks that come from being able to contact any and everyone at all times, but I cannot help but feel that some on my independence has been lost.

Trying to create a blog

2006-08-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

I am a technological idiot. I hope this works so that I can pass my class.