Chapter 3 of “Teaching to Transgress” by bell hooks was an enlightening read. On one hand, it’s sad to see that, though this was written years ago, our education system still has many of the same problems regarding teaching in a multicultural setting. On the other hand, though, the existence of scholarship such as that of Dr. April Baker-Bell shows that people are carrying on bell hooks’ work and ideals and are continuing to push for changes in the system.

I found the series of seminars that bell hooks and Chandra Mohanty held at Oberlin to be an excellent idea. hooks talks about the intent to raise critical consciousness, to have a space for constructive confrontation and critical interrogation, and to have a setting for people to voice fears and to discuss what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why they’re doing it, all in order to help these people shift their paradigms around more inclusive teaching. This all feels especially important today; you can see just by looking at news channels or social media how defensive people get over their mistakes today. When a mistake is pointed out, there’s a huge tendency to become defensive and double down on that mistake rather than accepting the criticism, apologizing, and aiming to improve. These spaces that hooks and Mohanty created seem to aim to move past this defensiveness and help people to actually learn and grow.

hooks mentioned how she and Mohanty felt greatly disappointed when the meetings concluded because they saw just how much work would have to be done, how much the faculty would have to unlearn racism to create and appreciate a new sort of education. They were definitely right in their realization that much work would have to be done, however it is a good thing that hooks, her contemporaries, and educators today continue to pursue this goal. Baker-Bell’s “We Been Knowin: Toward an Antiracist Language &
Literacy Education” gives some examples that clarify why this work is so important.

Baker-Bell’s parents did not finish high school because of negative racial experiences, taught by teachers who believed and upheld racist stereotypes of black students. Baker-Bell herself felt the white-centeredness of the education system when school offered her no opportunity to process the racial violence she’d seen in the police murder of Malice Green. Stories and experiences such as these have led her to pursue questions such as how can she produce anti-racist scholarship and what does racial and linguistic justice look like in literary/language education? She goes on to describe some antiracist critical media literacies such as digital activism as well as a discussion of Black English and how student’s should not be forced away from their own language, in this case a language that is often not even recognized as one. I am reminded of Vershawn Ashanti Young’s work “Should Writer’s Use They Own English?” (link) in which he discusses the harm that standard language ideology does to minorities in academia and how it serves to gatekeep many from entering the field. Young’s work is an excellent and insightful piece that I highly recommend to anyone interested in these ideas of multicultural scholarship/anti-racist scholarship/anti-racist language and literacy education.

Two insightful reads that really dived in deeper on a subject that is there but not something that is talked about enough. While I was reading Teaching to Transgress two things that I found interesting in the reading where; how many people needs to unlearn racism to learn about colonization and declaration, and how the fear of teaching race, sex, and class is rooted in the sear that the class will be uncontrollable. It’s not that I didn’t know these things, or I couldn’t guess; I just don’t think about it enough I guess. In my mind I’m confused as to how many people need to unlearn racism or the fear of teaching. But a big part of that may have to do where I live and my upbringing. Living and growing up in Newark we never faced these issues (not that I am saying people are not racist in Newark) but in school my teachers never had fear on teaching us anything, most of the time we dived deep into class discussions on important issues. But this may center around the fact that Newark is a minority area and many of the teachers are also minorities themselves? I do think that area and where you live plays a role into this and that fear of teaching or having to unlearn racism. Because from my own personal experience from high school to college, nothing was ever off limits when it came to teaching and talking about things that mattered or where important.

In the essay, We Been Knowin’, I definitely agreed with April Baker- Bell when she said that black people play an active role in highlighting, deconstructing, and addressing patterns of media injustice, and engage in Black digital activism to raise awareness of the crisis of racial injustice. One thing that stood out the most to me was the talking of the Trayvon Martin murder. When the incident happen, I was in high school. Close as well to the age of seventeen. During that time, my school devoted time to talking about it and the importance of why America needs to do better and be better. I will say I was shocked when Bell said there were articles that flipped the script and made it seem that George Zimmerman was a good person. Because I never read those articles or even heard of them. From my memory, we knew George Zimmerman was an awful person and during that time period we were all shaken up from the incident. But the fact that there were articles that tried to change that narrative you can see that Black people definitely need to do their role in helping media injustice. But it’s not only them, everyone needs to help this issue. The fact that would even happen after someone dies, is not only disrespectful but morally insane. My mom always said never to speak on someone who has passed away, especially to say wrong or hurtful things about them. But before I keep going on a rant, I do agree with this essay and there needs to be talks and there needs to be a continuation of work being done in efforts to support and raise awareness.

Hi all! Can’t wait to read your blogs & hear your thoughts on the pieces by bell hooks and April Baker-Bell.

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Extremely different pieces, yet, both are centered around distance and communication.

C ya laterrrr is heartbreaking and walking through the interactive game was a lot. I got pretty far into it before I couldn’t take it anymore. The detail, the way it is just life in the midst of what should never be, the real and rawness of it. What a moving work.

Dial, on the other hand, was a calming piece. If you analyze this piece with c ya laterrrr it could be really touching. Thinking about distance and time zones, etc. On it is own, it was hard to understand and navigate at first. It took a few minutes and I had to look at the author notes to really understand and that was helpful.

The two readings in a way where counteractive to one another. Both, do support the same overall idea but the approach in lesson is different. One softly touches on the subject while the other elaborates more on it. In The Popularity of Formulaic Writing, the article briefly touches on the Jane Schaffer Approach. It was a formula designed to help students develop well constructed papers. However, this idea did receive major criticism as it seemed that the idea was not encouraging exploration. But nowhere in Schaffer’s formula did she say not to explore, there was just a structure to help and be used if needed. But somewhere along the lines of translation, there has been confusion as to whether use the formula fully and faithfully in order to do well with writing papers. I do believe that there are students who will use the formula and keep it on the back burner of their mind, but not live with it. While there are others who will use the structure for the rest of their lives. Both is fine, everyone has a different method and needs to find theirs that they think work best and help them the best, I don’t see anything wrong with that. But I do think that after the formula is introduced, more teaching needs to take place.

That’s kind of where the second article comes into play. Teach Writing as Process Not Product does not touch base or mention Schaffer’s idea but it touches base on the overall use of writing products and not using process. Murray discusses that when teachers teach composition they are not teaching a product, they are teaching a process. And once the realization of teaching a process comes into effect, then there needs to be a design of curriculum made. But not to forget, that process can work to produce a product. They both go hand in hand, and need to work together. The article then further discusses the importance of discovery through language, exploration of what we know and what we feel, process of using language to learn our world, and implications. The article also suggests to teach unfinished wiring. I feel that the second article (this one), kind of dives in deeper on creating language and using voice to develop a paper that is more personal and not generic and not so structured. Helps with tips to still create a valid paper that will still earn a good grade even if there is no “formula” being followed. But in a sense, there is a formula with the implications. It just opens up more exploration rather than saying how a paper should be formatted and written.

Both of this week’s readings had to do with the process of writing and the best ways to teach said process. Mark Wiley’s The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (And Why We Need to Resist) warns against the popular but dangerous (to a writer’s education, not their health) “formulaic” writing process. Wiley states that it is due to the immense pressure on schools and teachers that formulaic writing has become so popular; this writing, which follows a “formula” to teach students how to write essays, is well-received by teachers because it makes it easy to teach large amounts of students how to write a piece that, academically, passes standards. (i.e will score well on standardized tests, the holy grail of education systems.) The formula Wiley chooses to focus on is the Jane Schaffer approach/formula, which teaches that body paragraphs are to be arranged as follows:

Topic sentence
Concrete detail #1
Commentary #1a
Commentary #1b
Concrete detail #2
Commentary #2a
Commentary #2b
Concluding sentence

This approach does make it easy for students to learn and understand how to write an essay, and while I do see how it could help many students, I also chafe at its strictness. Wiley argues the same, stating that while this approach is helpful to students at first, it ultimately leaves them too dependent on this structure and unable to really think in their writing. Once again, students are writing what they know the teacher wants to see (in this case, the Schaffer approach) and not expressing their own thoughts. Wiley believes that instead of being taught as strict formulas, structures like this should be taught as strategies, and students should be taught many different strategies to use so they can make their own decisions about which would work best for different situations. This would make their writing stronger (since the point of writing is communication and different communications require different strategies) and also their thinking about writing stronger, as they themselves have to consider which strategy to employ.

Donald Murray’s Teaching Writing as Process Not Product delves further into the idea of how to teach writing. He does not make mention of formulas but instead suggests that teachers stop grading student writing as literature/product and start instead helping them learn the process of writing. I agree that the process of writing needs to be focused on in schools, and I also agree with many of his implications, however, I don’t think Murray is quite aware of the pressures and circumstances placed upon teachers, especially those not in higher education. Murray states that none of his implications requires special training, special schedules, new materials, an increase in funding, or a change in teaching load…however, he does not acknowledge how teachers will, with their class sizes and limited time, put into practice any of his ideas. We’ve been talking a lot about how, despite the benefits of things like portfolios and comments and one-on-one conferences regarding writing, teachers simply do not have the time to do that with all of their students. It’s different in a college setting, yes, but students are taught, fundamentally, how to write academically not in college but in elementary, middle, and even high school.

I agree with the ideas presented in both articles, and they also mesh very well with my earlier discussion about creativity in writing education and how best to help students develop their creativity. However, it’s clear that in order for English education to change, the education system as a whole needs to change as well.

Once again I find that I’ve somehow come to expect too much from scholars who can’t seem to deliver on their promises.

Both “The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (And Why We Need to Resist)” by Mark Wiley and “Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product” by Donald M. Murray criticize formulaic writing, but then fail to provide a tangible alternative. Wiley contends that formulaic writing (like the Schaffer approach) can be one strategy among many used to teach writing, but never provides examples of these other strategies. And Murray straight up says, “None of these implications require a special schedule, exotic training…What they do require is a teacher who will respect and respond to his students…”. What an oversimplification of the process of teaching the writing process. Just listen to your students and they will magically learn to write! No other strategies needed!

While both readings fell short of my expectations, they each did so in different ways. Let’s explore how, shall we?

“The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (And Why We Need to Resist)” by Mark Wiley

Wiley starts off with an accurate description of all the challenges that teachers face, which led me to the false assumption that if he understood what we’re up against, he was going to provide viable solutions. He did not.

I definitely agreed with his critique of the Schaffer Approach, and I honestly cringed when reading about what it entails. Having students actually count words, sentences, and paragraphs is HUGE waste of time, there’s no mention of how to evaluate quality over quantity, and there’s no “next step” provided by the Schaffer Approach, rendering it basically useless unless what you actually want is for your students to become dependent on the only writing formula they think they’ll ever need. I was also surprised to find out that this approach was geared for 9th and 10th grades, because it’s description seems much more like an introductory writing method, suited perhaps for elementary or middle school students.

After he rightfully criticizes the Schaffer Approach, Wiley says that “students must develop a repertoire of strategies for dealing effectively with various writing tasks presented to them in different situations” and they must also “make choices about genre, content, structure, organization, and style.” He explains that students need procedural and conditional knowledge to question how to accomplish tasks and when to make particular choices. And then he gives exactly zero suggestions for how to teach students to do this.

“Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product” by Donald M. Murray

Murray starts off his essay with a pretty accurate metaphor of literature as something we conduct an autopsy on, making it impossible to produce live writing as an outcome. He also writes about writing in a rather poetic way, explaining that writing is the process through which we discover the world around us. And then he proceeds to disappoint me, just like Wiley.

I will say that one thing I appreciated was his breakdown of the writing process time frame. If you had asked me which of the three stages took the longest amount of time, I would have said either writing or rewriting. I was surprised at his claim that prewriting should account for 85% of the writing process, but his explanation of exactly what the prewriting step encompasses made me rethink my preconceptions about it. If the 85% is accurate, then most teachers and students don’t spend nearly enough time in the prewriting stage as we should.

However, Murray then fails to provide any concrete suggestions for how to accomplish the writing process in a non-formulaic way. He also contradicts himself in his list of implications by waffling back and forth on the writing timeline. First he claims there should be no timeline, then he says students must adhere to deadlines, and then he backtracks and says that the deadline should be the end of the marking period, which is absolutely ridiculous. The thought that students should only be working on one major writing assignments for the entire marking period is unrealistic, especially when Murray also says that drafts shouldn’t be graded. Most teachers are required to have a minimum number of assignments in their gradebooks each marking period, and they have to vary in weight. (Also, students will not complete work that isn’t graded.)

What I’m left with after reading both of these essays is a sense of frustration. Neither author provided solutions to the problem they identified, and what little advice they did provide isn’t applicable in the modern classroom.

Two very different pieces in a myriad of ways. Retratos Vivos de Mama is a beautiful piece that is so intimate through not just the words and thoughts within, but the way it is presented. I read what I could in Spanish and translated where needed.

There is something so powerful in the ways emotions flow between languages and the differences. I remember a friend whose second language is French said that reading French authors in their mother tongue , reading words meant to be in French, is a different experience than reading it translated. There is power in words, something we have all echoed throughout this semester. I think we have seen this sentiment of the power in language with Melanie and Xinyu’s works, but I think it is very prevalent here as well in a different way.

How to Rob a Bank is such a fun piece. It is really ambiguous and there is a lot of reading between the lines. It is extremely interesting to think about Electronic Literature that is heavily influenced by technology in a way we haven’t quite seen yet. In a way that is a reflection of where ELit will progress.

This piece is probably the one I can relate to the most. As a student, I think my writing was affected by this. Then I was constantly trying to write for the teachers mind and not my own. I also struggled and stressed over making things super perfect for these reason. If I had control over my writing I probably would have a solid voice and would have grown a lot more.

Honestly, teachers are absolutely bias, which is not always purposeful. I like to think I try really hard to be objective just for the sake of letting my students think, feel and grow. This makes me think about all the students I have the claim they ” don`t know what to write”. Maybe its not that they don`t know how to write but simply don`t know how to think for themselves enough to get started.

The question is… is this something we can even change and if so how? Is it rooted too deep?

This piece is probably the one I can relate to the most. As a student, I think my writing was affected by this. Then I was constantly trying to write for the teachers mind and not my own. I also struggled and stressed over making things super perfect for these reason. If I had control over my writing I probably would have a solid voice and would have grown a lot more.

Honestly, teachers are absolutely bias, which is not always purposeful. I like to think I try really hard to be objective just for the sake of letting my students think, feel and grow. This makes me think about all the students I have the claim they ” don`t know what to write”. Maybe its not that they don`t know how to write but simply don`t know how to think for themselves enough to get started.

The question is… is this something we can even change and if so how? Is it rooted too deep?