Readings

Murray’s article on product versus process was really interesting. I have thought a lot about the idea that too rigid of a rubric regarding writing assignments can stifle a student, and he makes this exact point. If the goal is to teach a process, then when assigning a very specific paper, specific topic, etc. the teacher is bombarding into the process and taking that step away. I have always said that prewriting is the hardest part for me as a writer. I just like to jump in and then see how things go and it makes sense that prewriting is difficult when, for most of my schooling, that part was done for me.

Thinking of teaching a process can be harder to grade, in my mind, so I see why product is the default. I always see how this default setting has hindered students in learning to write and in honing their writing craft.

I love the implications that Murray lists, especially giving time for students to dream and think about their topics and ideas. That is half the battle and, for me, ¾’s of the fun.

Wiley’s article discusses the idea of formulaic writing, and a specific formula called The Schaffer Approach. He talks about the positive and negatives teachers have brought up. One thing I think about it is this word “formula,” we know and have talked about the importance of words, and I think in writing the word “formula” can be problematic. If one is worried about students or any writer being stifled or too dependent on a formula, I believe it is because o the notions surrounding the word.

Many times, in mathematics, they use a formula as a one-way route of answering a problem. You use the formula, or you don’t get the right answer. We are not mathematicians. In English, a “formula” does not have to be this rigid. We can take a process, approach, step-by-step workshop, etc. and meld into what we want it to be. These “formulas” can be broken apart and we can slowly phase them in or out, or only use parts we feel are beneficial, etc. We take tools every day and work them into our lives. We don’t have to take our life and fit it into a tool. The same goes for writing and teaching. It isn’t always the tool or approach that is the issue, but how we use it that can be problematic.

Class Project

Thinking about the brainstorming session we had last class and our time constraint, I feel the best option would be the chapbook. I love all the ideas that were pitched and would love to do any of them, but I feel with each of our values and hopes for the project, this is the best route to go. We can add a digital element, find a way to get printed copies for each of us (maybe uploading it to Amazon KDP?) and find common themes that can be broken into parts for each of us. We can incorporate writing and art into it and really make it what we each want it to be.

Writing or thinking in a cohesive essay format has been difficult this week, so each paragraph will be its own entity, its own thought.

Baker-Bell’s article was a quick introduction to the direction we need to head in within the classroom, but I felt that it fell short. I described the article to a friend as a “thesis proposal,” that it was a good start, but didn’t dig deep enough in its considerations. It brought more questions than answers to the surface.

Baker-Bell made an excellent point at the beginning of the article that the article while looking through the lens of her lived experience could be connected to other systems of oppression and that “an antiracist language and literacy education has to be intersectional.”

Lived experiences are foundational to understanding each person within a classroom and how to teach them.

Standardized tests are stupid and while I get it, I don’t get it, and how our teachers supposed to bring in antiracist language and code meshing into the classroom while also teaching these standards that they are required.

Teaching racist language (this just meaning the current structure or the language that Baker-Bell is writing against) half the time in the classroom in order to hit your metrics would still be problematic because then it would simply teach that in order to “succeed” (at least in education) this type of language is the type of standard.

I feel defeated and kind of tired of individualistic approaches to anti-racist language/classrooms. They are important but they are also not the point, in my opinion. We should be brainstorming and trying to figure out how to disrupt change at a systematic level. I don’t know if all of these are made simply to find a way to incorporate anti-racist language for a teacher that doesn’t know how and to make 1 classroom antiracist or if it is in the hopes that if enough do this then something will finally change systematically. I don’t’ know the purpose but I know that it can feel really defeating to constantly look at these and think “that’s great, I hope a teacher does this, but now what? What’s next? How do we take this up a notch?”

I recently had a conversation with a friend about representation and diversity. Mostly, we spoke about it in literature, but also in life. Hooks’ introductory pages of chapter 9 really brought that idea to light and made me rethink what representation really looks like. When we think and speak about representation and diversity, we usually don’t speak on gender, it is usually on race, ethnicity, sexuality, and maybe gender itself, but not usually gender in relation to things other categories. It makes me rethink the representation I have seen.

I think Hooks’ shined light on black feminism is something a past class of mine spoke a lot about. We talked about how a lot of re-tellings of fairy tales and other stories are happening and they just replace the character with a woman of color but don’t change the narrative to reflect her. These types of adaptations are more about quota than about stories that highlight culture and lived experience. Another thing it makes me think about is the way we talk about inequality between men and women. Closing the pay gap is “hard” for them already, but which are you talking about? White men are paid more than white women by something like 60 cents more on average, but the gap is widened with how much they are paid versus women of color. There is a pay gap between white women and women of color. It makes you think who are we really fighting for?

In Hooks’ chapter 10, she discusses the importance of dialogue. I agree that conversations, real, hard, true, conversations can create bridges. We have spoken in class about burned-out teachers, and she really highlights the reality of what that does. The chapter ends with “being a teacher is about being with people” and that really hit me. It is so true and yet so forgotten.

They way I reacted to Delpit’s reading was similar to the way I reacted to Hooks. They were both eye-opening. When breaking down the five aspects of power, number three was the one that caught me the most, “The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture who have power.” It is so true, and I spent a lot of my higher education doing more unlearning than learning in many ways. It wasn’t hard to make diversity in literature my focus in the last two years of my undergraduate studies, true diversity, true representation, learning when to sit down, and hear the other person. That’s how we make change. Hooks highlight dialogue, but we have learned what true dialogue is and many of us can forget that second part. We listen to form our argument, to persuade, to see where we can make our point get across, but that is not dialogue, that solves nothing. That doesn’t help the children of color in your classroom. We think because of our education that we know “better,” but we only know what we know and that’s fine. That’s why we have to have true dialogue and we have to not just listen but hear. I think silence is the number one common denominator for these articles and silence is the simplest and most common form of oppression as both Delpit and Hooks point out in different ways.

There are people who need to be heard, and wherever there are people who need to be heard, there are people who need to hear. And there is nothing wrong with being the person who needs to hear.

The readings this week were on topics that are very important to me. Graduating high school with a distinction in languages and getting my TEFL certification in November of last year, thinking of the multilingual world as it relates to writing and teaching writing has always been an interest to me. Throughout the last six weeks of class, we have discussed many ideas of what teaching writing should and should not do for or prepare students for and we again see this in Matsuda’s article.

Matsuda talks about how teaching writing to students is not about preparing them for the world in academics in the US; teaching writing should be about preparing them to competently and equitably take part in the diverse world around that “has been, and always will be,” multilingual. The article brings up the importance of languages in teaching writing and the importance of recognizing the cultural differences of our students as it relates to language. One thing that Matsuda said that really stuck with me was that “issues concerning language have long been underrepresented in the mainstream discourse of composition studies,” and I completely agree. What is funny is that Elbow kind of disagrees with this in his article when he discusses that more are focusing less on a critical controversy of voice, but of World Englishes.

While Matsuda is pushing beyond World Englishes into multilingualism, World Englishes lives on that edge and in a way that brings the two pieces together. I don’t think we can discuss World Englishes without talking about voice or multilingualism. Teaching writing isn’t about teaching English or one standard English it should be about learning to interact with Multilingual pieces and World Englishes.

Writing isn’t about English, it’s about language

I think it’s easy to forget that writing is about more than standardized formats and grammar. It’s when we break these “rules” that writing comes alive (even if it is not always done purposely). This is where Matsuda and Elbows articles come together to discuss language.

 Elbow’s article is really interesting because we get a well-rounded view of the conversation that surrounds voice and made me think about how I interact with it in my writing. I think voice as a tool for feedback can be helpful when expounded on. A comment like “the voice here is off” is very helpful, but when you can explain that it can be helpful. Elbow also made me think about the idea of “a voice” versus “your voice.” Elbow says that if you don’t get the voice right in the piece it can backfire, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “your” voice but the voice of the piece. I think the biggest issue surrounded the discourse around voice is this distinction and how each person defines it.

The article also made me think about how I write in relation to voice and how I outline without voice, with facts and stats and resources, but take notes with voice, and draft with voice. Then I revise twice with voice in mind and then again without voice.

I think both articles are important to thinking about what we want our students to leave classes with an understanding of and what we want to be able to achieve in the future.

Here is the link to view my reaction paper:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pbbSu3R3J1gkj3MFPQSAbsc6dR9ftqNnVOCfa7tAt_o/edit?usp=sharing