Twitterings

The Absolute Knower in Freshman Composition

2010-02-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I spent the day with my husband at Lost Lakes in Fresno County. He was fishing while I was busy reading the first two chapters of Marcia B. Baxter Magolda's Knowing and Reasoning in College: Gender-Related Patterns in Students' Intellectual Development. I am reading this book as part of CSU Fullterton's certificate program in postsecondary reading.

I was interested in what Magolda evidenced about Perry' four ways of knowing and the gender-related patterns she found in them: Absolute Knowing, Transitional Knowing, Independent Knowing and Contextual Knowing. But I am mostly interested in the thought that the majority of my freshman students are in the stage (? right word?) of Absolute Knowing. This stage compares easily with Paulo Freier's "banking" method. Students believe that instructors possess all the knowledge and their role as students is to sit and listen/take notes. As if the instructor was making a deposit of knowledge into their brains so that they could spend it during a "fill-in-the-blank" test with the goal of earning their grade. In this stage students believe that there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Thus, I can see how students would view their failure as the fault of the instructor. "The instructor didn't tell me the correct answer."

But having thought about this Absolute Knowing stage, I'm worried because English composition they way I teach it requires more a Independent Knowing status, which skips over the next stage of Transitional Knowing. According to Magolda, the student in the Transitional Knowing stage accepts that some knowledge is uncertain and that simply recording knowledge no longer works. The student in the Independent Knowing shifts to understand that knowledge is mostly uncertain and begins to create his or her own perspective as well as being able to listen to the perspectives of others.

In my freshman composition class I use Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's They Say I Say. In this brief book, Graff and Birkenstein introduce the thought that there are different perspectives on topics and each of them is plausible. I'm thinking this forces an independent knowing onto a absolute knower. I realize that the shift has to be forced--well, no. It has to be set up well for the student to enter. I'm wondering if my own method of delivery is not transitioned enough.

Maybe I need to start with where most of them are: absolute knowing and then devise a way to help them to move to transitional knowing where some knowledge is uncertain before expecting them to realize that most knowledge depends on a perspective. So, maybe I need to start with what students have to say about a topic. What students have to say about a certain fairy tale first, before I have them read/listen to what an expert has to say.

I'll continue to think about how to help my absolute knowing freshman students make a successful transition to transitional knowing before expecting them to be in the stage of independent knowing.

Transitioning Students to a College Level of Accountability

2010-01-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

My first semester teaching as an adjunct is over, and I'm prepping my second semester. I'll say I had a HUGE learning curve and hope that I can use that experience to plan a better spring semester.

For example, while I anticipated the transition from high school to college to be difficult for most of my students, I was surprised at the number of students who remained in my classes when they were not submitting any of the required materials on which they would be graded. (I was even more surprised at their surprise that they didn't pass the class.) This is even when I pointed out on three occasions how I calculated their grade. This next semester I plan to better communicate their progress.

One problem was I spent too much time grading assignments that could have been assessed on a three point scale: 1 - unsatisfactory, 2 - satisfactory, and 3 - above average, or check marks (check minus, check, check plus).

Most importantly, I want to better accommodate this transition from a high school level of accountability to that of college level of accountability with my primary goal to increase the number of successful student experiences for each of my students.

How will I do that? That is what I'm contemplating as I plan my courses.

My First Week as an Adjunct Instructor--or Hooky Heaven

2009-08-20T13:53:00.001-07:00

For a while now I've dreamed of making my living as a composition instructor at a two-year community college. This past week this dream of mine has come true as an adjunct at Fresno City College and College of the Sequoias. I'm a freeway flyer.

On Monday I started teaching at Fresno City College two writing classes: English 1A and English 125. One was very early and the other mid afternoon so I stayed on campus to avoid having to find parking on the first day of the semester. After teaching and putting in some organization time, I strolled around campus figuring out where things were (and where things were not). I recalled thinking that in my past work life I'd be in an office or a meeting, answering a phone, drafting minutes, coordinating some meeting. I'd be uptight and holding panic back trying to juggle the tasks and personalities. Fast forward to the present. Here I was walking on a campus mid day because THIS WAS WHAT I WAS PAID TO DO.

I so felt like I was playing hooky.

Of course, I realize that I'll have more work than my former 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. job did (really 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.). And I'm sure I'll eat my hooky words and face a different type of panic. Already I've got three classes of extended writing samples from about 90 students. So, I've got a ton of things to do and read.

And then the learning curve I had over parking on Tuesday was profound. I have been so spoiled as a staff person--an early arriving staff person. I've never had a problem finding a place to park my car at 7 a.m. Tuesday, it took me longer to find a place to park than it did to drive to Visalia from Fresno.

I'm still in hooky heaven though. Today, while driving to Visalia to teach at COS, it was 9:00 a.m. and I wasn't behind a desk. I was behind the wheel listening to the CD Ventury Highway. Then a student in class made the cognitive leap that Anne Lamott's book title Bird by Bird might be related to something that was done in steps. She did this just from hearing the book's title. Another student deduced that because Lamott's book was on writing, and because the title Bird by Bird came from her brother's personal experience, therefore the chpater title "Shitty First Drafts" must also be a personal narrative based on personal experience. I'm getting paid to help student notice their thinking and put it down on paper! Pinch me.

Does life get any better?

Demonstrating Purposeful Summaries

2009-02-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in the one credit course I take in conjunction with working at the English Writing Center, the program director had us break up into groups to read through a student essay while using one of lenses from Elbow and Belanoff's Responding and Sharing: a lens that we avoided. I was in the group who avoids Says & Does.

Says & Does is a combination summary and what I call a craft analysis, or looking at how the paragraphs in the essay function to create the whole. In 2004, when I first started teaching, Says & Does was incomprehensible to me—especially because no one demonstrated it or spent time allowing me to practice it while providing feedback. But now, with close to five years working with and analyzing writing, I’ll say I am more comfortable using it.

My group of B and T and me started to read this essay on identity and were immediately stumped by the first paragraph that was positioned to introduce the essay’s idea and approach, but which told us something about the paper being on identity and something about how different authors found their lives changed and thus themselves changed. We as a group had to stretch for this meaning as it was not on the page.

As the three of us read, it became very clear that the paragraphs after the first introductory one only summarized four authors’ articles on identity, with four articles summed up on one paragraph and one in two. At the end of two of the paragraphs, the student attempted to discuss how the author’s narrative evidenced identity, but the attempt fell quite short--especially so because the preceding summary did not support the attempted connection with identity.

Since I was the only one in my group who had taught the class that produced this type of essay, I realized that while the student was summarizing the various essays, they were not summarizing for a purpose. Whether the instructor demonstrated how to summarize with a purpose, I cannot say. But I realized that when I return to teaching, and when I teach Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say I Say kinds of summary and analysis, I need to spend some time demonstrating to students how to paraphrase, and then summarize with different purposes.

So while working through the seven paragraph student essay using Says & Does, we identified that the essay was mostly summary, uneven, and disconnected. But we struggled with the Says & Does, and we were experienced college students: a junior, a senior and a grad student. I don’t think that I would use this lens for new tutees, but another lens, such as Sayback & Metaphor. And the group focusing on that lens came up with the same diagnosis, but also a Rx by helping to generate possible connections the student writer may have benefited from. The best help I received was how to teach They Say I Say so the class understood, had practice in how to summarize with a purpose.

I think a way to do this is to choose an essay that can be viewed through multiple lenses (at least five or six), and then to do one myself and walk students through the decisions I made in writing the summary and why. Then assign the summary of the same article to different groups but each with different purposes. Then spend the following instruction day reading through and discussing the more successful summaries focused supporting a different purpose. I think a concluding goal would be to allow students time to free write and then share what summary with a purpose requires them to do as readers and writers. Then assign the next essay with different lenses for them to practice summary with a purpose yet again.

Lenses for Reading Tutees Papers

2009-01-29T21:15:00.001-08:00

Every Thursday at 4:00 p.m., I have a one credit course that covers subjects related to tutoring at the university's Writing Center. Today was our second class and I felt exceptional tired by class time.

In class we went over the Elbow and Belanoff technique, or is "lens" a more appropriate term, of sayback. I had been under the impression the term meant summarize, or paraphrase. While it does, it also means to summarize but to pose comments in the form of a question. My script would be "I think you are saying . . . ." But later it was pointed out that phrasing it "Are you saying . . . ." tends to not shut the writer down.

When working in my old position as an executive secretary, the VP of Advancement was asking a question to a large group of people online. He said he didn't like to state something, but pose it in a question. I am such a direct person that I rarely think about using a question to soften my understanding, but I see how that can work better. Rather than saying, "You didn't feed the cats." But, "Did you feed the cats," leaves room for a response and is not judgmental. (Bad example, I know.)

We also had to write a metaphor to describe sayback. Lizz and Andria, more experienced tutors, were at the table with me. Lizz gave the metaphor of a counselor saying, "So what you are saying is . . . ." If I could draw a shrink in a chair with a patient lying on a couch, I would have done it. My metaphor, which I drew (I think I go visual when I'm tired), was two birds, with one having thrown up and asking, "Is this your worm?" The other bird looking down and considering if it looked like his worm, but all chewed up. Crude metaphor, but I was trying to think of what was similar to digesting the thoughts of someone else and asking them if your understanding was what they meant.

I consider myself very accomplished at summary, the filtering of what others say through my own understanding--I've been called "Minute Queen"--but I know if there is a tear in my filter, there is a flaw in my summary too. For example, when I first started listening to financial investment lingo, the term puts and calls, I heard "putt" like in golf. I had to ask someone what they meant as I couldn't see how teeing off on a green fit into financial investment language. I can't remember what puts and calls means now.

We then talked about the reply lens, which I've discovered I've been using incorrectly. When giving a reply to a tutee's paper, all you do is respond to the topic and not the paper. So, if someone has written a paper on nuclear power, you don't question what they've said about it, but notice what the topic "evokes" in you. I thought of Louise Rosenblatt and her thoughts on the power of literature to evoke other things in a reader, much like how one note/string plucked on an instrument sounds multiple tones or harmonics. So, a nuclear power paper probably would evoke in me thoughts of building dams for water storage in California. There are many differing opinions on whether dams are needed and whether their benefits out weight their deficits.

By the end of the two hours, I had my second wind. I now will spend some time with my new tutees to learn the lens of sayback and reply. Actually, I'd like to use the word "lens," rather than "technique" as when they come to the context essay, they will be acquainted with having to look at something through a filter--which is a nother metaphor for sayback.

High Hopes: Tutoring Spring 2009

2009-01-28T21:15:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of tutoring at Fresno State's English Writing Center for spring 2009. I tutored last semester and learned a lot about helping students understand the relationship between their writing and an audience. This semester I hope to learn as much as I did last, but in different areas.

I've heard that Fresno State's Writing Center is unique. Rather than tutoring students one-on-one, we tutor in groups of three students to one tutor. Well, not students, but tutees. I've taught College Composition before, so it was a challenge not to resort to my tearcherly ways. I'm not there to "fix" their papers. But I am there to facilitate their understanding of what it means to communicate an idea, a stance on an issue, to someone else.

What I noticed last semester is that when we read a tutee's paper, I plowed through the sharing and responding techniques presented in Sharing and Responding by Peter Elbow and Patricia Belanoff. But I didn't pause to help the students apply the responses to the paper. I will be focused on doing that this semester.

Also, I used multiple responses on one paper, rather than one response. I know better this semester to allow my tutees time to become familiar with the techniques of say back (summary), more (I'd like to hear more about), believe/doubt (I believe you when you way/I doubt that), movies (movies of the reader's mind), etc. I notice now that when I respond to a paper, I tend to say these things. I'd like to hear more about, I believe this because I know this, I doubt this because, etc. Even, are you saying x? I think you are almost saying x. This helps the writer understand how their words on the page are being interpreted. Of course, Elbow and Belanoff say it a lot better.

I have high hopes for this semester. Including being able to provide help to walk-ins as well as online submissions.