Somehow I’ve managed to spend the last year or so putting off writing this blog. I wish I could say that I have been too wrapped up fighting the good fight, but the truth is, life just got the better of me for awhile. Now that it seems the ducks are finally sober enough to line up, the Ts are hanging properly, the Is well-dotted (no, I will abuse no apostrophe purposefully), and the excrement now lying in a single, manageable pile, I think it’s time to write again. I warn you, I am out of practice. Please bear with me (yeah, that will get you wanting to read on!).
Some updates: Yes, I am still teaching. I am, I guess one could say, the unofficial chair for the unofficial English department. I am working with another instructor to build and maintain our Writing Center. I am constantly being offered sweeter positions--Chair of Developmental Studies, Director of Remediation and Retention, Chair of General Education, Director of Communication Studies, etc. I am convinced that these will happen just as well if I don't think about the chance that they could. I do like what I do, though it can get a bit monotonous at times. To break that cycle, I am helping still another instructor develop a Speech program. I have also quit smoking. I am on a diet. I will surely still die, eventually.
This fall, as rumor would have it, I will be entering an Ed. D. program at UMKC in Education Administration with and Emphasis in Higher Education in Urban Universities. I think I'm in, but the official word comes at the end of the month. Needless to say, I will be busy. Oh, and my daughter will likely move in with us in July.
Wow, even I am bored right now. On to better things.
Today’s Topic: Teaching Thinking, Teaching Writing, Teaching the Already Taught.
"The most important skill one can develop is the ability to learn how to learn" - Thomas Friedman.
We have a new Dean of Curriculum at my University who is, as most new Deans will, trying to shake things up a bit. I think that this can only be a good thing for a college that is less than two years removed from being a correspondence school. Anyway, her first order of business with me was to ask me to design a writing survey for the beginning and ending of the Composition 101 course. She wanted to track how much students learned through the course.
"Sure," I told her. "No problem." Then I went on to explain exactly the kind of information she would be getting from me. "You need to realize," I explained, "these are only eight-week classes. No one will really be able to learn to write in only eight weeks." She seemed shocked that I would have the nerve to say that the course that I designed, one of the classes that they had spent so much money asking me to create, would bear so few results. But then, that is the nature of English--a field where the typical student spends the majority of their formative years studying.
I suppose the question is, if we're not really able to teach writing, what exactly are we doing here? Why is what we do considered to be so important to the education process? My argument? We're not here to teach individuals to write; we're teaching them to think--to interact with academic ideas in productive ways--to learn the academic "rules of engagement." We teach expression, the need for clairity, and the way ideas are accepted or turned away. We teach the power of logic, the need for ethics, and the undeniable reality the we are emotional beasts. In an English class, engagement in ideas is crucial--we teach the ways to entertain those ideas without blindly accepting them. Like I said, we teach thinking.
This, of course, brings up another question: how do we teach thinking? Is there some formula? Some tried and true method for convincing our students to dig a little deeper into the things they encounter on a daily basis; and, if a student doesn't know how to think, how can we get them to think enough about thinking to really understand the myriad of thoughts that encapsulate a single strain of thinking enough to lead to a single, definable thought?
We don't.
The end.
Thanks for playing.
On the radio this morning, the DJs we discussing interesting ways to cheat in school (yeah, must have been a dry news day). Callers would join in the conversation talking about how they bought or sold the answers to tests, printed the answers on their water-bottle label, or caused some kind of distraction. It was all very interesting, but I couldn't help but to think of how little we must think of our students' ability to learn if we force them to use their creativity to cheat instead of to think.
I mention this because I am rambling; I justify this because I want to illustrate a simple point--our students will think no matter what we say to them, assign to them, or do to them (save Electrocution Therapy, perhaps). As educators, we have to ask ourselve if it really matters that our students store the events of the War of the Roses in their recallable memory, or if our students would be better served if we emphasized how to find the information and how to know what to do with it. Do we want to raise encyclopedias or researchers? Can we help our students reach their potential better though assorted facts, or through asking them to interact in creative ways with their environment?
What do you think?
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Friday, August 20, 2010
Where are You Going, Who Cares Where You've Been?
For the past few months, I have spent my days working in an office perched on the second-story of a building in an outdoor shopping mall. This is the chosen location of my university, a for-profit, 100% online university that has charged itself with the task of educating the distant learner, the working student, and the military soldier who are, in many cases deployed overseas. Currently, over 97% of our students actively serve in the military, but we are beginning to market to the private sector. By the end of next year, we plan on doubling the size of our student body.
From my little cubicle, I work with students who are fighting in Afghanistan, training security forces in Iraq, working as military recruiters in Virginia, policing the streets of New York City, raising their children in Germany, and so on. All of these students interact with me and with each other several times a week. We challenge our assumptions about the world, our politics, and our purpose in life. But make no mistake, this university is here for the money, and though we are taking painstaking measures to ensure that we are not counted among the recent news-making schools that share our educational concept, this is more a capitalistic endeavor than what has been traditionally thought of as a true institute of higher learning.
As if to remind each of us what our real purpose is for being here, the main entry door to our university is framed by a Victoria's Secret to the west side, and a Hot Topic to the east. Just down the street there's a Build a Bear Workshop for the kids (assimilate them early), and the southeast corner of our building, interestingly, houses a store called Justice. The irony never ceases to amaze me as each and every weekday morning, I enter the building admidst the proud hum of the capitalistic engine that drives and divides our culture. This is not what I envisioned when in graduate school, I more often than not was seen launching myself into long-winded conversations about academic integrity, scholarly thinking, and the sacred bonds of the teacher/student relationship. Then again, one has to wonder if this is how Plato and Isocrates must have felt when they too saw the changing of educational media--when they watched the freedom of ideas finally locked behind the solid walls of academia--sold, by themselves, no less, to the highest bidders.
Some days I want to gather my books, and without uttering a single word, exit the building through the same door I entered not so long ago. I do have my pride, after all. I have a mission--to spend my life exploring this thing called teaching. I have no time to concern myself with gains and losses, the cost of books, pens, paper, or electricity. I did that before college. As a friend of mine once said, I have had that adventure. Yet here I am, in a cubicle near a window that overlooks a parking lot full of SUVs and minivans, walking past stores like Forever 21 and Baby Gap on my way to Starbucks for my morning shot of chai tea (blended, hold the whipped-cream, please), and wondering what the hell I'm doing here.
And here it is: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and everything in between, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, so long as we don't all end up poor . . . it is with a mixture of fear and excitement that I tell you this: that I am beginning to believe, this is the future of higher education.
I don't think I like it either.
Let me explain.
According to NPR's David Inge, more than one-billion people regularly read online, and this trend is growing. In a world where academics complain that people no longer read, the reverse is true--people are reading more than ever. These one-billion plus souls log onto the Internet, most of them on a daily basis, to read the news, opinion articles, product descriptions, stories, jokes, blogs (generally better ones than this one), forum threads, and so on (not to mention those who go to porn sites because of the articles).
People are also doing a lot more writing. We update our status on facebook; text our friends, family, and favorite restaurant for, well I don't really know quite what for; still, we follow our friends and heroes on Twitter and allow them to follow us; some of us even torture our friends with blogs, YouTube clips, clever questionnaires, and the list continues to expand.
Let's face it, we are in a world that is more connected, more literate, and far more informed than it ever has been, and that integration between individuals and the combined knowledge of the species is increasing exponentially. Faced with all of this knowledge, we learn early on how to navigate through this ever-growing mass of information with surprising efficiency. Even a task as meaningless as purchasing a new hairdryer sends many of us into research mode, pulling together information from a multitude of sources, all to ensure that we make an informed decision about our purchase.
With all of this information at our fingertips, it stands to reason that we seek out knowledge where it is most likely to be found and where we are most comfortable finding it, the Internet. Geography is no longer a factor in choosing a college--we can now choose our college or colleges based on the programs they offer, the price of admission, and by the integrity of their programs. Imagine the freedom of taking classes from the comfort of your own living room, attending a lecture from your local coffee shop, or taking part in a study group from the waiting line at the DMV. What we may lack in terms of direct interaction, we make up in terms of convenience, individual responsibility, and ingenuity.
While traditional universities are scrambling to integrate multimedia into their courses, online education programs are finding new and creative ways to engage with students at an incredible rate and daring the timid pace of traditional institutions to keep up. The online medium belongs to those who have been forced to abandon their preconceptions of what education should be, thought in depth about what it could be, and used these new ideas to carve their mark in the digital landscape.
Remember when I said my university currently targets the distant learner? Think about this: we currently have the capacity (and are employing it) to teach any course we offer at anytime, anywhere, including teaching students who work on nuclear-powered submarines--the ones that stay submerged for weeks on end--and these courses start every two weeks, not every semester.
I am quick to admit, I hate the idea of for-profit education in its current state. But we're gaining ground and, at least my university, is establishing itself as a true scholarly institution. While traditional universities are facing budget cuts, trimming courses from their catalogs, and fighting for new enrollment, online universities are growing at an alarming rate. Our university, for example, has added six new degree programs this year and we're currently building several more. We are amping up our programs, not just to meet current academic standards, but to exceed them. We know our audience because we have to--they are the only thing that keeps us here. We enjoy no subsidies, no research grants, and no bail outs. When we lose students, people lose their jobs. Most of us aren't convinced that being unemployed is a good thing.
This is a wake up call to all of the purists out there. There is a change afoot. Everything we once imagined the role of higher education to be is now being turned on its ear. While something inside of me shudders at the thought of education being handed over to a capitalistic enterprize, it isn't difficult to see just how valuable a little competition can be to higher learning. And while I swore when I started here that I was selling my soul to the dark side, I'm beginning to see that this is a revolving body and the light is peaking at the horizon. We are now at a point where the very survival of traditional education demands that educators get creative, get interactive, and challenge all there is to know about education without mercy. That's what we're doing, and I am in part happy and in part terrified that we are winning.
From my little cubicle, I work with students who are fighting in Afghanistan, training security forces in Iraq, working as military recruiters in Virginia, policing the streets of New York City, raising their children in Germany, and so on. All of these students interact with me and with each other several times a week. We challenge our assumptions about the world, our politics, and our purpose in life. But make no mistake, this university is here for the money, and though we are taking painstaking measures to ensure that we are not counted among the recent news-making schools that share our educational concept, this is more a capitalistic endeavor than what has been traditionally thought of as a true institute of higher learning.
As if to remind each of us what our real purpose is for being here, the main entry door to our university is framed by a Victoria's Secret to the west side, and a Hot Topic to the east. Just down the street there's a Build a Bear Workshop for the kids (assimilate them early), and the southeast corner of our building, interestingly, houses a store called Justice. The irony never ceases to amaze me as each and every weekday morning, I enter the building admidst the proud hum of the capitalistic engine that drives and divides our culture. This is not what I envisioned when in graduate school, I more often than not was seen launching myself into long-winded conversations about academic integrity, scholarly thinking, and the sacred bonds of the teacher/student relationship. Then again, one has to wonder if this is how Plato and Isocrates must have felt when they too saw the changing of educational media--when they watched the freedom of ideas finally locked behind the solid walls of academia--sold, by themselves, no less, to the highest bidders.
Some days I want to gather my books, and without uttering a single word, exit the building through the same door I entered not so long ago. I do have my pride, after all. I have a mission--to spend my life exploring this thing called teaching. I have no time to concern myself with gains and losses, the cost of books, pens, paper, or electricity. I did that before college. As a friend of mine once said, I have had that adventure. Yet here I am, in a cubicle near a window that overlooks a parking lot full of SUVs and minivans, walking past stores like Forever 21 and Baby Gap on my way to Starbucks for my morning shot of chai tea (blended, hold the whipped-cream, please), and wondering what the hell I'm doing here.
And here it is: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and everything in between, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, so long as we don't all end up poor . . . it is with a mixture of fear and excitement that I tell you this: that I am beginning to believe, this is the future of higher education.
I don't think I like it either.
Let me explain.
According to NPR's David Inge, more than one-billion people regularly read online, and this trend is growing. In a world where academics complain that people no longer read, the reverse is true--people are reading more than ever. These one-billion plus souls log onto the Internet, most of them on a daily basis, to read the news, opinion articles, product descriptions, stories, jokes, blogs (generally better ones than this one), forum threads, and so on (not to mention those who go to porn sites because of the articles).
People are also doing a lot more writing. We update our status on facebook; text our friends, family, and favorite restaurant for, well I don't really know quite what for; still, we follow our friends and heroes on Twitter and allow them to follow us; some of us even torture our friends with blogs, YouTube clips, clever questionnaires, and the list continues to expand.
Let's face it, we are in a world that is more connected, more literate, and far more informed than it ever has been, and that integration between individuals and the combined knowledge of the species is increasing exponentially. Faced with all of this knowledge, we learn early on how to navigate through this ever-growing mass of information with surprising efficiency. Even a task as meaningless as purchasing a new hairdryer sends many of us into research mode, pulling together information from a multitude of sources, all to ensure that we make an informed decision about our purchase.
With all of this information at our fingertips, it stands to reason that we seek out knowledge where it is most likely to be found and where we are most comfortable finding it, the Internet. Geography is no longer a factor in choosing a college--we can now choose our college or colleges based on the programs they offer, the price of admission, and by the integrity of their programs. Imagine the freedom of taking classes from the comfort of your own living room, attending a lecture from your local coffee shop, or taking part in a study group from the waiting line at the DMV. What we may lack in terms of direct interaction, we make up in terms of convenience, individual responsibility, and ingenuity.
While traditional universities are scrambling to integrate multimedia into their courses, online education programs are finding new and creative ways to engage with students at an incredible rate and daring the timid pace of traditional institutions to keep up. The online medium belongs to those who have been forced to abandon their preconceptions of what education should be, thought in depth about what it could be, and used these new ideas to carve their mark in the digital landscape.
Remember when I said my university currently targets the distant learner? Think about this: we currently have the capacity (and are employing it) to teach any course we offer at anytime, anywhere, including teaching students who work on nuclear-powered submarines--the ones that stay submerged for weeks on end--and these courses start every two weeks, not every semester.
I am quick to admit, I hate the idea of for-profit education in its current state. But we're gaining ground and, at least my university, is establishing itself as a true scholarly institution. While traditional universities are facing budget cuts, trimming courses from their catalogs, and fighting for new enrollment, online universities are growing at an alarming rate. Our university, for example, has added six new degree programs this year and we're currently building several more. We are amping up our programs, not just to meet current academic standards, but to exceed them. We know our audience because we have to--they are the only thing that keeps us here. We enjoy no subsidies, no research grants, and no bail outs. When we lose students, people lose their jobs. Most of us aren't convinced that being unemployed is a good thing.
This is a wake up call to all of the purists out there. There is a change afoot. Everything we once imagined the role of higher education to be is now being turned on its ear. While something inside of me shudders at the thought of education being handed over to a capitalistic enterprize, it isn't difficult to see just how valuable a little competition can be to higher learning. And while I swore when I started here that I was selling my soul to the dark side, I'm beginning to see that this is a revolving body and the light is peaking at the horizon. We are now at a point where the very survival of traditional education demands that educators get creative, get interactive, and challenge all there is to know about education without mercy. That's what we're doing, and I am in part happy and in part terrified that we are winning.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
In the beginning . . .
I'm an English teacher. I guess that makes sense. Just like a garbage man deals in garbage or a dancer dances, I teach English and am therefore described as an English teacher. I also do other things (if a student were to write this in an essay, I would ask for more information), but this blog is not about those other things; it's about English, teaching, and the teaching of English, specifically, my experiences, thoughts, and random musings about the craft. I'm putting this together for a couple of different reasons: 1). because as a writing teacher, I need to write more than an endless series of evaluative comments on student essays (shouldn't I be somewhat of an expert in actual writing?), and 2). because I feel like I have something to say about this whole writing thing that few people seem to be saying.
So, a bit about myself: I exclusively teach college composition and argument. I could teach literature, but that is not nearly as exciting to me. I just enjoy empowering people by having them become aware of and practice rhetorical devices in writing. It's kind of a cool gig. I work for an online university. I get what the fuss about online education is, but we're still doing some good in the world (even if, at times, it seems a very small "good"). Rest assured, those of us who teach here are pushing for more quality in our education than quantity; we're starting to get there.
For fun, I read text books and theory. I am, I suppose, a nerd. Nowadays, being a nerd can be cool. I could be cool if I wanted to be. I'm not. Right now I'm reading a book by Jay Heinrichs called, Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson can Teach us About Persuasion. It's a fun little read. I will let you know how it turns out.
So anyway, let's get to the meat of what this blog is about: my weird thoughts about writing and rhetoric, analogy, anecdotes, metaphors, and insights on the writing process. Today's theme: fishing.
So, a bit about myself: I exclusively teach college composition and argument. I could teach literature, but that is not nearly as exciting to me. I just enjoy empowering people by having them become aware of and practice rhetorical devices in writing. It's kind of a cool gig. I work for an online university. I get what the fuss about online education is, but we're still doing some good in the world (even if, at times, it seems a very small "good"). Rest assured, those of us who teach here are pushing for more quality in our education than quantity; we're starting to get there.
For fun, I read text books and theory. I am, I suppose, a nerd. Nowadays, being a nerd can be cool. I could be cool if I wanted to be. I'm not. Right now I'm reading a book by Jay Heinrichs called, Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson can Teach us About Persuasion. It's a fun little read. I will let you know how it turns out.
So anyway, let's get to the meat of what this blog is about: my weird thoughts about writing and rhetoric, analogy, anecdotes, metaphors, and insights on the writing process. Today's theme: fishing.
Fishing for Readers or The Reader Fish
Through my classes, we've been talking about how to attract and draw in readers. I'm always looking for interesting ways to explain the process. Today, as I was strolling about the college hallways, I thought about fishing. Why? I haven't a clue. I don't fish. I don't even know where one would fish around here. Sometimes I think if one were to really try, he or she could convince me that some fish come pre-breaded and in angular shapes. Modern science does some pretty amazing things. I guess the idea wouldn't be all that absurd. Anyway, I thought about the fishing process and how that relates to writing. It goes something like this:
When we write, we cast our words into space. Not space like chest-dwelling alien, spaceship, puppy-on-the-moon space, but just an indefinable emptiness. Attached to our writing is the promise of better things. Our subjects and titles, if compelling enough, draw the reader fish to our work. We expertly hook them in, not by yanking on the line, but by angling our words in ways that attach themselves to our readers. Once hooked, we don't immediately pull our readers from their realities into ours; we allow them space and time to get used to these new words gently lodged in their throat. Little by little we guide them closer to the shore; closer to our way of thinking--not by instantly denying our readers their worlds, but by slowing filtering in ours.
We don't fight, we nudge, we prod, we offer a path to our ideas by convincing the reader fish that our way of thinking is logical and the only way that makes sense. Eventually, we guide them into our world, reach down into the shallows for that final pull toward the surface, gently lift them from the water, swiftly chop off their heads, and cook them over an open flame. If we're really good, we might even convince them to bring their own tartar sauce.
How can you not love the idea of writing?
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