I’ve been following the work of Kaitlyn Tiffany and Kate Lindsey, largely in The Atlantic, on what they call “the Millennial Internet era” and its gradual demise, at least as they see it. And thinking about millennials got me thinking even more about the names or labels for such “generations” in twentieth and twenty first-century America. As my grandmother would have said, it’s a puzzlement. Millennials supposedly include those born roughly between 1981 and 1995, and this group falls fifth among the American “generations” usually acknowledged:  The Greatest Generation (1901-27) The Silent Generation (1928-45) Baby Boomers (1946-64) Generation X (1965-80) Millennials (1981-95) Generation Z (1996-2010) Generation Alpha (2011-25) According to this lore, I am part of the Silent Generation, though when I was coming of age in the sixties, I thought I was part of the Beat Generation, or the Civil Rights Generation: I don’t remember ever hearing “silent” applied to my cohort in those days and wouldn’t have recognized the label if I had. (I’m wondering which of these cohorts you belong to and what your own perceptions were and are of the accuracy of that label.) At any rate, Tiffany and Lindsey see the millennial view of the world and especially their experience of the Internet either “slipping away” or becoming cringe-worthy, relegating them to technological has-beens who must adapt to new ways of doing things or become obsolescent, and very quickly. As proof, Tiffany writes that the early file format “GIF is on its deathbed,” largely because “GIFs have gotten way overused” and are no longer reflective of creativity or innovation. And because Gen Z associates them with millennials. More proof comes from the prominence of the “millennial pause” (waiting a split second after hitting “record” before starting to speak), no longer necessary in the age of Tik Tok, and from the decline of Instagram and Facebook. The solution lies, the authors say, in learning to give up old ways of interacting and adapting—quickly! Of course we all have lived with shifting technologies all our lives, and many have become fairly agile at adapting to them—cross-generational adaptations, if you will. But I am still interested in and puzzled by the names of these generations and of how such titles tend not only to characterize people in a particular era, but stereotype them. In this regard, a writing assignment based on this concept of “generations” seems like a potentially useful one for students today. They might begin by interviewing grandparents (or great grandparents) and parents and asking them what they think about the “generation” their birthdates group them into. They can choose one of these “generations” and do research on it, finding out how it got its name, what its supposed characteristics are, major events that occurred during its span, and so on. Or they might do the same for their own “generation,” investigating its label and asking how well they feel that they fit, or don’t fit, into it. They can probe who is included in these “generations” and who is not: as I read about the “silent” generation, for example, it seems to me to include primarily white people, thus missing a huge and important segment of the population born during those years. Finally, students might compose a piece of oral history based on their conversations with family members or friends. They might write proposals for alternative labels for one or more generations, along with evidence and examples to support them. Or they might write arguments for or against the whole tradition of naming generations. And even if you do not want to engage students in such a formal assignment, the concept of “generations,” their titles, their inclusions and exclusions, and their alternatives can make for lively class discussion followed by a short writing on a focused question.  As to the “end of the millennial Internet era,” I’d love to hear what students in your classes right now think of that!   The image in this post, "Gen Z" by EpicTop10.com, is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ... View more

As we approach the midterm elections, we’re steeped in the inflammatory rhetoric of polarizing advertisements and debates that are often just an exchange of zingers, if they happen at all. A recent New York Times analysis reveals that fewer candidates are showing up for those public conversations: “Many candidates are sticking instead to safer spaces: partisan news outlets, fund-raisers with supporters, friendly local crowds. The result is a profound shift in the long traditions of American campaigns that is both a symptom of and a contributor to the ills afflicting the country’s politics.” With dwindling models of democratic rhetoric in the public sphere, our writing classrooms can be a space where we offer tools for students as they gain confidence in understanding what’s at stake in political conversations. Past Bedford Bits writers have offered inspiring classroom activities that are both evergreen and timely. For example, Tracy Gardner offers a Political Meme Scavenger Activity in order to “discuss argument and persuasion, the underlying political messages, symbolism, language strategies, and visual rhetoric.” With “Grumpy Cat” as a hook (though you could select your own meme), it’s an appealingly accessible assignment that moves students toward deeper conversations about effective communication. Donna Winchell has a similarly adaptable assignment for looking for logical fallacies in political discourse. You could certainly add additional logical fallacies to her suggested list (though a class can get pretty far looking for examples of “hasty generalization,” the “straw man” fallacy, and the “either/or” fallacy. In the sixth edition of our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing, co-authored with Stuart Greene, we offer readings and assignments that might help students understand why some of the most polarizing political conversations right now are happening in school board elections. After all, those debates are often, quite literally, about what counts as essential knowledge. In our assignments, we invite students to consider their own experiences with high school textbooks in relation to David Tyack’s pithy essay, “Whither History Textbooks?” and Alia Wong’s more extensive, “History Class and the Fictions of Race in America.” By better understanding the business of textbook production, and critically analyzing the extent to which they were invited to learn historiography in their own high school classrooms, college students can start to see the power dynamics involved in all knowledge production. That framework can deepen students’ analysis of every piece of writing in your classroom, and beyond. As we all grapple with this particularly worrying moment for our democracy, it might be eye-opening to invite our students to consider Jonathan Haidt’s argument, from the May 2022 Atlantic Monthly, in which he explains our current polarization this way: Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Heidt blames social media for weakening all three. As he says, in 2009, Shortly after its “Like” button began to produce data about what best “engaged” its users, Facebook developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a “like” or some other interaction, eventually including the “share” as well. Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions—especially anger at out-groups—are the most likely to be shared. Your students will have plenty to say about these claims and their experiences of using social media, even if they have left “old peoples’ Facebook” far behind. Whether or not you decide to analyze political rhetoric in your classroom, your students are experiencing the volatility of this cultural moment every day. Our writing classrooms are just the place to help them gain confidence in understanding the crisis in our democracy, and how language has been part of the problem and must be part of the solution.   Photo by Priscilla Du Preez (2017) used under the Unsplash License. ... View more

  Last week I wrote about attending a webinar discussion on translanguaging organized by Shawna Shapiro, one I left with lots of new information, ideas—and questions. I’ve been encouraging what is now called “translingualism” or “translanguaging” as well as code-meshing in my textbooks since 1999, so the more recent work in this area is nothing short of thrilling to me. Last week’s webinar took me back not only to my work on recognizing and celebrating the vibrancy and validity of all languages and dialects but to work I’ve done on a forthcoming anthology of rhetoric and writing. For that volume, I was tasked with putting together a “coda” on rhetoric and writing in the 21st century. And I can’t think of a task that has given me more grief! After all, we are still fairly early in the 21st century, and the rate of change is, well, astronomical. In the thirteen years that I’ve spent working on this volume (with a small team of dedicated and glutton-for-punishment section editors), I have revised the coda three times, and I believe I could revise it almost every month from now until publication. But enough of ranting! What the webinar last week took me back to a paper I happened to run across by Xuan Wang: “’I Am Not a Qualified Dialect Rapper’: Constructing Hip-Hop Authenticity in China,” an excerpt from which I have included in the anthology coda. In it, Wang analyzes and discusses a piece of hip-hop (created and published on the internet) that is an amalgam of hip-hop, Putonghua Chinese, fangyan/dialect, and English. In other words, a fairly spectacular piece of translanguaging. I eventually tracked Wang down (at the time, she was associated with the Tilburg University in the Netherlands) and learned more about the ethnographic approach she uses in this paper and also about several other pertinent publications. Wang is careful to describe the rapper’s context—a very small village in a very remote area of China where a deeply marginalized dialect is used—and to point up the ways in which the piece resists marginalization along with sanctioned “moves” and genres. When, just a week ago, I received the latest issue of College Composition and Communication, I was once again reminded of Wang’s essay: the lead article in this issue—“Hip-Hop and the Decolonial Possibilities of Translingualism,” by the brilliant Esther Milu—focuses on hip-hop in Kenya. The article opens with Milu in a translingual conversation Jua Cali, a well-known Kenyan artist, pulling readers in and demonstrating translanguaging at work. Cali insists that Milu come, right this moment, to join him at a conference at the Kenyan Cultural Center on how hip-hop artists in Kenya are using translanguaging, and why they are doing so. The how turns out to be pretty obvious, but the why brought forth a complex response from Cali, who said translanguaging challenged the predominant status of English in Kenya, supported the preservation and nurturing of Kenya’s translingual culture, and did so successfully through hip-hop music (378). Milu examines each of these whys in detail and also makes powerful connections between them and her own embodied translingual identity. Finally, she points to the fact of the “diversity of Black language identities, subjectivities, and voices in the field” and asks “how might awareness of Africa’s translingual history change how we theorize Black rhetorics and Black language pedagogies” (405). This is anything but a simple question, answers to which impact not only Black students from countries like Africa or students of color from China, but Black and students of color born and raised in the United States. And I would argue that such awareness needs to be part of every single writing teacher’s knowledge base as well as the knowledge base of all students in our writing classes. I have learned a lot from studying translingualism and translingual approaches to writing instruction and learning. But it’s clear I have so much more to learn, from scholars like Wang and Milu—and from hip-hop artists around the world (thanks to H. Samy Alim for his work on the latter!) ... View more

In the third edition of Signs of Life in the USA, Sonia Maasik and I added a new chapter of readings titled “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Codes of Popular Literature.”  We thought that this would offer a useful addition to the usual topics covered in popular cultural textbooks, enabling composition instructors and other adopters of the book to expand their students' awareness of the many windows on American life and consciousness that cultural semiotics can open. As I wrote then, in the introduction to the new chapter, “Whatever the genre, popular texts all have in common the way that they reflect back to their readers what they most desire. This is what makes them entertaining.”  The adopters of the third edition of Signs of Life appear not to have agreed, because that chapter was not used very much during the life of that edition, so Sonia and I did not revive it in subsequent editions. But, as I continue to contemplate what I am calling the “under the radar” dimensions of American popular culture, I think that here is still another place to look for those signs of life in the USA that are not getting sufficient attention. Of course, best-selling fiction that has been adopted for television and the movies—like how J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin have been mined again and again for such purposes--gets plenty of attention. What I am thinking of here, however, is the vast amount of printed literature that somehow always seems to have the label “A New York Times best-seller” boldly displayed on its cover. These are the books that avid readers of popular fiction often are reluctant to admit to enjoying (especially if they are academics!). But as I find myself finally picking up the light reading that Sonia so much enjoyed—and that I could not bear to toss out—I am seeing a glimpse of the semiotic opportunities that pop fiction can offer. What follows is a brief summary of what I have noticed: Sonia loved detective mysteries, but not violent ones. Her favorite writer in this regard was the late Sue Grafton, but she also liked cat-centered detective novels written by such authors as Lilian Jackson Braun and Ali Brandon, as well as contemporary Swedish procedurals. So that's what I've been reading, along with a rereading of the quite remarkable novel by Peter Hoeg called Smilla's Sense of Snow. And, as disparate as all these books are, I have been struck by a common thread running through all of them: the inclusion of extremely wealthy characters. In Braun’s case this is the protagonist, who has unexpectedly (for him) inherited a billion-dollar fortune, but it could also be a side-kick or an antagonist of some kind. The main thing, it seems, is to have someone around who can enable the author to describe all the perquisites of extreme wealth—the designer mansions, the fancy cars, the personal attendants, the expensive restaurants, the constant travel, the fawning way with which they are treated… and so on and so forth. It is easy to take this superfluity of riches for granted in popular culture—whether medieval or modern in its setting—because it is everywhere. But this is precisely why we need to question it, asking, “what does this tell us?” In classical and medieval times, the answer to such a question was easy: rich and powerful characters dominated the literature of those eras because literature (as opposed to the artifacts of folk culture) was created for, and consumed by, the ruling classes. But for a country like the United States, which has always claimed as one of its most cherished values a dedication to “the people”—to the “common man”—a mass cultural fixation on wealth seems contradictory. And it is, but this very contradiction is fueled by the cherished American mythology that has long been called “The American Dream.” The promise of the American Dream is one of dramatic upward mobility from poverty to riches, not a static existence within the middle class. Thus, we find a paradoxical situation in which the world's first mass middle-class society is ambivalent about itself, ever striving upwards and fantasizing about reaching the socioeconomic top of the heap, whether through personal effort and hard work or, as we often see in popular fiction, an inheritance. This is not trivial, and it marks a significant shift from the days when American popular culture was largely focused on middle-class protagonists (like the families portrayed during the golden age of the television sit-com, or, for that matter, such middle-class detectives as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and TV's Columbo). Though there are a few signs that audiences are getting fed up with the increasing divide between America's haves and have-nots—as reflected in the popularity of TV series like “The White Lotus” or the dystopian nightmare of “Squid Game”—there is still a cultural fixation on the rich. This is evident with the topics that dominate the conversation on pop culture today: the warring kings and queens in “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon,” the stately estates of “Downton Abbey” and “Bridgerton,” and the ongoing obsession with the British royal family. The message is clear enough: consumers of popular culture are turning to fantasies of great wealth, even as the once-cherished American middle-class splinters in the face of a new gilded age.   Photo by Ashin Suresh (2021) used under the Unsplash License. ... View more

What will you fight for? Stenciled graffiti, black letters on gray concrete sidewalk, near Madison Square Park, Manhattan, NYC, October 2018.  Photo by Susan Bernstein   Recently, I attended a Board of Trustees (BoT) for the public university system in my community. At the hearing, members of the university community, including students, have an opportunity to testify about system-wide concerns and concerns at individual campuses. After submitting testimony to the BoT Dropbox and intending to testify in person, I could not stay. As the evening wore on, I knew that my name was near the bottom of a very long list of speakers, and previous speakers had already, and very eloquently, articulated my concerns.    But there was another reason. In listening to the testimony of my colleagues, I felt overwhelmed with grief and sadness by the many longstanding systemic and structural problems of the university system. The university system now faces many difficulties exacerbated by years of neglect, and the simultaneous defunding and devaluing of public higher education.   I was close to tears and shaking inside, and I needed space to process what I was hearing. A walk in the cold evening air might help, but I knew I needed to go home.   Before leaving, I jotted down concerns from my colleagues’ testimony for the BoT. Here is a short list, much of which would be familiar to anyone working in public postsecondary education: Contingent faculty outnumber tenure-track faculty. These contingent faculty, including graduate students, are poorly paid and have no job security. There is a shortage of full-time faculty, and a shortage of new full-time, tenure-track faculty due to retirements and hiring slowdowns. As a result, the university lacks: Sustainable support for mentoring, advising, and mental health counseling for students, especially students of color, and first-year undergraduates Sufficient numbers of tenure-track faculty to sustain department infrastructure Because funding is precarious and not guaranteed, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs with documented successful results are at risk of shutting down   Perhaps most distressing of all, many speakers offered testimony regarding the pending demolition of the school of nursing at one of the older campuses. The school of nursing shares space with a residence hall, a food pantry, emergency housing, and a support center for older adults, among other services. The demolition of this space is to make room for a new “state-of-the-art” campus for health science education facilities.   Even as new buildings are constructed, older buildings are in serious disrepair resulting in egregious and long-term accessibility problems. My colleagues gave powerful testimony regarding how these problems impact our own campus. My colleagues’ experiences are corroborated in my own testimony. A slightly revised version of my testimony follows:   I testify today on behalf of our students to bear witness to the ventilation problems that students experienced long before the Covid-19 pandemic began. Since then, nothing has changed and, with the realities of Covid-19, these problems hold new urgency. The following four problems, among many others not listed, cause students the most suffering as they attempt to pursue their education: Classrooms as hot as 85 degrees with no windows and no working fans. Students walk out of class to avoid asthma attacks, vomiting, and fainting. Airtight classrooms with no ventilation and bright fluorescent lights. The lack of ventilation causes breathing problems and the fluorescent lights cause migraines. Fourth floor classrooms where strong winds blow straight and hard into open windows, disrupting lectures and discussions. The window air conditioners in these rooms are unusable, as they are so loud that students cannot hear themselves speak.  Elevators that are too small to allow social distancing and too small to fit wheelchairs, and therefore are in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In other words, in addition to being frequently broken, the elevators cannot accommodate people with mobility challenges, breathing difficulties, and other disabilities, and disabled people cannot access their classrooms.   In other words, the damage is real, past and present. But a better world is possible. Fix the ventilation now, before the next emergency. Thank you for your time and attention. ... View more

  Elizabeth Catanese is an Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Community College of Philadelphia. Trained in mindfulness-based stress reduction, Elizabeth has enjoyed incorporating mindfulness activities into her college classroom for over ten years. Elizabeth works to deepen her mindful awareness through writing children's books, cartooning and parenting her energetic twin toddlers, Dylan and Escher.   How do your students gain energy? Do you have a class full of introverts who gain their energy by quiet, reflective activities? Or do you have a class comprised of extroverts who need interactions with others to thrive? I sometimes ask my students whether they identify as more extroverted or more introverted. Depending on the semester, the split can be anywhere from fifty-fifty to one-third introverts and two-thirds extroverts, mirroring some studies done in the general American population. And, of course, there is the important, binary-resisting, ambivert designation which always pops up in a segment of the classroom population. Regardless of numbers, though, an important takeaway is that I have never had a class where there were no self-identified introverts. It is a form of diversity in our classrooms, and I’ve found it important to make space for more introverted ways of being in our classes. As we ask students to speak up, what ways can also help them to learn more quietly?   Once a student in my Intercultural Communication class at Community College of Philadelphia suggested that Disney should never have gay characters. A commotion broke out and everyone wanted to share their thoughts. I rang my meditation bell—which I usually use to start mindfulness practices in class—and asked each student to first write about their thoughts on the issue, then comment on it aloud, one after the other, without responding to any of the comments they heard. Then I asked everyone to write again about their overall perspective after hearing the voices of their classmates, noting if anything about their perspectives had shifted. Asking students to respond in writing first is helpful for some introverted students. It allows thoughts to be gathered before they are expressed. Additionally, sharing without direct response/feedback is common in some religious traditions like Quakerism, where one can share in community without engaging in more conventional dialogue. It made sense to structure the conversation this way, but I wasn’t sure if the activity would be successful. The results of this particular activity were surprising; while in the cacophony of voices that had originally erupted several people had agreed that Disney should not represent gay characters, once we had completed this activity, everyone, including the student who had initially suggested the stance, had changed their mind. What was most interesting to me was not the content of the discussion—though it was an important conversation—but rather how rare it is, especially in the America we live in today, for opinions to change that quickly. I attribute this, in part, to the thoughtfulness of the quieter students (some I’m sure who identified as introverts) who may not have otherwise gotten to share their rationales had they not been asked to write first and had this been a more traditional back and forth discussion. This approach certainly doesn’t work for every discussion, but it is a powerful tool to have in one’s back pocket. The previous example was one where writing occurred concurrently with sharing. Such an activity can be productive, but I’ve also learned that it’s fine to have students write something and not share it, not turn it in, and not have an audience for it other than themselves! I often include “recap/reflection” questions so that students can pause and think about course content. Sometimes I ask for volunteers to share, and sometimes I simply let the activity allow students to connect with their own thoughts through writing—nothing more. A final way to make space for introverts in the classroom is something I call self-advocacy points. If students extend the conversation from class with me via e-mail, they get one point of extra credit. Telling me, for example, more of their thoughts about Taoism in a Humanities class, or additional questions they have about thesis statements in an English class, helps to boost their grade. Relatedly, in classes where participation is given a point value, emails can be substituted for verbal participation in class. Students who take advantage of these points are often students who have a lot of fear speaking in class or are hugely drained by the activity. They may be thinking of an idea to share and by the time they are ready, the time to share has passed. When I receive emails, I will sometimes then make space for students to share in the next class the perspective that they have already rehearsed in an email to me. In the past, this has encouraged some students to speak more during the class as well. Setting up a self-advocacy chat or a space to continue discussions after class in an online platform would work equally well.  It is perhaps no secret that I am an introverted professor. At first, I felt that I had to teach in the most extroverted way possible and train my students to be outspoken. It was only when I began to accept and value my own introverted identity that I started to make space for introverted modes of being in my classroom. It has added texture and variety to my activities. I’ve also found that embracing human variation in the activities we create for the classroom is another way to love our own human variation and a way to gain energy as educators. ... View more

Throughout all the editions of Elements of Argument, the concept of the warrant has been the most difficult to teach. In fact, we recently started using the term assumption because it was a more familiar term. Instead of discussing what warrant underlies an argument, we speak in terms of what assumption you must accept in order to accept the evidence offered in support of a claim. The more examples we can draw from headlines, the easier it will be for students to find the assumptions that underlie the arguments they hear and read about in the media and to analyze the critical relationships among claim, support, and assumption. Identifying the underlying assumptions held by opposing sides in an argument can also help students see why it is so difficult to find a common ground. Look at how the terms can be applied to this argument: Claim: Abortion after sixteen weeks of pregnancy should not be allowed in our state for any reason. Support: Killing an unborn child after sixteen weeks is murder. Underlying assumption: A fetus of sixteen weeks is a person with the same protection under the law as any other person.   In order to accept the support as proof of the claim, you must first be able to accept the underlying assumption. On the other hand, anyone who cannot accept the underlying assumption will not be able to accept the claim. Consider these statements: Claim: It should be legal to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is not viable. Support: A non-viable fetus can never develop into a child that can survive outside of the womb. Underlying assumption: It should be legal to terminate a pregnancy that cannot produce a child that can survive outside the womb. This type of analysis can be applied to an argument on any subject. Claim: Voting by mail should not be allowed in our state. Support: Voting by mail increases the possibility of voter fraud. Underlying assumption: Forms of voting that increase voter fraud should not be allowed. There is nothing wrong with the form of this last argument, but of course, the support offered must be verifiable for the argument to be valid. The writer or speaker would have to offer convincing evidence that mail-in voting increases the possibility of voter fraud. So far, there seems to be little evidence to support that assertion of widespread fraud. Over sixty court cases have failed to prove fraud in the last presidential election. In a recent interview with Jon Stewart, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is currently running for Lieutenant Governor, defended her state’s decision to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Trans reporter and MSNBC Opinion Columnist Katelyn Burns writes, “In the interview, Stewart grounded his questions in fact, asking Rutledge what basis she had to overrule all of the major medical associations that have designed standards of care for trans minors over the last several decades. In the face of Stewart’s gentle pushback, Rutledge dissembled, remarking that she ‘wasn’t prepared to have a Supreme Court argument’ with Stewart at that particular time. The interview was notable because Stewart called out the attorney general’s arguments in real-time, such as when she tried to claim that 98% of all youth with gender dysphoria eventually grow out of it. ‘That is an incredibly made-up figure,’ Stewart replied, as Rutledge failed to name a single source for her claims.” When Rutledge does face the Supreme Court, she must be prepared to provide evidence to back up her claim and the assumptions on which she bases her argument. This is an important lesson about argumentation that we hope all of our students will learn. "Newspaper Collection, Three Headlines, July 2016"  by Daniel X. O'Neil is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview Americans in particular should study their popular arts the better to understand themselves. The media inform their environment, make suggestions about ways to view themselves, provide role models from infancy through old age, give information and news as it happens, provide education, influence their opinions, and open up opportunities for creative expression. Culture emanates from society, voices its hopes and aspirations, quells it fears and insecurities, and draws on the mythic consciousness of an entire civilization or race. It is an integral part of life and a permanent record of what we believe and are. While future historians will find the accumulated popular culture invaluable, the mirror is there for us to look into immediately. [from Handbook of Popular Culture, M. Thomas Inge, ed. (1989)] 1955 15-minute Meat Loaf recipe https://clickamericana.com/category/media/advertisementsThis post is the second of 3 posts from the Generation Project series. Teachers can use this assignment as part of the series or on its own as a stand-alone classroom activity. This component of the project extends on student’s work in exploring the historical context of their assigned generation and asks them to locate and analyze popular culture artifacts to reveal ideas, values, and behaviors of their designated generation. They influence us, persuade us, and affect our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Popular culture is generally defined as “everyday objects, actions, and events that influence people to behave in certain ways” (Sellnow 3). In the past, popular culture took the form of print and traditional media, propaganda, and other material objects. Today we can include a variety of digital media texts such as Twitter, memes, Tiktok, and other social media artifacts. Popular culture draws on mass appeal and consumption behavior that shape cultural identity and generational tendencies. It is not difficult to look around and see that these everyday objects and media artifacts are everywhere in our daily lives both in the present and the past. We experience them through advertisements, music, television, and the Internet. Exploring and analyzing these artifacts engages students in thoughtful research beyond historical facts and defining moments and provides new lenses for understanding generational research. It helps them triangulate their ideas as they look at layers of influence and engage in meaningful rhetorical analysis of a variety of multimodal artifacts. Steps to the Assignment Although students interact with these artifacts every day, they might not understand why they are significant. I start the conversation by offering definitions and examples through background readings such as Sociological Definition of Popular Culture and the PBS Idea Channel’s engaging videos on the subject: Does Popular Culture Need to Be Popular? Next, I ask students to analyze artifacts from different time periods which gets them out of their own cultural moment and offers a comparative framework. I happen to have a hearty collection of vintage magazines that I bring to class but have also used online resources that are easy to search and access (e.g., “search: advertisements from the 50’s” or dedicated sites such as Click Americana that features “vintage and retro memories.” Each student (or together in groups) chooses an artifact to analyze and discuss. They look at rhetorical arguments, identifying ideologies, and visual messaging. I ask them to extend their thinking to the cultural moment of the time period and compare it to their modern culture to show how ideologies shift and change depending on context. Students present to the class by sharing the artifact and supporting their ideas through particular details, visual references and textual examples. Other students can contribute their ideas during the presentations. This step can also work as a discussion post in an online setting. Once they have a general understanding of how to analyze the artifacts, I turn them back to a generational time period. Their ultimate goal is to understand the ways these artifacts shape their generational research of the five living generations (See Part 1 for focus years) at a particular point in time. Each student locates and analyzes the following cultural artifacts for their focus years: Material/Commercial (advertising, products, etc.) Film Art Music Literature Language (slang, saying, phrase, etc.) Fashion Food Something of their own choosing Students create a page on their Google sites in which they include: a representative image for each artifact. image citations: Many of these images are in the public domain but students cite and link to the original source of the image. a short description/analysis/interpretation of the artifact in which they describe ideologies, values or beliefs they interpret from the artifact. In the final step of the assignment students write an overview in which they read across their collection of artifact sources and focus on ideologies, values and ideas that they discern from their collection. Through this, they will cross-link to the individual artifacts in their discussion. I require that they include at least 3 embedded links and multimodal components in this post. Note: Although I have students post to their Google sites as interactive documents, it is easily modified for other formats. Reflections on the Activity This popular culture activity promotes strong research practices including source location, analysis, and documentation. It expands notions of research as students learn to triangulate their perspectives and understand the importance of multimodal artifacts to reveal significant insights. By looking at artifacts such as film, advertisements, music, literature, and language, students begin to put together a more complete picture for their generational portraits. Students nurture a critical eye for understanding the artifacts they encounter every day and it helps them realize that popular culture artifacts are actually complicated reflections that reveal and shape life as we know it. Sellnow, Deanna D. The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts. 3rd ed., SAGE, 2018. Stay tuned – next post – Part 3: Generation Collaborations ... View more

In my FYC with corequisite course this semester, I am experimenting with alternative grading to encourage students to engage with course activities and threshold concepts instead of grades. This past week, we reached the mid-point of the term, and I asked students to reflect on what they are learning about themselves as writers, readers, and language users.    For over half the students in the course, the system seems to be working as I intended: these writers are completing assigned preparation work, meeting with writing fellows, asking questions, contributing to discussions and peer reviews, and experiencing some ah-ha moments. They’ve produced multiple drafts (a literacy narrative, a discourse community profile, summaries, reflections, and a multimodal remix), and their consistent participation has earned them solid process grades. They’ve expressed surprise at the amount of work required, the extent of my feedback, and their own success. In short, they have engaged, fully, in this first-semester college writing course.    But for the remainder of the class, success in the alternative system has been elusive: they have routinely skipped required preparation, failed to share or submit drafts in progress, written cursory responses in peer reviews or asynchronous discussions, neglected my feedback, and overlooked significant instructions (often noted in bold and reiterated via email and our chat group). Their current process grades—which will contribute 60% to their final score—reflect their lack of engagement.    In some cases, I know why they are struggling: sudden changes to work schedules, hospitalization, Covid, a death in the family. Others report being unable to manage their time, lacking (or not understanding) technology, not finding the resources I’ve posted, and just not seeing the point of it all.   A picture of an empty lecture hall. Photo by Changbok Ko on Unsplash Here’s the question: with half the course remaining, how can these students get back on course, get back up to speed? Are there on-ramps by which they can re-engage in the process?    Take the case of a student who missed a couple of classes and returned on a day I had set aside for uninterrupted writing (a 90-minute block of time for composing is a luxury for many of my students). About ten minutes into the session, this student approached and placed her laptop on the table in front of me. “I can’t seem to get started,” she said. I saw a blank Google Doc on the screen. I probed a bit. Had she watched all three assigned videos and completed the related preparatory steps?  No—she had begun with one video and a pre-writing exercise the week prior to her absence, but nothing else. During the week she missed, she had disengaged. It did not matter that all needed materials were posted and easily accessible: she disconnected completely from the course for a week. She had no idea how to proceed.   She needed an on-ramp to re-engage and meet the latest writing target—without losing more process points along the way. Together, we worked through one of the missing preparatory assignments (a planning chart), listed two additional steps to tackle at home, and then set a reasonable completion date (along with an opportunity to work with a Writing Fellow the next week). While she won’t recoup all the points she missed, she can get back into the rhythm of the course within a few days.     But now consider the student who completely disappeared for two and half weeks, during which he did not communicate with me or his classmates, nor did he log into the online repository of course materials and resources. He then emailed to let me know about his planned return.  He knew his situation was precarious, but he did not want to withdraw and lose the 5 weeks he had invested. He was seeking an on-ramp to re-engage and complete the course.      The same week this student contacted me, I received an email from another student, hospitalized and facing a life-changing diagnosis; she would have to miss nearly two weeks of class. The hospital internet was spotty, but she would do her best to catch up once she was discharged. Her life demanded that she disengage, at least for a few days, and she wanted to know where the on-ramp would be when she could return.      Much has been written, researched, and (quite frankly) assumed about abysmal completion rates in developmental and corequisite writing courses. There are certainly times when students need to withdraw or repeat our courses; these occasions, however, carry significant repercussions, from financial aid to degree progress, for the students involved. Early alert systems, intrusive advising, academic coaching, peer mentors—these are all systemic institutional efforts to keep students learning, engaged on a track to completion.     As an individual instructor, I can support these initiatives by designing individualized on-ramps when appropriate and feasible. At the same time, I must admit that these on-ramps require a lot of additional time and effort from me. If I had only one course, only a handful of students, it might be different. My workload, however, is much more extensive, as I suspect most of yours are. So I am wondering if there are ways to build such on-ramps into the syllabus or course design earlier, to create these flex points for re-engagement in advance. In truth, I am not sure what exactly this would look like.     If you teach FYC or corequisite courses, particularly with under-represented populations—or if you have adapted alternative grading (even ungrading)—how do you support students who want to re-engage after a brief break in participation? I would love to hear from you.   Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Lauri Mattenson. Lauri is a Lecturer with UCLA Writing programs.   Holding Zoom Space She’s sitting in her empty bathtub, laptop propped up on a stack of towels, because there’s no room anywhere else in the apartment. He’s in his garage using his neighbor’s wifi. She’s on academic probation and never submitted a draft. They are using a laptop with seven missing keys and a cracked screen. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in two weeks. She’s taking care of three little sisters during class. He’s the only Covid-negative person in a household of six. They are working 25 hours a week while going to school full-time. We’re weary, but we’re all here.    Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

  This past summer, I have enjoyed attending some of Shawna Shapiro’s “Salons,” online discussions on topics related to language, language learning, and especially, critical language awareness (CLA), about which Shapiro has recently published an excellent book, Cultivating Critical Language Awareness in the Writing Classroom. I was very glad, then, when I learned that the Salons would continue, and recently I had the opportunity to attend one dedicated to translingual and second language approaches to teaching writing. This Salon, held on October 7, featured Shapiro in conversation with Professors Zhaozhe Wang (from the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy at the University of Toronto) and Qianqian Zhang-Wu (Director of Multilingual Writing at Northeastern University). Shapiro was particularly interested in these scholars’ views on the relationship between translingual and second language approaches to the teaching of writing in general and on how both approaches related to critical language awareness in particular. Underlying the whole discussion was the question facing all teachers of writing today: what should be our major goals in teaching writing to students today? Early in the conversation, Wu—referencing an article on "'Monolingual' Students as Multilingual Writers” (see the September 2021 issue of College English, pp. 121-137)—told the story of one “monolingual” student who drew a memorable picture of herself showing her multiple languages: her brand of “standard English,” her “Buffalo English,” the “language of her heart,” “the language of her lips,” and so on, making the point that we are all in some senses multilingual. This realization allowed this student to engage much more productively in Wu’s class. Wu went on to describe her own approach to teaching writing, saying that critical language awareness is “broader” than either the translingual or the second language approach and arguing that bringing students to full CLA can be the goal of both approaches. Wang opened his remarks with another reference to College English, citing “Clarifying the Relationship between L2 Writing and Translingual Writing: An Open Letter to Writing Studies Editors and Organization Leaders” by Dwight Atkinson, Paul Matsuda, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, Todd Ruecker, and Steve Simpson and noting that this relationship had been a fraught and contentious one for years. I take the point and importance of these two articles, but I’d like to add a third which, to me, sets the scene for dialogue and collaboration particularly well: Julia Williams and Frankie Condon’s “Translingualism in Composition Studies and Second Language Writing: an Uneasy Alliance,” in the December 2016 issue of the TESL Canada Journal.  Reading—or even skimming—these three articles provides an overview of the “contentious” or “uneasy” relationship these authors document. To oversimplify greatly, translingual and second language approaches have strong advocates. But they also have critics who argue that translingualism verges on the idealistic or pie-in-the-sky at best and “anything goes” at worst (charges hotly debated by numerous scholars, including Suresh Canagarajah and Ofelia Garcia)—and that the second language approach denies students access to a variety of dialects and languages (also hotly debated by Paul Matsuda, Ilona Lecki, and many others).  The discussion in Shawna Shapiro’s CLA Salon touched on these critiques and others, but also made attempts at rapprochement, especially in terms of relating both approaches to critical language awareness as a set of guiding principles in the writing classroom, aiming to raise awareness of issues of power and privilege, to help students understand the history of “standard” languages in the U.S. and elsewhere, and to set themselves and their own learning in the context of this history. And this part of the discussion led back to the question posed earlier: what should be the goal of the writing classroom? Arguing that proficiency in “standard” English is not enough, that “anything goes” is not enough, and that just “awareness” is not enough, Shapiro suggested this formula as a goal:  AWARENESS + ACTION = AGENCY How I wish there could be another Salon devoted to this formula, opening it for debate and discussion and criticism.  To my mind, there is much to like about it, much to admire—especially the end focus on student agency. I would suggest, however, that one key word missing from this formulation is CHOICE. Perhaps you might say that awareness, action, and agency aren’t possible without choice—and I would say “exactly so—that’s the point.” Discussions of rhetorical situations have long held that choice is both sufficient and necessary for a situation to be deemed “rhetorical.” I agree. And so to me, pedagogies, curricula, and teaching that make real choices available and possible are the ones we should be supporting. Toward that end, we can make use of principles and practices drawn from translingualism, from second language writing, and from critical language awareness. All in the service of our students being able to exercise extensive choices.  ... View more

As I continue to ponder the increasing division between Americans along cultural and ideological lines, I am struck by a parallel division within media coverage of what's hot and what's not in contemporary entertainment, especially in television. My own usual sources for information—the Atlantic, the L.A. Times, Slate, Vox, and similar sites—are filled with stories on high-buzz programs like "Better Call Saul," "Squid Game," "House of the Dragon," "Rings of Power," "Yellow Jackets," and so on, while the Emmy Awards continue to highlight such high-profile favorites as "The White Lotus," "Ted Lasso," "Succession," "Ru Paul's Drag Race," "Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls," and "Queer Eye." Finding information and commentary on series that lie outside what is largely a "blue state" entertainment universe, however, takes some effort. Sure, I can look at the Netflix lineup; but, even with such popular programs as "Bridgerton," “Peaky Blinders," and "The Empress," nothing from Netflix, as I noted in my blog post "'This is Us": How Television Ratings Reflect Cultural Trends" appears in the top Variety television ratings for 2021. Obviously, if I frequented the kind of social media sites which skew towards a more "red state" user base, I would find a lot more information on what's happening outside of my own cultural silo. But that, I am finding, is going to take some research.  A few days ago, I came across an online discussion concerning the RTV show "Gold Rush," which appeared on a hobby site I visit now and then (the general ideology of the site can be indicated by the fact that any discussion of global warming is forbidden there). I took note of it, beginning with the fact that I had never heard of the aforementioned show.  I then did some quick research. As it turns out, "Gold Rush" is a long-running Discovery Channel series (related to shows like "Ice Road Truckers" and "Deadliest Catch)" that initially premiered in 2010 as "Gold Rush: Alaska." It follows the adventures of a group of unemployed Oregonians who, without any prior experience in mining, go to Alaska to search for gold. Over the years, it appears that some of them have done very well at it. Now, there are two things about "Gold Rush" that particularly interest me: The first is that the original protagonists of the show were victims of the Great Recession, and the second is that the show is wildly popular with its audience. Let's begin with its popularity. As Anna Runa put it on PopCulture.com in 2020, "'Gold Rush' has had a serious surge in ratings, as the Discovery mining franchise has dominated cable ratings with now four of the five top cable series among people ages 25-54 and men 25-54 …driving Discovery to the top 3 most social primetime cable networks, excluding news" ('Gold Rush' Dominates Cable Ratings After 'Parker's Trail' Return, Catch an Exclusive Season Preview). This is quite an accomplishment, garnering a viewership encompassing a particularly coveted viewer demographic, and yet you don't hear about the show if the sources of your information are limited to the usual high-profile national media outlets—at least I haven't. The significance in all of this goes back to a problem that I have been exploring in a number of my Bits blogs recently: the way that a great deal of American popular culture is going under the radar of most professional culture critics, journalists, and academics. This matters, as I have said, because the study of popular culture is one of the best ways available to get a clear understanding of where our society stands as well as where it is going. If we are missing a sizable segment of that culture, then we are not going to get an accurate picture. This takes me back to the first thing that struck me about "Gold Rush," which is that it began as an RTV-style documentary on the lives of working people from the Northwest, who were set adrift by the Great Recession. There are many things that one can say about such a show—the way it celebrates traditional "frontier" values, for example, or its disregard of the environmental havoc that all forms of natural resource extraction inevitably have on the environment. Its attention to the lives of people who were victimized by an economic catastrophe that largely left the upper classes unscathed, in particular, addresses a class-based experience that popular culture in America tends to sweep under the rug. Whoever they are, the protagonists of "Gold Rush" aren't the Kardashians—and that’s significant. It is apparent that "Gold Rush" tells a story that is mostly being heard by those who already know it too well. This story could also be seen as a signifier of the vast wave of political populism that has swept America in the wake of the Great Recession. The misalignment between its loyal base of viewers and the lack of chatter surrounding it in popular media coverage is why it warrants cultural-semiotic attention and analysis.   Photo by Piotr Cichosz (2020) used under the Unsplash License. ... View more

  I wrote last week about Jillian Hess’s new book on Romantic and Victorian authors’ use of commonplace books and about how they organized information in them. Reading that book got me thinking about note-taking in general, about my own process of taking notes, and about whether and how to engage students in productive note-taking. I don’t remember being a serious note-taker until my college years, when I had some (particularly English and history) classes that alerted me to the fact that I had no clue about who did what when (not to mention why) in Western history. I knew a lot of facts but if asked to place them in historical context, I couldn’t really do it. I remember being especially irritated that I couldn’t connect what little I knew about classical music with what was happening in art or literature or history at the same time. I got so irritated that I embarked on what I now think of as my “great timeline” project. I got a long roll of paper and started at one end with what I knew then (or thought I knew) about as early Western literature: the Iliad and the Odyssey. I located them in time and the below them tried to fill in other information about their periods. And I went from there –from ancient Greece and Rome and the Roman Empire, marching through the “Dark Ages” and the Renaissance and right up to the 20th century. This was in the early sixties—no internet available, and I had only a manual portable typewriter—so I spent hours and hours in the library reference section, just searching for basic information. What I ended up with seems lame in retrospect—almost all white, almost all male, almost all Western European, not even all that much American. I think I somehow knew about the Bhagavad Gita, but my knowledge of other cultural traditions was, well, pathetic. Still, I’d give a lot to see this old “great timeline” again, if only because it represented my attempt to teach myself something, to learn to make connections, to synthesize information, and to do what I now think was a nascent kind of rhetorical thinking—that is, seeing events and texts always in context, always in conversation with other events and texts. And because it made me an inveterate note-taker. I’d start each term with a notebook for each class, later making marginal notes in a kind of meta-commentary that helped me prepare for exams and papers. And grad school was just one long session of note-taking! During the year that I spent preparing for qualifying exams, I filled two loose-leaf spiral notebooks to bulging capacity, with sections for works read, for “connections,” and for “dissertation material.” And I kept these two fraying and fading notebooks for fifty years! So, note-taking has been beneficial to me, and it’s a habit I continue still, though I use digital folders now for a lot of these notes. And I have encouraged my students to experiment with note-taking (and to explore with their relatives, especially grandparents and great-grandparents, who might have kept commonplace books or other forms or notes). Of course, students today have tools I could not even have imagined (the Xerox machine wasn’t even invented until l was well into college). One of my students carefully explained to me how he uses Twitter to take and share notes on things he wants to remember from his classes, saying that doing so helps him retain information—and connects him to friends, too. In my graphic narrative classes, I met students who kept visual notes, filling notebooks or computer files with drawings and sketches that served partially as mnemonic devices for them. And in another class, a group of students began using hashtags to organize and share information, reminding me that Lou Maraj deems “hashtagging” a form of commonplacing in his recent book, Black or Right. The times seem ripe, then, for a renewed look at note-taking, for asking students to describe and to share their own practices—perhaps even to mount a class research project on contemporary forms of note-taking. In the meantime, I think your students might enjoy seeing one terrific note-taker, Professor Amanda Watson, at work in an interview with Professor Jillian Hess.    ... View more

In the article “These College Students Don’t Like the System They’re In,” New York Times journalists Patrick Healy and Adrian J. Rivera convened a panel of twelve college students from diverse locations, political opinions, and race and class backgrounds to discuss and “describe how it feels to be in college right now.” Three out of twelve students offered tentatively optimistic responses. The remaining nine students gave pessimistic responses. Four of the students used words that suggested they felt invisible. The breakdown looks like this:   Tentatively Optimistic: Just fine.  Grateful but doubtful. Excited but new to this Generally Pessimistic (Invisibility highlighted in cyan) Unheard.  Disassociated. I don’t really know another word to say it, but kind of “effed over,” I guess. Small.  Overwhelmed.  Excessive stress.  Unlooked at.  Too necessary.    As a writing teacher, I find the students’ feelings of invisibility very concerning. Whether literal in virtual spaces, or figurative in face-to-face classrooms, feelings of invisibility expressed by students in the Times article seem to become an impediment to learning and growing, as seen in these statements:   Obstacle to Learning and Growing (specific learning issues highlighted in light red) “And no matter how much you say. …I need help [professors] don’t offer it.”   “The administration said [offering new signage] was too much money, and they don’t want to do it.” “I’m taking so many useless classes that I’m paying for that have zero effect on what I want to do in life.” “We made it very evident that we were unhappy, uncomfortable [with the professor expressing his opinion]. And yet he continued.” If I say something that might disagree with [the professor], she would get offended and treat me differently.” “When somebody of a minority is standing right in front of your face and waiting for you to say something so you can actually have a conversation — let’s have a conversation about it — it’s crickets.” “You’re always kind of wary of what that open discussion might come up to be.” “Everyone just stuck with kind of the same idea. …no one really branched out.”   I want to suggest that these words, highlighted for impact, are not unique to this generation of students, and are not necessarily or completely caused by the learning conditions of the pandemic. As a struggling undergraduate student in a very different time and place, I remember those feelings of invisibility keenly and painfully. For example:   My Undergraduate Experiences of Invisibility (students’ contemporary voices in light red) “I need help.” As a humanities major, I did not understand why I was required to take introductory courses designed for science majors. Advanced preparation in math was assumed in these courses, and there was no help available for humanities majors like me who struggled with algebra and geometry, and were not required to take either calculus or chemistry in high school. “...something that might disagree with [the professor].” In English, for which I did have advanced preparation, it appeared that I did not have the appropriate preparation for respecting the (at the time) white, male literary canon. I was given permission to write a paper linking The Canterbury Tales to popular culture, and received, as a first-year student, a very low grade for not focusing on medieval texts. “...no one really branched out.” I felt frustrated when the professor’s grading system was so unclear that the professor, more than once, spent half a class period answering students’ questions. This discussion took place in a humanities class that was important for my major, a class that I had dearly wanted to take. But the extended discussion of grades left little time to focus on the course material, and I often felt bored and frustrated.   Decades later, I can now view these examples from a teacher’s perspective. Speaking to my younger self I would reply:   Students challenges–Professor responses “I need help.” Make better use of the professor’s office hours “...something that might disagree with [the professor].” Follow the instructions to the assignment “...no one really branched out.”  Understand that other students needed information about grading to best complete the course materials    However, I recognize that none of these responses would have been satisfying. I was an undergraduate far from home accruing debt with every passing day. The explanations from an instructional perspective might have been helpful, but they would not have solved the immediate problem I was having–that learning in conventional college classrooms limited to lectures and assessments did not work for my hands-on learning processes. I could have withstood a healthy mixture of traditional and nontraditional learning, but that is not what I ended up paying for. In fact, I often felt invisible.   My hope as a teacher is to become mindful of how easy it can be for students to feel invisible, and to try to recalibrate my teaching as necessary. This is challenging and necessary work in difficult times. My ongoing goal, which is always in process, is to remain open to learning and growing with my students.       I came here to build the future. Inscription on a rectangular light-colored stone surrounded by red flagstones.  Tempe, Arizona, September 2014. Photo by Susan Bernstein   ... View more

 As instructors, we may often think of summer as the ideal time to recharge our pedagogical batteries. However, I have always found myself more inspired to re-examine my teaching (or at least to try some new practices) in the thick of the semester, when I have real students — with their particular quirks and curiosity and challenges — right in front of me. In my conversations with new students nowadays, it is clear that many are struggling to decide if college is “worth it.” The stakes feel especially high for both instructors and students at the moment, when there’s so much bad news about the slow recovery from learning losses and social disconnections students experienced during the pandemic. The New York Times recently featured a focus group of 12 college students who reflect on pressures they are feeling right now. It’s a sobering read, with students feeling “unheard” and “overworked.” Some responses were positive, but overwhelmingly, the students’ affect is gloomy. That’s why I’m glad our university teaching center is currently hosting a book group on Kevin M. Gannon’s 2020 Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. Gannon historicizes his call for “a pedagogy of radical hope” in the tradition of 19th century Dutch educational reformer Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, who was part of the democratizing “folk school” movement. Gannon also draws on insights from Paolo Freire and bell hooks about the liberatory potential of education that might be more familiar to North American instructors. In his book, Gannon proposes concrete practices (and includes useful reflective exercises in each chapter) that are “life-affirming,” flexible, inclusive practices that center student agency. The book is appealingly slim, provocative, and timely if your campus is also engaged in discussions about the value of higher education (in one way or another, aren’t we all?). On our campus, we try to inspire Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” in our new students, with first year seminars designed to spark excitement and intellectual risk-taking, often bolstered by “ungrading" practices that I have written about in earlier posts. I suspect Gannon would consider our practices examples of a pedagogy of radical hope. Additionally, we work to build community and connections through strategies I describe in my last post, and which Madhu Nadarajah writes about compellingly in this space.  But pedagogical efforts in just one class are not necessarily enough to mitigate the challenges of this overwhelming moment. I was curious to hear my own students’ responses to the New York Times’ focus group’s question, “How does it feel to be a college student today?” So, I asked my first-semester students to write one- or two-word answers anonymously on note cards that our peer mentor collected. The word cloud of their responses is the image on this post, and it is alarming. “Stressful” looms large, as do words like “disconnected,” “overwhelming” and “exhausting.” I take heart from some of the positive words (“exciting,” “safe,” “refreshing”), but look forward to listening to my students as we consider how our classroom, at least, might offer strategies to address some of their negative experiences of college. I am going to emphasize with my students what Gannon calls the “not-yetness” of learning, a term coined by Amy Collier and Jess Ross to describe the forward-looking pull of transformative education, in contrast to the deficit model (characterized by the grumpy colleague who grouses, “Why can’t students these days write?”). I am heartened to see the word “trying” in my class’s word cloud, as a signal that some students see themselves as people in process, still learning and growing—in response, I plan to share with them my own sense of not-yetness as an instructor, who, after over 30 years in the classroom, continues to try to do better.   Photo by April Lidinsky, 2022 ... View more