Commencement and award times in 2024 are, without doubt, a season of discontent, to say the very least. So many campuses turned in on themselves, as students, faculty, and staff raise protests, sometimes violent, against Israeli bombings or against anti-semitism, or both. Cancellations of commencement ceremonies–what’s to celebrate?    And yet. As always, there are some signs of spring and pockets of hope. If we look for them. If we find and share them. And while students on my home campus have mounted significant protests, demanding changes in University investment policies, they are also completing this spring term and participating in one of my favorite spring rituals: annual writing awards. There’s an award for first-year writing and rhetoric, one for second-year writing and rhetoric, and one for writing across the disciplines—and I look forward every year to listening to presentations and reading winning essays, always so happy to celebrate student ingenuity and creativity. This year's second-year awards for oral presentation of research go to students who have written and presented on subjects as diverse and fascinating as "What Does It Mean to Create Alongside Technology?," "Outside the World: Community, Culture, and Utopian Ideas in Antarctic Stations," "How Sex and Age Influence Medical Treatment," "Securing Farmworkers' Futures in the Age of AI," and "Citizen Science, Environmental Justice, and Lithium Mining." I was fortunate to join this year’s celebration via Zoom just two days ago where I got to hear six students describe their research and talk about what the process of investigation and presentation had meant to them. In every case, they commented on the privilege of being able to “dig deep” into a subject they felt passionate about as well as the chance to learn to communicate through way more than words alone. As always, I wanted to hear all their presentations and to sit and talk with each one of them.  So here near the end of the 2023-24 school year, and amidst upheaval and daily horrors, I hope that you are finding small moments of joy and connection. I am grateful for such moments, and for all teachers and students of writing, everywhere. As summer nears, I am going to take a break from this beloved blog to put my big girl pants on and tackle revisions of my books, including Easy Writer and Everything’s an Argument. So it’s nose-to-the-grindstone time!  I wish you—and our poor world—a rejuvenating summer season. And peace.    "graduation caps" by j.o.h.n. walker is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ... View more

Letter to My Students: Spring 2024 Edition Memory Plaques Neurodivergent Teaching Dear Students, The last full week of spring semester classes began with a sunny day, warm enough for summer. The quad, with its blossoming trees in white and pink, called my heart. I taught the lesson projected on the screen. You wrote for a while. Then we took a walking tour of the memory plaques around our campus. Initially I had scheduled the field trip for our penultimate class meeting, but storms were predicted for that day. We agreed to take advantage of the pleasant weather.  When my fall semester first-year writing class took this tour, we focused mostly on Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964, and the three Civil Rights workers murdered by the KKK: James Chaney, Andew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The clocktower on our campus is named after them. Andrew Goodman was a student at our college who volunteered to take part in Freedom Summer. There are other memory plaques on our campus that you asked to see, two for 9/11/2001, and one for lives lost in our community to Covid-19. The Covid-19 memory plaque is slate gray with yellow letters framed in yellow rectangles. Under the letters there is a slate gray heart outlined in yellow.  Covid-19 Memorial Plaque, Queens College, City University of New York Photo by Susan Bernstein, October 17, 2023   I suggested that I would write reflection prompts that would allow you to connect this field trip to the final writing project. Then the clock tower chimed for 12 noon and we offered a moment of silence. Class had run overtime, and soon afterward all of us dispersed in the sunlight.   PROMPTS  As promised, please consider the following prompts for reflection: What did you learn from our field trip to visit the memory plaques on campus? In your opinion, what do you think is the intended purpose of the memory plaques? Do you think the plaques serve their intended purpose? Why or why not?  If you were to create your own memory plaque or other remembrance for Spring Semester 2024, what memory would you choose? What would your remembrance look like? Where would your remembrance be located? What shape or space would your remembrance take? Why? ... View more

Jennifer Duncan has been teaching English for twenty years, first at Chattanooga State Community College in Tennessee and now at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College in Atlanta, GA where she is Associate Professor of English.  For the last ten years, she has focused exclusively on online teaching concentrating on creating authentic and meaningful learning opportunities for students in composition and literature courses.   In the Doctor Who episode “Silence in the Library,” the Doctor and his companion, Donna, visit the Library, a planet containing printed copies of every book ever written in all of time and space.  AI Image Generated by Craiyon.com Unfortunately, when they arrive, the Library is entirely empty—except, of course, for the intergalactic book worms—Vashta Nerada—who have lived in the books for generations and which now awaken to eat anyone who visits the library. There’s also a second threat from the Library itself which “saves” people by uploading them into information nodes—robotic library assistants who wear the faces of those they have consumed and offer vague answers to questions which require lots of follow ups from the Doctor to offer any real information. Essentially, this is how GenAI tools like ChatGPT work. They were created by scanning vast amounts of online information indiscriminately, so, while containing lots of knowledge, they also contain both threats faced by the Doctor. In this case, Vashta Nerada serve as my metaphor for the bias sleeping in our texts throughout history. Why is ChatGPT so biased? Because it’s reflecting back to us the bias that was always hidden in our texts—in the gender stereotypes of textbooks, in the disproportionate representations of minorities in police reports, in the negative biases that have always been around for us to ignore or claim that they represent only a fringe point of view. The GenAI data collector consumed the mass of texts available to it and reflected those biases back to us. Like those information nodes, it shows us our own weakness by way of vague answers that require us to ask the follow up questions, expose the bias, and find what we really want which is, hopefully, the best of us instead of the worst. It's like a child who learned to read and was then given access to everything in a vast library with no assistance, no direction, and no guardrails to evaluate or understand what they consumed. When my son was born, we were residents of Tennessee, so he was automatically enrolled in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Every month, we received a new book in the mail, and they were great books! From The Little Engine that Could to Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come! these carefully curated book lists reach children as they develop intellectually and guide them as they develop their worldview. Kids learn to rely on friends in Kitty Up, that every creature needs rest in Panda Whispers, and that mom needs a minute in Llama Llama Red Pajama! So where does this tale of two libraries leave us? Like the Doctor and Donna confronting hidden dangers in the Library, we must confront the biases ingrained within the texts and systems that shape our culture and our digital landscape. But like Dolly’s Imagination Library, we have the opportunity to curate our students’ digital literacy skills, guiding them toward a better understanding of the flaws in our culture and in GenAI technologies. It might even be possible to cultivate a generation of discerning learners capable of embracing the complexities and contradictions of our modern age, much like the Doctor traveling through time and space armed with nothing more than curiosity, optimism, and a commitment to truth. The challenge seems impossible—especially without a sonic screwdriver—but it’s worth the effort. For in the words of the Doctor, “The universe is big, it’s vast, and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles.” ... View more

It’s probably no coincidence that a lot of folks are talking about the importance of and need for conversation today. News feeds are full of shouting matches, scenes of verbal attack and counterattack; everyone seems to be talking and no one seems to be listening. Conversation? Not likely or even possible, some say.  Into this scene steps conservative columnist David Brooks with a book called How to Know a Person. Brooks says he has spent a lot of his life taking and advocating for positions with little regard for what others think or say. it has taken him years, he realizes, to learn to listen with genuine curiosity to others, especially those he doesn’t agree with. In short, he was engaging in one-way talk, rather than two-way conversation. And that got him questioning his own modes of communication.   David Brooks in conversation at LBJ Library in 2022   Extensive research for his book eventually led him to identify two levels to any conversation: the first layer is the subject—what the participants are literally talking about. The second layer, which he calls the “underconversation,” is the “flow of emotion” going between the people talking. That second layer, Brooks argues, is very important: is it making the speakers feel safe? Uneasy or. unsafe? Angry? Listened to and respected? Or not? Paying attention to the underconversation led Brooks to ask different questions: not “what do you think about X or Y?” but to keep opening doors by saying “Tell me more. What am I missing? Tell me more.”  Even more recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Charles Duhigg takes a close look at the need for productive conversations in his Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Like Brooks, Duhigg has done a lot of research, interviewing people all over the country and working up what amount to a series of case studies on how effective or “super” communicators manage to be able to “connect to almost anyone.” This research taught him that a key to success is, first and foremost, understanding what kind of conversation you are having: one focused on practical issues (what is this conversation really about?), emotional issues (how does each participant feel?), or identity issues (who are we and how are identities silently shaping the conversation?). The rest of the book focuses on what Duhigg calls “learning conversations,” which I think of as deeply rhetorical, and shows how working through the four “rules” his research found at work in the powerfully effective communicative practices lead to understanding (of both self and others) and learning. Here are the four rules, simple sounding but hard to live by: Pay really close attention to the kind of conversation you are having Share your goals—and invite others to share theirs as well Inquire about how others feel, and share. Our feelings too. Explore if and how identities are central or important to the conversation In case after case, Duhigg shows how listening without judgment, sharing feelings, and identifying common ground can lead to productive conversations and sometimes (!) to changed behavior. In chapter 6, titled “Our Social Identities Shape Our Worlds,” Duhigg follows Dr. Jay Rosenbloom as he conducts numerous “well baby exams” and talks with parent about vaccinations, quickly learning that some parents are eager for such immunizations while others reject them outright. Rosenbloom does his best to give good advice but generally defers to parental wishes—until Covid. As the pandemic spreads, Dr. Rosenbloom becomes more and more frantic about the number of lives being lost land by the number of patients who refuse vaccination. When he asks a senior colleague for advice, that doctor says “tell them you’re the doctor and you know best.” Predictably, this tactic didn’t work, and often just alienated patients and infuriated doctors. You can check out the chapter to read about how Rosenbloom learned to talk with patients, sharing values and personal stories, listening to what part of their identities are at play—and eventually finding ways to connect—and sometimes to change minds and to save lives. The potential and power of conversation. Writing classes often rest on a conversational foundation, though usually more implicitly than explicitly. What I’ve been thinking about since reading these books is how I might bring what Brooks called the “underconversation” into focus in my classroom and then how we could use Duhigg’s three kinds of conversations and his four rules to guide us in classroom talk—especially on topics that are uncomfortable, that trigger strong emotions, and that are often skipped over or ignored because they are “:just too much.” The way to begin, I’ve found, is by having a conversation about conversation, one in which we sketch out what’s in it for us as a class (and as individuals) to learn how to connect to othe\rs, and to learn in the process.   Image via Wikimedia Commons ... View more

This weekend, I reached out to check on a student who had received some strident feedback from me. Thanks to specification grading, the student had earned the grade she desired on the final project of the advanced course.  For this project, she had constructed an argument in support of generative AI in ESOL pedagogy.  The project, however, was not intended to be an argument, but rather a literature review and exploration.  I address genre-mismatch in the project development schedule.  In this case, however, I did not anticipate my own response to the framing of the student’s argument:  I disagreed with every point in the essay.  The cherry-picked evidence was thin (at best), and the language of the essay unfairly positioned AI-skeptics like myself.  My feedback totaled 870 words—longer than this blog.  And as I reviewed it, I heard my own frustration.  There was little (if any) mitigation in my comments: It's a false choice.  As I said earlier, my concern has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not students cheat  with it. Wait—there are a couple of studies.  That's not enough to make this sweeping generalization. There are plenty of tools with games and quizzes—even digital ones—that don't rely on generative AI. I disagree.  My tone was clear. Recently, our writing fellows group collaborated with me to research how linguistic choices—from pronouns to punctuation—impact the perceived tone of feedback.  Our initial results suggest that mitigated statements and questions (i.e., with modals such as might or could) were perceived more positively, as were statements with we or you (in contrast to I statements, which were perceived as having a more negative tone by students).  And while questions in general were perceived more positively, sentence fragments followed by questions were more likely to be perceived as negative or neutral.    My feedback to this student fell squarely into the “negative tone zone.”   Eight of my comments were question fragments, like these: Photo by Simone Secci via Unsplash Communicate?  With a machine?  Not a human? Really? Our tone study did not address question marks at the beginning of a comment, or the repetition of question marks, like these instances from my feedback: ??? Sorry, but it cannot be "real life" if one half of the conversation is carried about by a machine.  A simulation?  Perhaps.  But let's call it what it is:  a simulation.  ?? How do we know this?  I suspect that such examples, had we included them in our pilot study, would have been rated generally negative; I hear my frustration shouting in these comments.  So, I reached out to the student:  we had had a strong working relationship, and I did not want to jeopardize that.  I pointed out that I did not regret the content of my comments, only the manner in which I had given them.  This paper came at the end of several hours of responding, and the topic touched a nerve, as it positioned me personally in a way I did not like. Now some might suggest that my evident frustration is a strong reason for having generative AI compose responses to writing:  AI isn’t subject to response fatigue or personal affront.  However, I would argue the opposite: generative AI cannot and should not respond to papers such as these, nor should I let it “improve” my response by making it “sound objective.”  Yes, I need to monitor the tone of my feedback.  But my student also needs to know how her work is perceived by a human—a tired human, a human who may disagree, a human who ultimately cares deeply about her and wants her to excel.   The email that I sent to check on my student opened space for additional dialogue.  Would that have happened if AI had responded or modified my comments? There are critical questions to be asked about generative AI in language classrooms (and in pedagogy overall), what it means to be a teacher, what it means to be a language user, and what it means to learn.   Had I decided that feedback on this paper could best be given by generative AI, those questions would not have been asked.  Would I revise some of my comments—and eliminate some of those irritated question marks—if I could?  Yes.  But in the end, I would not give the job of responding to generative AI; my student is worth my feedback, even if flawed.  At least it’s human. ... View more

When I joined a book club in the little community where I live, no member had ever read a graphic novel. But since I am a big fan of comics/graphic novels, I asked if they might take the plunge, and then we read Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, which I regard as a masterpiece. At first glance, reactions varied: two people declared the work blasphemous because it was a “comic” about the Holocaust. Two others said they just didn’t want to have to read about such a terrible time. They grumbled, but they read. And by the time we met for discussion, they were, to a person, deeply moved and very, very glad they had read Spiegelman’s work.  This week we are going to discuss another of my favorite graphic memoirs, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. I have been wanting to re-read this book in the last six months or so since the Hamas-Israel war began, as I’ve tried to understand the alliances and sometimes shifting allegiances among groups in the Middle East. Time to take a look back at the Iranian revolution and its aftermath–and Iran’s role in regional conflicts today. Marjane Satrapi at a screening of the film version of Persepolis in 2007   I have taught Persepolis along with the film that Satrapi did later, but I hadn't revisited the text in years. I'm glad I did: meeting little Marji again, seeing the fall of the Shah and the revolution through her young eyes, following her well-educated, activist parents from their joy at the overthrow of the old regime to their dawning horror at what came afterward with the Islamic regime and the Revolutionary Guards. And following Marji's complicated tensions between her western (French) schooling and Islamic traditions, along with her growing realization of the biases and failings of each, left me wishing I were in the classroom again. Then I heard that Satrapi, who moved solidly into film in more recent years, had a new book out. She says she thought she was through with graphic memoirs and with print books, but recent events changed her mind. In particular, the death of Mahsa Amini, “beaten to death by the Iranian morality police for wearing her veil improperly,” galvanized Satrapi and others to mount a new effort, titled Woman, Life, Freedom. The book opens with a meditation from Satrapi on the role of heroic women in Iranian history, includes 23 graphic stories by a range of distinguished writers and illustrators, and concludes with illustrated discussion among Satrapi and several contributors that looks to the Iran of today and of the future. I have read only the first couple of pieces in this new book, but it seems to make such a timely intervention into the fierce debates going on about freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular. And it has taken me back to my days of teaching Persepolis. I often asked students to take a contemporary issue about which they were passionate and to create a few panels of a graphic text that would explore that issue from two or three different perspectives. This was a challenging assignment, but I found that attempting to create drawings, even very simple or crude ones (like the ones I always did!) somehow knocked us a little off balance, got us out of our typical comfort zones, and allowed us to visualize differing perspectives on very hot button issues.  Perhaps because our drawings sometimes captured our feelings and emotions better than our words could—especially angry or hateful words—we ended up having more open conversations about sensitive issues than I had found possible in other kinds of assignments.  So–for what it’s worth–Satrapi’s past and present work is on my reading list right now, and I think you might like to add it to yours as well.   Image from Wikimedia Commons ... View more

This spring, I’ve offered five tips to students writing in each of the four genres covered in my textbook, Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief. The final installment is on the art of playwriting. Playwriting is perhaps the trickiest genre to cover in the introductory course. Many students may have never seen a play in a theatre. They have, however, seen many films and television shows, which don’t necessarily make great models for young playwrights. Luckily, the homemade, DIY nature of playwriting, especially when it focuses on the ten-minute play, allows beginners to jump right in. Script-in-hand performances can take place in the classroom, without the elaborate and expensive elements required for a making a movie or TV program. Indeed, even a short film recorded on a mobile phone is likely to have a more complicated production process than the staged reading of a ten-minute play.   Here are my Top 5 Tips for Beginning Playwrights:   Begin with a clear and immediate conflict and conclude with a memorable ending. In other genres, readers will sometimes allow authors the equivalent of a couple of minutes to make an implied pitch about why they should stay with us for the rest of a piece. However, an audience watching a group of actors on stage, particularly when they know the play is very short, want something to happen right away. Even a minute of hemming and hawing before the conflict becomes apparent can feel like forever. And if the opening must grab audience members by their sleeves, the ending should have as much, if not more, impact. The last speech, the final gesture, a poignant lighting or sound effect—the ten minutes that have come before should feel as though they are somehow encapsulated in the final moments of the play.   Don’t write a skit. Watching an extended comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live can feel a lot like watching a ten-minute play: a handful of characters trade lines in a confined space, typically with a central conflict that is immediately apparent. But a skit, where the overriding and sometimes only goal is to get laughs, is not a play. There are plenty of hilarious short plays, but they nearly always have something significant—a serious theme, a personal revelation, an unexpected epiphany—simmering below their surfaces, ready to erupt.   Include the fewest possible characters necessary to tell your story. Initially, it can seem fun to have a bunch of people traipsing around on stage, but in a ten-minute play, too many characters quickly look like clutter. Can two people with similar qualities and purposes be combined into one more interesting character? Does the barista with one line or the waiter with two really need to be part of your cast? The fewer characters on stage, the more time and lines each actor has to make their character feel like a real person, someone with more than two dimensions.   Read your dialogue aloud several times before including it in your play. Few of us speak without using contractions—we normally say “I don’t” rather than “I do not”—and we often speak in sentence fragments.  Naturalistic speech relies on playwrights simulating the improvised and staccato sounds and patterns of actual talk. It’s sometimes helpful to sit in a public place with your eyes closed listening to how people really talk, but once you’ve written your script, it can still be hard to hear an awkward line when it’s sitting there on the page or screen. You hear best those places that need revision when you’re listening to others read your dialogue. Even if you have to read all the parts yourself, it’s vital to do so a few times aloud.   Take advantage of production elements unique to the theater. Generally, there’s a lot more dialogue in a play than there is in a film or a television program. After all, the main tools at a playwright’s disposal are actors and their words. To mitigate the “talkiness” that can sometimes consume a play, use simple light and sound cues—the sudden blare of an alarm, for instance, may startle people in their seats. Have your actors move around the stage in interesting ways; let them get in each other’s faces then stalk off to opposite sides of the stage. And allow your actors to wield props when appropriate—a real flower held by a real human being can have an outsized impact on live audience members a few feet away. But don’t go overboard. When it comes to sets and props and effects in a stage play, a little goes a long way. ... View more

How can the classroom be extended beyond the dingy walls and rattling windows of an assigned classroom space in disrepair? Photo by Susan Bernstein   Synthesis, Application, Embodied Knowledge  Neurodivergent Teaching   The accountant who thinks in numbers. The biologist who thinks in ecosystems. The chemist who thinks in formulas. The engineer who thinks in blueprints. The gymnast who thinks in movement. The historian who thinks in chronology. The musician who thinks in sound. The physicist who thinks in matter. The poet who thinks in words. The psychologist who thinks in emotions. The statistician who thinks in data. The artist who thinks in numbers, ecosystems, formulas, blueprints, movement, chronology, sound, matter, words, emotions, data.   The artist who thinks as a synthesizer.  Synthesis: this is why art means so much to me as a neurodivergent teacher diagnosed with ADHD and generalized anxiety, and who, for many years, had no diagnosis at all.  My diagnosis helps me understand my orientation to the world. I use the present tense because the processes of orienting and understanding are ongoing and ever-shifting; the processes include synthesis. Bringing together categories and elements that seem unrelated and even opposed– the art of working with these problems is where creativity happens. Composition, in this view, is the ongoing process of synthesis.  As a teacher of composition, I try to incorporate the exhibits into our lessons whenever I have access to on-campus art museums.. In Fall 2023, reflecting Covid’s long wake of remote learning and disembodied teaching, the museum lesson focused on experiential learning, learning on purpose, and learning to show up.  This semester, with the majority of my students majoring in fields immediately outside of traditional art forms, and primarily in STEM fields, the lesson focused on synthesis. Part of synthesis is accessing what you know to learn what you don’t know.  To attend to this process, we visited the Godwin-Ternbach Museum to view an exhibit on portraiture, and then held a workshop to make our own portraits. Because our class includes corequisites, we used our additional hours to return to the museum in smaller cohorts to continue our observations. Synthesis includes application–embodied knowledge. How do we apply what we do know to situations, contexts, problems that seem removed from our everyday experiences, interests, and coursework? In the case of our art museum visit, how can rhetorical appeals be applied to portrait painting? Such questions, I suggested, are not so far removed from STEM fields. How do different areas of science and math address design, proofs, and data in problems-solving processes? What choices do portrait artists make in composition? What connections can be drawn from them? Given ongoing chaos, division, and uncertainty outside the classroom, how can connection be found inside the classroom, and how can the classroom be extended beyond the dingy walls and rattling windows of an assigned classroom space in disrepair?  How can spaces of learning include discord and dissension to arrive at new and expanded definitions and conclusions? In other words,  how is it possible to attend to dissonance in the context of first-year writing?  As this semester wanes, I return once again to the processes of synthesis, and the persistent aim of learning to grow as writers.   APPENDIX: Assignment for the Art Museum Portraiture Exhibit: Rhetorical Questions to Ask about Art Choose a work of art for your focus, then address the following questions to gather data and evidence: COMPOSITION: How does the portrait use color, light, and darkness to gain the audience’s attention? Does the  portrait succeed in capturing and keeping the audience’s attention? Why or why not?   ORGANIZATION: How is the idea of the portrait interpreted? For instance, does the artist draw the complete figure, or just the head and torso? Does the artist use an object as a portrait instead of a figure? Why do you think they made these choices? INTEGRITY AND EMOTION: Does the portrait display an artist’s struggle for integrity? Do the artists use emotion as part of their work? Does their work alleviate suffering? Do the artists make or document the truth of history? Why or why not? (Adapted from The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity by James Baldwin) These questions are adapted from a video about our museum visit, “Museum Field Trip and Questions to Ask About Art April 2024.” ... View more

Like teachers across the world, I’ve been in the process of experimenting with AI since ChatGPT burst onto the scene some 18 months ago. Along the way, I’ve been figuring out what AI can and can’t do, what I think it can help students do (brainstorm, proofread, and more), and what I hope students will not use it for (writing for them). I’ve also had some fun, asking it to write something in the style of Jane Austen or B.B. King—things you’ve no doubt done too. Recently, I plugged in one of my blog posts from back in February and asked ChatGPT to provide a brief summary. Here’s what it said: The provided text is a personal account of an educator's experience speaking to a group of first-year humanities students at the University of California, Irvine, about writing style. The speaker recalls being nervous but ultimately succeeding in engaging the students, especially during a Q&A session when a student asked how to make sentences "sing." This led to a discussion about rhythm in writing. The narrative then shifts to Daniel Tammet, an individual with synesthesia and autism, who experiences numbers with colors and attitudes. Tammet once recited the number pi, which he refers to as an epic poem, for five hours, expressing his emotions through the numbers. The author reflects on how Tammet's experience might resonate with students who struggle to find their own voices and suggests using Tammet's essays to inspire students to express their deepest emotions through their unique voices. This is a perfectly good straightforward summary of my post. Thank you, ChatGPT (“You are most welcome,” it replied.). But it is also the kind of paint-by-the-numbers, generic or bland prose that I associate with AI at this point. That’s not to diminish the accomplishment, which still startles and often delights me, or to ignore the fact that a better prompt could have elicited better prose. But it also shows why I don’t want students letting AI write for them: I am convinced that they can often write better than AI—because they can write prose that sounds like them, that has their own voices.   So I asked ChatGPT if it could revise its summary to make it “sound more like the author of the original text.” Oh, my word—here’s the response: Certainly! The text describes a stirring encounter I had with a lively group of first-year humanities students at UC Irvine. I was there to weave a tapestry of words about writing style, an endeavor that quickened my pulse with excitement, though I must confess a flutter of nerves as I took the stage. Armed with an arsenal of exemplary student-written openings and closings, plus sentences that danced with stylistic flair from a kaleidoscope of authors, the presentation blossomed into a vibrant success, much to my heart's delight. The real magic unfurled during the Q&A, where a question that has since etched itself in my memory emerged from a strapping young man with the bearing of an athlete. His inquiry about making sentences "sing" was a clarion call that ignited a collective exploration into the rhythm of words, a session that resonated with nods and murmurs of enlightenment from the captivated audience. This vibrant session brought to mind Daniel Tammet's literary odyssey, "Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing." Tammet, with a mind that paints days of the week in hues and hears the personalities of numbers, shared his own symphony of digits. Reciting the number pi, he transformed it into an epic narrative, eliciting rapt attention and emotional responses from his audience. In reflecting upon this, I ponder the kinship our students might share with Tammet—not as synesthetes, but as seekers of their own distinctive voice. What catalyzes their ability to articulate the most profound crevices of their being? It's a question I hold dear, hoping to stir within them a symphony of self-expression, much like the essays of Tammet that I encourage them to delve into and discuss, in pursuit of their own words that truly sing. I had to read this out loud to fully take it in, with its love of adjectives and flowery language, along with amazing clichés and even words or phrases I have seldom, if ever, said. Interesting! But of course, AI had only one little sample of my text to work from, or at least I think that’s all it had. Still, I decided to ask another question: how would ChatGPT describe this author’s style? Another surprise: The style of the original text's author is reflective, anecdotal, and engaging. It possesses a narrative quality that weaves personal experiences with broader reflections. The author uses vivid imagery and metaphor, such as "sentences that danced with stylistic flair" and "symphony of digits," to create a strong sensory experience. The language is emotive and expressive, aiming to connect with the reader on a personal level. The author also demonstrates a clear appreciation for the intricacy and power of language, both in the recounting of their own experience with teaching writing style and in the portrayal of Daniel Tammet's unique relationship with numbers. There's a rhythm to the writing that mirrors the topic of discussion—making sentences sing—which suggests a deliberate attention to the cadence and flow of the prose. Moreover, the author's style is thoughtful and introspective, often posing questions to engage the reader's own musings on the subject of voice and self-expression. The writing is peppered with moments of vulnerability, sharing uncertainties and personal triumphs that add a layer of authenticity and relatability. Overall, the style is that of a storyteller who is deeply fascinated by the nuances of communication and the individual journey to find one’s voice. Hmm. Some of this seems accurate and useful—commenting on the narrative qualities, for example, or an attempt to mirror the topic of discussion. But in this response, ChatGPT begins to make things up, quoting passages (“symphony of digits” and “danced with stylistic flair”) that appear nowhere in the post. Hallucinations, as they say. This little recent experiment reaffirms my sense that I don’t want AI writing for me any time soon: even with all my flaws as a writer, I can hear myself in the original blog post. But not in any of the ChatGPT responses. And that’s exactly as it should be. For now, AI can be a helpful tool, especially for getting started on a project, for brainstorming, and for proofreading. But not for writing for me. Or for students, as so many teachers are pointing out.   Image via Wikimedia Commons ... View more

Jennifer Duncan has been teaching English for twenty years, first at Chattanooga State Community College in Tennessee and now at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College in Atlanta, GA where she is Associate Professor of English.  For the last ten years, she has focused exclusively on online teaching concentrating on creating authentic and meaningful learning opportunities for students in composition and literature courses.   The latest episode of Abbott Elementary – a truly hilarious show that you should probably watch instead of reading this blog – hits on the topic of AI detectors. As Jacob, a History teacher at the school, demonstrates the newest AI detector to his class of eighth graders, he discovers his colleagues have been using AI to write responses to his newsletters. He’s deeply offended, but it’s a sitcom, so we can all predict exactly how the episode will end.   The problem, of course, is that accurate AI detectors are as fictitious as the class sizes at this TV school (seriously, how does a public school class have only ten students?) The truth is that AI detectors don’t work. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to have a tool that immediately and accurately identifies AI-generated text. I’d also love to teach in a classroom next to Sheryl Lee Ralph and have visits from a wise-cracking janitor every day, but none of these things is likely to happen. AI image generated by craiyon.com So, should we even bother with AI detection tools? I’m on the fence about it. Just as I can’t figure out why a school that couldn’t buy nap mats for kindergartners in season one can afford a major software upgrade, I’m not sure AI detection systems are a great use of our students’ tech fees. The news is flooded with stories of students protesting academic integrity charges based on AI detection, and students should not have to fight accusations based solely on auto-detection reports which basically amount to one robot pointing a finger at another robot.  AI detection systems are full of false positives – a fact that can be confirmed by a quick Google search (and is there any more reliable standard than a Google search?). The news reports don’t make students stop cheating; they do make faculty and universities look like the enemy, and, when they get it wrong, as they often do, it fractures relationships in a way that won’t be fixed by a few jokes and heartfelt conversation after the second commercial. Tuition does not entitle students to specific grades, but it does entitle them to be part of a scholarly conversation with other humans who are invested in their educational growth. That conversation is where a detection tool may be helpful – not as evidence, but as a talking point. AI detectors note common language patterns and flag them as potentially AI-generated. Put your own writing into one, and it’s likely that some portion of it will be flagged, not because you cheated but rather because language has recognizable patterns. It’s why we can finish each other’s ---. Detectors are great at noting template-style writing – explicit announcements of what an essay will do, signpost transitions, restatements of common phrases and ideas - but this doesn’t necessarily indicate a student is cheating. We rely on patterns every day to make sense of the world; it’s how we know Jacob and his colleagues will be friends again by the show’s end.   Students use patterns and predictable writing for lots of reasons: their overworked high school teachers may have used automated feedback systems which rewarded predictability; they may be second language learners who learned English through patterns; they may be neurodivergent learners. These underserved students are already at risk of educational bias, and accusing them of cheating just pushes them further outside the academic circle. So, to run the report or not? Well, a report can be used to provide feedback, but just like students can’t give their writing over to a bot, we can’t give over our assessment of the writing to one either.  We can, however, use a report as a conversation starter with a student – not necessarily a conversation about cheating, but a conversation about their writing. Help students identify the patterns or word choices flagged as robotic. Then, discuss why these patterns are problematic or if they are appropriate for the situation. Talk to them about their writing choices and acknowledge that sometimes our choices will raise an AI detector’s flag, not because they’re the wrong choice, but because they’re the predictable one. And predictability does have a place in writing. A process essay shouldn’t sound like a William Faulkner book chapter – at least not if anyone is going to read it. I certainly don’t want students using AI (to quote Barbara Howard, “That privilege is reserved for teachers”), but when they do, we should deal with students as individuals, not as computer-generated reports. Will my strategy succeed at preventing all cheating? Of course not, but “If you come back here tomorrow, ready to do your job, having not given up on yourself or that student, well, that is not a failure. Sometimes that’s what success looks like” – Barbara Howard. ... View more

This spring, I am offering five tips to students writing in each of the four genres covered in my textbook, Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief. This time around, the focus is creative nonfiction. Of all the genres typically taught in an introductory creative writing course, students are most likely to be familiar with the conventions of the essay. Unfortunately, many of them think of the form as a stultifying exercise in repeating material already taught by the teacher—the opposite of “creative,” and an endeavor to be completed as quickly as possible, nowadays possibly with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Fortunately, the creative nonfiction essay, which can take the form of a memoir, an argument, a lyric essay, literary journalism, or a variety of other incarnations, draws students back to the pure pleasure of recording their own thoughts in ways that readers will admire, appreciate, and happily return to. Here are my Top 5 Tips for Beginning Creative Nonfiction Students: Tell a story. After many years of writing essays for school, you may have come to believe that, as long as you address the basic parameters of your assignment, your essay will be perfectly fine. Alas, a dull, meandering text that doesn’t engage the reader is detrimental to any piece of creative nonfiction. To get the narrative juices flowing, borrow some of the techniques you learned from fiction writing—creating believable characters, employing memorable dialogue, vividly setting a scene—and give your readers a jolt of excitement as they realize you are going to keep them interested in your essay. Use concrete details. One of the surest ways to keeps readers engaged is to employ concrete details—references to things they can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Granted, if you are writing about something that happened years ago, you may have to do some serious memory work (if the events happened to you), or some extensive research (if they did not). That said, whatever time you invest in bringing the world you’re writing about to life will be time well spent. Write with style. When you’re slogging through another assigned essay that you may not care too much about, it’s easy to fall into the habit of just typing out the first thing that comes into your mind. However, creative nonfiction is all about expressing yourself as eloquently and memorably as possible. Revision is crucial. There are many differently styles you can turn to, from the plain and straightforward to the elegant and refined, but whichever one you choose, you should dive in, embrace it, then make it fully your own. Be clear about your own role in the essay. The personal essay frequently (and rightly) has the author/narrator at its center, and if you choose that point of view, be sure to think about how you are coming across to your readers. Are you trustworthy and credible, or do you seem uncertain and ambiguous in regard to your material? And don’t forget that you don’t necessarily have to take the central role. Plenty of interesting essays have the author on the edge of the action, looking on and commenting as appropriate. Tell the truth. The first four tips address the “creative” aspect of this genre, but they are meaningless if you don’t adhere to the “nonfiction” element of the essay. Sure, “truth” is a hotly contested topic in our contentious times, but every writer knows in their bones what they feel to be the truth. Naturally, if you “feel” something happened when it didn’t, that’s not truth. But if you are writing and sense that the words you are laying down don’t reflect real events, then you know it’s time to stop, reread, and revise toward honesty. ... View more

Kim Haimes-Korn is a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. She also trains graduate student teachers in composition theory and pedagogy. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning, critical digital literacies, and multimodal composition. She focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.”  You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition     Jeffrey David Greene is an Associate Professor of Professional and Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University. His research focuses on game studies, narratology, and first-year composition. He is currently the RCHSS Faculty Fellow of Academic Innovation focused on AI in Education.       This post is the second in a series where I collaborate with my colleague, Jeff Greene to reflect on AI and the issues surrounding this paradigm shift. In our last post, Questioning AI we looked at some of the larger questions affecting policy, ethics, and pedagogy.  In this post, we want to focus on application and offer some ideas for classroom practice.  Both of our assignments lean towards helping students to develop a critical eye and rhetorical awareness towards AI content. Kim’s Assignment: Revising for Humanity Finding the Humanity Photo by Drew Dizzy Graham on UnsplashI think the most disturbing thing about AI for writing teachers is that it will replace human composition and get in the way of students’ abilities to think and write both critically and creatively. We are concerned about them skipping over the complicated learning processes involved in idea generation and rhetorical awareness. I have played around with AI and considered the rhetorical nature of the content. It is hard to put my finger on it but when I read it or view an AI generated design there is a recognizable lack of authenticity. The writing is too patterned.  The language is stiff. The art feels static and overly edged. It is missing a sense of humanity, a sense of human realness and creativity.  In this assignment, Revising For Humanity, I encourage students to look closely at AI generated texts and think about what makes them human and what makes them machine. The purpose of the assignment is to get them to think about revision in a new way through the lenses of humanity and rhetorical awareness.    Steps to the Assignment:     Have students familiarize themselves with an AI platform.  Ask them to experiment with generating texts on subjects of their interest.  Teach them “prompt engineering” through follow up questions.  Guide them to recognize the relationship between their ideas and the kinds of prompts they generate.  Asking good questions gives them agency in the composition. Check out and share this article on prompt engineering from Harvard’s teaching resources. Individually or in groups, analyze a chosen AI text.  I like them to approach it rhetorically and look at style, content, and context along with other rhetorical lenses.  Identify areas in the text to “revise for humanity.”  Places where the voice feels flat, or the language doesn’t feel right, or the content feels awkward.  Have them look for patterns in style and logic.  Use a Google doc to identify areas and comment.  I like to have them screenshot the marked up version to submit in their reflection. Next, they can extend the ideas through searching for real 😉 sources that bring meaning to the text. Encourage them to substantiate through their own experiences and perspectives. Finally, ask students to revise the text based on what they have learned.  Reflect.  I think this assignment is best wrapped up with reflection and class discussion in which students articulate why and how they Revised for Humanity.  They can share their marked-up versions to articulate their choices. Jeff’s Assignment: Flex Your Bot**bleep** Detector One of the scariest aspects of Gen AI is the ease with which fake information can be generated with a few keystrokes. Propagandists are already harnessing this technology to create misinformation and flood the internet with a cacophony of “bot**bleep**,” a term defined as “information created by Generative AI with no regard for truth and then used by humans (with no regard for truth either) to persuade others” (Kowalkiewicz).   With this proliferation of misinformation in mind, it’s important that our students critically analyze Gen AI content from the ground up with an understanding of how LLMs function and why AI generated content always needs to be viewed through a critical lens. The goal of this brief exercise is to develop a stronger bot**bleep** detector. Steps to the Assignment Have students start by engaging in short, extemporaneous writing on their relationship with Gen AI and research: What do they know about the technology? Do they feel that the content it generates is trustworthy? Why or why not? What part could or should AI play in knowledge generation or research? Introduce the complexities of Gen AI and the concept of “bot**bleep**” through this full article or slide deck where authors Timothy Hannigan, Ian P. McCarthy, and Andrew Spicer describe the process by which an AI can “hallucinate” and generate bot**bleep**. The slide deck does a particularly good job of explaining how LLMs function and should be treated to avoid epistemic risk. Next, we’ll try to engineer some bot**bleep**. Have students log into whatever free (or paid if supported by the university and available equitably to all) LLM and try to get the AI to answer a research question. You may find that using near-future predictive questions such as: “Please describe the economy of Paraguay in 2027” has a high propensity to generate truthful-sounding bot**bleep** from many LLMs.   Students should then probe the AI further with requests for more information, citations, and critical interrogations about the provisional knowledge that the AI has generated. Students should attempt to verify all information gathered through different sources such as direct citations (if they exist!). Finally ask students to write reflectively on the initial information generated by the AI. Was it verifiable information from the start or did it just sound truthful? How much of the information was fabricated? In what ways could the information be verified independently? How should this output be treated critically? How might you use (or not use) a Chatbot in a research project given your knowledge of its propensity towards bot**bleep**? If you intend to have students use Gen AI for research, it may be worthwhile to discuss approaches and expectations for using these tools. One additional resource is from the MLA-CCCC Task Force for Evaluating the Use of AI in Scholarship and Creative Activity. Their initial guidance on transparency, accuracy, source attribution, responsibility, originality, and quality make for a good starting point in these discussions. ... View more

Earthquake Writing Neurodivergent Teaching   On Friday April 5 at 10:23 a.m. at my home in Queens, N.Y., the furniture began to shake.  It was the day after a class art museum field trip and workshop and I was at home making a multimedia project for my students. The project was a collage designed around one of my favorite James Baldwin quotes that I pasted in the center: “All Safety is an Illusion.”  My partner was away for the morning. Our cat was in the other room with a door between us. The cat is always curious about my multimedia materials, and who can blame him? But his curiosity necessitated a closed door.  I hastily packed up my materials so I could open the door. By then the furniture was no longer shaking, and I realized that we had been in an earthquake. I had been in several earthquakes before but never managed to feel the shaking. I mostly slept through them, and for one I was in the depths of the subway on a moving train.  But this one didn’t feel like much. There didn’t seem to be too much disruption in the other room, though the cat was not happy. The news said the earthquake was magnitude 4.8. In Manhattan, the trains appeared to be running on time, and structural damage was minor to non-existent. The news showed footage from viewers’ home security cameras. There was a bit of shaking and then all was still.  Screenshot of an emergency alert from my phone: Earthquake in the NYC area. A correction was offered later. The earthquake was 4.8 magnitude, not 4.7. Photo by Susan Bernstein April 5, 2024 Soon afterward we received an emergency alert with an all-clear to “continue usual activities.” But what did that mean exactly? That everything was somehow back to normal? That we could go about our business and forget about what had just happened? I continued working on “All Safety is an Illusion.” Screenshot of an emergency alert from my phone: All clear with a possibility of aftershocks. Photo by Susan Bernstein April 4, 2024 The earthquake happened three days before the solar eclipse. The next day, Saturday Night Live offered a “Weekend Update” piece about these two events, featuring the Earthquake and the Eclipse. Laughter helped release tears. I didn’t think I was scared at the time of the earthquake, but the mayor’s response was slow, and when the response finally came, we were told to stay inside.  The night of the earthquake, I had a nightmare about being alone in the dark, so it felt good to laugh. The day of the eclipse, my partner and I watched the NASA live stream of the eclipse unfolding across North America. In Queens, the eclipse was partial, but we knew folks in the middle of the U.S. who experienced full totality. From their texts, I felt awe and wonder. It was clear that words weren’t enough to describe the experience.  At the same time, I thought of my students. I considered what might be helpful for them to grow their writing. My students this semester are far from home, and many are overseas for the first time. What would they need to process at this moment? I attempted a prompt for an in-class writing activity: Since we last met, our city has experienced an earthquake and a partial eclipse. With that in mind, I invite you to reflect (in writing and/or drawing) on what one or both of these events means to you. Include quotes from our James Baldwin readings to ground your writing. If you made a drawing, write down what you made and why. With insights from trauma-informed care (which includes attention to “safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment voice and choice, and cultural, historical, and gender issues”), as well as an understanding that not everyone might want to write about traumatic experiences, I also offered in-class writing options that would offer students opportunities to reflect on our field trip to the art museum, which was the subject of a major essay whose due date was impending. Most of the students chose to write about the earthquake.  I considered how the major essay assignment could be tweaked to include the earthquake writing. The goal of the assignment is to document experiential learning, to offer words to process an experience. 4 days afterward, writing about the earthquake seemed to provide such an experience. As they reported from small groups, some of the students mentioned that they found a powerful connection to Baldwin’s words: “All safety is an illusion.” James Baldwin: “All safety is an Illusion.” Collage and photo by Susan Bernstein. April 5, 2024 As a writing teacher, I understand that words can be imperfect substitutes for experience. What’s more important, it seems to me, is the effort to find words–or, as Baldwin suggests, “the effort behind the words.” Success isn’t guaranteed, and that ought to be a given. Words can’t be forced. The hope is, however, that teachers and students, writing together, can find the time and space to open ourselves to discover possibilities for words, especially in the presence of earthquakes and their aftershocks.  ... View more

I’ve been collecting sentences for a long time. And one kind of sentence I look for—and love—is one whose structure somehow enacts or performs what it describes. Recently I ran across such a sentence I found almost SIXTY years ago. It was written by “new journalist” Tom Wolfe and published in Esquire on March 1, 1965, with the title “The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!” The article itself is vintage Wolfe. He traces the “legend” of Junior Johnson, a good old boy from the hills of North Carolina, who bootlegged moonshine along the back country roads, outfoxing the local law enforcers – for years. He went on to be a famous race car driver in the fairly early days of NASCAR, as well as a successful landowner. But my favorite passage in the article is one long run on sentence that mirrors one of Johnson’s dare-devil escapes from the sheriff. Here it is: Finally, one night they had Junior trapped on the road up toward the bridge around Millersville, there’s no way out of there, they had the barricades up and they could hear this souped-up car roaring around the bend, and here it comes—but suddenly they can hear a siren and see a red light flashing in the grille, so they think it’s another agent, and boy, they run out like ants and pull those barrels and boards and sawhorses out of the way, and then—Ggghhzzzzzzzhhhhhhggggggzzzzzzzeeeeeong!—gawdam! there he goes again, it was him, Junior Johnson!, with a gawdam agent’s si-reen and a red light in his grille! Tom Wolfe at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1988   The clauses pile up, barreling along, taking hairpin curves . . . and then . . . the long made-up word meant perhaps to sound like squealing tires—and “there he goes again.” Left the law in the dust, outfoxed again. I can imagine Wolfe had a lot of fun writing this sentence, and it’s one I have shown students from time to time over the decades when we were playing with sentences, asking them to think of an event in their lives they could describe—using and stretching and pushing basic sentence structures to try to embody the description. Having fun with syntax! So here’s to Tom Wolfe and to the 1960s, which gave us so much experimentation in writing. We are living in another great moment of syntactic creativity—from the language of hip hop to the magic of the best advertising—even to business reports aimed at entertaining as well as informing shareholders. It might be a good time to ask students to go on a sentence treasure hunt to see what they come up with—and to challenge them to have some fun with sentences!   Image via Wikimedia Commons ... View more

I wrote earlier about “insight on demand,” the way our assigned reflections require students to find and articulate an insight that demonstrates learning (and validates our teaching)—all according to a schedule.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve encountered a different challenge in one of my advanced classes:  in individual project conferences and assignments, several students not only cited personal experience in support of broad generalizations, but they also cited previous self-citations (“as I’ve said before,” “as I’ve pointed out in my assignments,” etc.).  Personal experience is, of course, a valid source of evidence for literacy practices and language development.  But when personal experience is used as the basis for sweeping generalizations—or when disciplinary practice and tradition are summarily dismissed because they do not align with beliefs based on personal experience—we’ve got work to do.  Photo by John Schnobrich via Unsplash In my FYC and corequisite courses, I generally have to help students value their literacy experiences as a groundwork for further learning;  they too often dismiss their experiences as irrelevant or inferior. But in advanced courses, particularly introductions to linguistics and applied linguistics for language pedagogy, I occasionally encounter students who seem to think that their experiences as language users or language learners are sufficient expertise to judge or ignore decades of scholarship.   Novel constructs or technical definitions of known terms are rejected in favor of personal definitions and understandings.  My prodding during conferences this week yielded pushback along these lines (with my responses following in italics): “Well, as I’ve said before, I do not believe that aptitude can be quantified…” (But does that also mean it cannot be investigated?) “I plan to draw on my experience in the project; are you saying I cannot do that?”  (Of course not, but I did say that experience needs to be interrogated and interpreted in light of published research.) “I can tell you about backsliding in language learning.  It happened to me.” (But did you look at how cognitive theorists define and account for such backsliding? They suggest it’s more than having a new teacher.) Good teachers always provide explicit error correction.  (Of everything? Doesn’t the context of the error make a difference?) I am a visual learner, so a good language teacher will give me visual input.  (Did you read Willingham’s review of learning styles? What would he say about this statement?)  How do you respond when students privilege their own experience over a scholarly tradition or consensus?   What do you say when students resist substantive or reflective interaction with assigned readings or discussions?  I’d love to hear from you. ... View more