For a recent assignment in my corequisite class, I distributed an assignment sheet, posted it online, and made in-class and online announcements to remind students of the due date, also listed in the syllabus. I sent an email as well, along with a reminder to our GroupMe chat. When I introduced the assignment in class, I wrote the assignment targets and due dates on the white board in our classroom. At the end of that session, a student stopped me from erasing the board: “Could you wait a minute?” He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. That moment—coupled with a number of assignments not submitted on time this semester—prompted me to pay more attention to HOW my students were taking notes, or more accurately, NOT taking notes. Following best practices for accessibility, I post outlines for most class sessions online prior to class, and this semester, I have made short videos with accompanying handouts for students to watch prior to class and review after class. In the videos, I add annotations to notes and remind students to make a note of certain points. Yet consistently, students in my corequisite composition courses do not take notes: I can see that they have not opened the online notes that accompany videos. I printed one set of notes and offered bonus credit for completing annotations as students watched the online videos. No one took me up on that offer. Most come to class without pens or pencils; they sometimes open my posted outlines on laptops or phones, but with few exceptions, they neither type nor handwrite notes during class.  As I mentioned in my last post, much of the key information for my courses is available in multiple locations and multiple modalities. Corequisite students, however, are not engaging with that material. An example of note taking   In stark contrast are students in my upper division courses, who have taken all the materials offered and adapted it to their own needs, clearly engaged. When I asked them about their note-taking habits, here’s a sample of what they described: Several students talked about the value of listening—one student, for example, said she takes minimal notes in class, using just a bulleted list of key words and concepts. She struggles with writing speed and spelling, and by noting just keywords and concepts, she can keep pace with listening and fill in the details afterwards.  Another student noted that she likes taking notes by hand; it forces her to think about what is important and what she needs to write. A couple of students in my advanced grammar course create a copy of posted notes in Google Docs, and both add comments and examples during class. They can discuss the notes as they prepare for class, and they compare their understanding of the material afterwards. The shared notes become the basis of their review materials and their questions for me. Several students make copies of my handouts and use note-taking apps on tablets to annotate them during class. I have watched these students take pictures of illustrations or sentence analyses from class to insert into their digital notes. An example of a sentence diagram One of the students who takes notes by hand said she almost always re-writes them later, re-organizing and making sure things make sense while the ideas are still relatively fresh. Another student who takes notes by hand pointed out that she uses multiple colors to annotate and organize various headers and examples, and she often adds her own comments, ideas, and examples in a different color. She described the satisfaction of “3D spatial awareness” as she locates information in the pages of her notebook.  An example of a sentence diagram   The strategies differ, but each one suggests intentional engagement with the content—multimodal, personalized, and very often writing-based. These same students have emailed me, responded to my emails, and shown up in my office to talk about their learning.   Like many schools, we offer a student success course for first-year students, a course in which study strategies and note-taking skills are explicitly addressed. Yet 13 weeks into our first semester, most of these corequisite students have not engaged with the content through note-taking or taken advantage of numerous opportunities to do so. When the students meet with me in conference, I generally prod them to make notes, to bullet suggestions and then prioritize what they want to do next. But the advice is not sinking in. Our writing fellows have volunteered to put together some note-taking and online success hacks for the corequisite classes next spring, and if the corequisite students are willing, the fellows will do some one-on-one mentoring. Still, I wonder what else might work for this group. How are you encouraging your corequisite students to take notes? 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

An example of "dark academia" aesthetic Right before Halloween this year, Pamela Paul published an op-ed in The New York Times, “The Season of Dark Academia,” leveling some justified criticism at the “dark academia” aesthetic of social media fame, noting that far from the romanticized view popularized in the aesthetic, “real” academia these days is indeed dark, with 62 percent of the faculty “contingent” workers, with food insecurity rampant on college campuses, and with mental health issues skyrocketing. Paul, who is the author of eight books and former editor of the Times Book Review, says she can easily understand the appeal of an aesthetic like Dark Academia, which can offer a particular version of a “dream life” lived within the walls of ancient libraries. But she suggests there can be a pretty steep price to pay for this particular form of escapism, as her references to “real” academia make clear. Paul’s discussion of dark academia got me thinking about internet aesthetics in general, which spread like kudzu during the 2010s and 2020s on social media sites like Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok—from Cottagecore to Weirdcore, from Indie Kid to bisexual lightning, and many, many more. Linked to visual style/couture as personal style, internet aesthetics were so ubiquitous that Paul didn’t feel the need to spend much time identifying them and that the word “aesthetic” has morphed into an all-purpose adjective (as in “that’s so aesthetic”). My students have, with great good humor, tried to match me to one or more aesthetics—always, I must say, to my surprise. It is always interesting to get a glimpse of how they see me, what they assume about my “style” and my likes and dislikes. As a result, I’ve sometimes spent time asking them to do some freewriting about their relationship and reaction to internet aesthetics in general—and to how they understand their own personal styles in particular. Once they begin to write—and then to discuss—they often begin to point out the stereotyping inherent in such “aesthetics” and to mount criticisms of them as such. These discussions always lead us to consider the degree to which any kind of label attached to people can work to stereotype them, often in hurtful, harmful ways that don’t come close to capturing the “real” person so labeled. But students also point out that such aesthetics and labels can help create group identity, a kind of solidarity and togetherness that they found so sorely lacking during the pandemsic. In so many words, they tell me to “lighten up and have some fun.” But I don’t give up so easily: so I remind them that it can be fun to try on a label—or an aesthetic—if you are the one doing the choosing, but a lot less fun when others are imposing them on you. Let’s think about that for a while and then think twice (at least!) before we make assumptions about people based on what we perceive their “style” to be or to say about them. I wonder if your students are still using such aesthetics and, if so, what they see as their good—and bad—aims and uses. Photo by Ricardo Esquivel from Pexels. ... View more

Laura Hardin Marshall (referred by Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers) is the Writing Support Coordinator at Webster University and a PhD candidate in rhetoric and composition at Saint Louis University, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition. Her research focuses on the response practices of writing instructors and consultants, examining what feedback we offer to students, how we offer it, and what students then do with that feedback as they work through their revisions and future assignments. She has taught courses on basic writing and college preparation, introductory and advanced composition, and writing consulting and has published articles on writing program and writing center administration. What do you think is the most important recent development or pedagogical approach in teaching composition? The overall move toward more diverse and inclusive conceptions of composition, language, rhetoric, and communication have made an enormous impact on teaching and learning—or it has the potential to do so when more instructors, administrators, and universities embrace it. Similarly, many composition instructors have re-envisioned the five-paragraph essay and more traditional thesis-driven composition. By moving away from more formulaic and/or academically traditional types of writing (which often put US- and white-centric conventions on a pedestal), we can help students conceive of writing in more diverse ways that meet their linguistic and rhetorical needs. It feels as though so much of composition instruction still centers certain “right” or “standard” ways of thinking and doing that only actually fit very specific and rigid situations, and we do students a disservice by limiting the scope of what they can do! As writing instructors we can do a much better job at being transparent about identifying and knowing how to work with (or against) the contexts and conditions at play when we choose what and how to write. By understanding context and timing, situation and audience, we can better know how diverse and versatile (and enjoyable!) writing can be. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I like to emphasize rhetorical situations and kairos (having a sense of timing that is appropriate, intentional, and suitable for the given situation). When we write, there is so much more to it than developing and supporting a thesis, but students are often stuck in a very narrow mind frame. So many students seem to approach writing by thinking of it only as a thesis-driven, five-paragraph essay that’s been drilled into them year after year, and that style of writing is so often (sadly) devoid of creativity and context, often with an audience of one. They’re taught a form of writing that never sees the light of day. When we can point to other assignments and writing contexts that call for diverse ways of communicating, students can better see what composition is (or should be) truly about. They have to be able to see who they’re writing about or to (and the potential diversity of their audiences), in what locales and modes, at what time of day or year. I believe that when students can identify the wide variety of elements at play, they have a better understanding of the possibilities and choices that go into making composition work. What is it like to work with the editorial team at Bedford/St. Martin's? The Bedford/St. Martin’s editorial team was such a delight to work with! I initially thought most of the events would be focused around “selling” us on certain textbooks and/or instructional tools, which we would then be encouraged to adopt in our classes or programs. That couldn’t have been further from the truth! The editorial team was so clearly invested in learning what composition teachers and scholars want and need in the classroom. They cared about hearing about our experiences: what has worked, what hasn’t worked, what have we observed about student engagement, etc. I didn’t realize the care and intentionality that goes into developing educational materials that work for instructors and students, but the team very much demonstrated those qualities. They came through in each of the events they planned. It was such a pedagogically energizing experience! What do you think instructors don't know about higher ed publishing but should? I think many instructors—like me before this experience—don’t know how pedagogically informed higher education publishing is. I initially thought that commercial textbooks were developed and written by people who were far removed from actual classrooms and students. If nothing else, I assumed that most of the offerings would have mostly stodgy concepts and practices focused on a “current-traditional” sort of pedagogy, i.e., quite out of touch with current issues and practices. My experience as a Bedford New Scholar made it very clear that higher ed publishing is aware of and wants to tap into pedagogies that are more inclusive and functional for an every-changing student and instructor population. The offerings and the technological tools they develop are much more progressively student- and instructor-centered than many might imagine. And they’re so friendly and willing to be hands-on! I was surprised by how many resources were available to help instructors maximize how we teach and support students. Laura’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Laura’s assignment. For the full activity, see Double-Entry Research Log. The double-entry research log serves to orient students to the wide range of tasks involved in academic research. The accompanying citation exercise helps illustrate that citation conventions—though seemingly arbitrary—have purpose and meaning for academic readers. (It also promotes regular and early citation.) It also gets students into the habit of thinking about and responding to the research they find. Students in the early stages of researched writing often think about quotes as evidence they can lob at readers without any follow up; they pass the “ball,” and then it’s up to the reader to run with it. With the double-entry log, though, students know they’re supposed to stop and think about the idea they’ve chosen, and we’ll talk throughout the semester about how they’ll do the same when they incorporate the quotes into formal writing. The screenshots help me as an instructor assist students in quoting and citing correctly; they’ll be used later when we discuss paraphrasing, too. Lastly, summaries help students understand the piece and practice conveying authors’ claims clearly, but it’s also a useful reminder of what each source is about, which can often become fuzzy the deeper into the research process we go.  ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Dr. Leslie Werden, a Professor of English & Rhetoric and Department Head of Humanities at Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa. She teaches Persuasive Writing, Small Group Communication, Literary Theory & Analysis, British Literature, Page to Stage, and more.    Blaming Binaries The large post-it note, halved with a line down the middle separating a list of binaries, was left behind in the classroom. On one side: white, power, strength, leader, good. On the other: black, no control, weakness, follower, bad. The lone black student arrived in the classroom and cocked her head, glaring at the list, brows furrowed, lips tightly pressed together. “What. Is. This?” she asked her professor. A discussion about three different stories from the class before. “Thank God,” the student said. The binaries left behind, assume too much and remain misunderstood.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

The goal of cultural semiotics as I have described it in Signs of Life in the USA is to probe beneath the surface of our behavior and experience to uncover those meanings that are often hiding, as it were, in plain sight. There is nothing esoteric or hieratic about this, and all it really takes is the ability, and willingness, to set aside the more immediate claims of the phenomena that we are interpreting to reveal something yet more fundamental and often more profound. Take, for example, Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter. The immediate significance of this event is obvious, confronting us with an extremely high-profile instance of the culture war that is now raging not only in America but also throughout the world: with the prospect (if not already the reality) of Twitter's being wrenched wide open to the most appalling kinds of hateful and dis-informational tweets, it is by no means an overreaction to be very worried about what this will mean for the future of our democracy and for the world as well. Quite appropriately, an enormous amount of attention is already being addressed to this very real threat. But, behind this threat lies a question that I have yet to see being asked—a very simple question that could also be asked about other extremely powerful agents (like Facebook and TikTok) in the digital age: why have we granted so much power to Twitter and the other titans of social media? After all, no one—no government, no religious authority, no traditional agent of social control—compels us to use one social medium over another, much less tolerate what amount to near-monopolies like Twitter’s. Why are even the extremists who have flocked to sites like Parler and Gettr, and for whom Truth Social was created, so eager to return to Twitter and take it over? The answer to such questions lies in a phenomenon that Malcolm Gladwell explores in his book The Tipping Point. Specifically, he posits that certain “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.” Though the book was published before the full rise of social media, Gladwell’s thesis regarding what he calls “the law of the few” (that is, the way that a small number of select individuals can influence the behavior of a huge number of people) sheds light on the way that Facebook, for instance, wiped out MySpace, even though MySpace got there first—or, how Apple's iPhone obliterated the Blackberry. To put this another way, in a fundamental contradiction of America's still-cherished mythology of individualism, the many follow the few in American society, conforming to what they see everyone else doing once a certain “critical mass” has been reached. Thus, with respect to the topic of this blog, we can say that people flock to Twitter because that is where the flock is.   But it doesn't have to be this way. For, to adapt the anti-war slogan of the sixties, “what if they gave a war and no one came?” we might now ask, “what if they gave a Twitter and no one tweeted?” If this question seems unthinkable, that leaving Twitter to simmer in its own juices simply cannot be contemplated, then there lies the deeper significance of Musk’s Twitter takeover: the digital age is no more self-reliant than the notoriously conformist 1950s, perhaps even less so. The promise of Apple's famous “1984” commercial that personal computing will liberate the masses has never been anything but a sales pitch promoting mass conformity on behalf of a tiny number of corporate titans who rake in all the profits and the power.     Photo by Ravi Sharma (2020) used under the Unsplash License. ... View more

    On a recent tip from Shawna Shapiro, I got to attend a virtual seminar sponsored by Brandeis University’s Language, Culture and Justice Hub, which is part of the university’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. Though I tuned in a little late, I believe the webinar was organized by Professor Leigh Swigart, a linguistic anthropologist who serves as Director of the Center’s Programs in International Justice and Society. One of the early slides in the four brief presentations really resonated with me: it aimed to capture the evolution we seek in terms of diverse languages and dialects. Beginning with monolingual English on the left margin, naming the still-too-often state of affairs, arrows pointed right to tolerance of linguistic diversity and then to acceptance, respect, and finally affirmation, solidarity, and critique. This simple graphic succinctly captured the struggle we are engaged in and implicitly challenged those at the webinar (and all teachers of writing) to place themselves and their departments/colleges on the continuum: just where are we? What has led to that placement? And what will it take to move to the affirmation end of the continuum? It struck me that we can ask the same question of our students: where do they place themselves on the continuum and what led to that placement?  One other takeaway from this webinar came in Shapiro’s remarks. For Shapiro, three key terms to guide our teaching and our pedagogy and our curricula are Access, Asset, and Agency. In discussing access, she referred to her commitment to explaining the why of her courses: why she had chosen the topic, the readings, the assignments, the whole curriculum, so that students have access to her thinking—and have a chance to engage with it and to add their own responses. Access also assumes that we will consciously help students in understanding how to meet (and to critique) the expectations implicit in any course. In discussing asset, Shapiro asked how we can help students draw on their own rich linguistic, cultural, and global backgrounds and how we can bring that richness to our readings, assignments, and genres, perspectives, and so on. And finally, in terms of agency, she asked how we can help students make informed rhetorical and linguistic decisions that are consonant with their own goals.  Urging that we reject any deficit-based framework for writing and reading instruction (instead of asking what students lack but rather what the institution lacks) in favor of an assets-based perspective, Shapiro offered a couple of examples of how we can promote agency and value assets at the same time. We can, she continued, suggest that students might want to include citations in any language rather than looking for translations, thus valuing the language of the original research being cited. She also led a brief discussion on the use of names in the classroom, giving examples of asking students what they preferred to be called (and learning how to pronounce it correctly) but not rejecting out of hand what she called “additive identities,” that is, a name a student might have chosen for good personal reasons rather than just because their given name was “hard for English speakers to say.” Recognizing and respecting names is, of course, one way of adding to student agency.  Of course, offering students a wide range of choices—in readings, in assignments or projects, in forms of assessment—are other important ways of helping build a sense of personal agency and autonomy. That is a goal I believe all teachers of writing can and should aspire to! The image above, "Brandeis University" by Eric_Haines, is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ... View more

Content alert for sexist language, white supremacy, racist violence, and suicide.  If you are having thoughts of suicide, you are not alone. A mental health professional can help. Call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, or visit https://www.speakingofsuicide.com/resources/    This week I am reading Heather Clark’s Red Comet, a recent biography of Sylvia Plath, poet and author of the novel The Bell Jar. I was fascinated to learn that Plath once taught as an adjunct at her alma mater, Smith College, in 1957-58. Plath had a temporary, renewable one-year appointment, and in the fall semester she taught three sections of first-year English. Plath quit this position after her first year because it was, she discovered, untenable with her life’s work as a writer. In a letter to her brother Warren in the fall of 1957, Plath reveals: . . . the sacrifice of energy and life blood I’m making for this job is all out of proportion to the good I am doing in it. . . I am sacrificing my energy, writing, & versatile intellectual life for grubbing over 66 Hawthorne papers a week and trying to be articulate in front of a rough class of spoiled bitches. (Clark 509) The excerpt of this letter, with its dated, sexist language, may be shocking to some, and Plath  probably did not intend for the public to read it. All the same, the sentiments Plath expresses are unsurprising. Teaching first-year English was new to Plath, and she had recently returned to the United States from England, where she had finished a second bachelor’s degree at Cambridge University. Plath had survived rigorous academics, severe mental illness, a suicide attempt, shock treatment, and incarceration in a mental hospital in Massachusetts. As a twenty-five year old neurodivergent woman, Plath was used to fighting her way back to the fragile equilibrium of the intellectual life that she craved. Adjuncting, as suggested in her letter to Warren, used up too much of her time and energy  to maintain a clear focus on her own writing (Clark 509). In the late 1950s, the first semester of first-year English at Smith was focused on literature written in English, especially Romantic and Modernist writers whose predominance was beginning to fade for the younger generation. Five years later, James Baldwin (eight years older than Plath) wrote “As Much Truth as One Can Bear.” This 1962 essay considers the emergence of younger post-World War II writers, and especially those writers who approach their work from a very different sensibility: We are the generation that must throw everything into the endeavor to remake America into what we say we want it to be. Without this endeavor, we will perish. However immoral or subversive this may sound to some, it is the writer who must always remember that morality, if it is to remain or become morality, must be perpetually examined, cracked, changed, made new. (Baldwin 50) For Baldwin, writers have a special responsibility to examine, dismantle, and “remake” America, not in the service of perpetuating a fantasy, but for forging new ground for the greater good, beyond individual writing lives. Indeed, in this essay, the reader can find one of Baldwin’s most well-known adages, a quote that reinforces his point about the urgent necessity of social transformation: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The fact that Baldwin and Plath wrote as near contemporaries in the late 1950s and early 1960s is interesting to me. Even as Clark contextualizes Plath’s life and work with details from post-World War II history, any consciousness of the Civil Rights Movement appears to be absent. In this way, Plath’s concerns might be seen through the lens of what Koa Beck identifies as White Feminism (also see Mathew and Hariharan).Baldwin, who was Black and grew up in Harlem, left the United States for exile in France in the late 1940s. His hope was to discover his vocation as a writer away from white supremacy in America. But in 1957, as the Civil Rights Movement continued to unfold, Baldwin returned to the United States to bear witness, to engage with writing and activism (See I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck and James Baldwin: A Biography by David Leeming). I link Baldwin and Plath through the year 1957: Plath’s year as a struggling adjunct, and Baldwin’s return to the United States. In fall of 1957, nine Little Rock, Arkansas teenagers (known as the Little Rock Nine) became the first Black students to attend Little Rock’s Central High School. The Arkansas governor called in the National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. White supremacist riots ensued to keep the Little Rock Nine out of Central High School, and eventually President Eisenhower sent the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to quell the rioting and to escort the Little Rock Nine students to school (also see Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beals).  Photo credit: The U.S. Army At a sixty-five year distance, it seems peculiar that the author of Plath’s biography, although making use of Plath’s copiously written journals and letters, makes no mention of these national events in Red Comet. I am puzzled by this absence, until I consider white supremacy, white privilege, and the overwhelmingly white poets of Plath’s acquaintance. What turns might American Literature have taken if that generation of poets followed Baldwin’s call to reckon with the truth? What might Sylvia Plath have contributed to this reckoning, as a struggling adjunct “sacrificing her energy”?  Work/life balance, Plath suggested in 1957, was an impossible fantasy. In 2022, life as an adjunct often feels critically unbalanced and extremely isolating. Yet, in a subsequent lecture, Baldwin advocates  that his audience must “engage in the struggle, which is universal and daily, of all human beings on the face of this globe to get to become human beings” (63). That is, even as people appear to inhabit different worlds or spheres of influence, these worlds touch each other, intersect and collide. Struggle is a means of survival, and Baldwin reiterates that his  audience must take action if change is to occur. For Baldwin, struggle for the greater good offers “artistic integrity” and is often “our only hope” (67). For adjuncts, contingent work remains destabilizing and often, as Sylvia Plath discovered, debilitating. Even so, as the struggle of the Little Rock Nine affirms, history unfurls in and out of classrooms. Participating in, and acknowledging and bearing witness to struggle might serve as a means of connection for students and teachers. In the face of formidable challenges, even acknowledgment might seem painful and exhausting, but no less necessary, in troubling times.   Works Cited Baldwin, James. “As Much Truth As One Can Bear.” The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan, Pantheon Books, 2010, pp. 50-57. Baldwin, James. “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.” The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan, Pantheon Books, 2010, pp. 63-70. Clark, Heather. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Penguin Random House, 2021. ... 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.   I hypothesize that the link between happiness and success is greater than many of us can imagine. On the one hand, this is obvious. Doing laundry doesn’t make me happy; when I put it off, it makes me less happy. I then have even less motivation for completing the task and less success. Relatedly, I could have 15 assignments that I do not enjoy grading take three times as long to grade as the 60 larger assignments that I’m excited about grading. For me, happiness creates energy. Importantly, I have found that my own happiness can give students energy as well: Quick feedback is energizing; a smile directed at a student can be invigorating for them;  saying “I love x topic” creates a boost that often makes students dig into the reading sooner. There are a million small ways that our happiness can rub off on students and help them succeed. I do not think that teachers need to jump up and down excitedly at the front of the classroom or ignore the vast array of other human emotions and mental health issues that are parts of our lives. I am a happy teacher who also struggles with anxiety and often feels a sense of sadness, especially in the times we are living in now. The kind of happiness I’m advocating for is a sense of joy and centeredness in teaching—the kind of happiness that, most simply put, allows me to look forward to my job more often than not and the kind of happiness that reminds students of my commitment to them. One way to achieve joy and centeredness is through activities that nurture the mind and body. For some of us, these may be self-care activities like swimming, massage, meditation or yoga—all wonderful but sometimes costly experiences for a profession that for many does not pay well. There are other activities like browsing library shelves, working on sleep hygiene, and chatting with friends about daily life challenges on a walk. Great also! When I engage in some of these mindful practices, my body is much more centered and ready to teach. All this is to say if your academic institution is having a free ten-minute chair massage, do not inadvertently forgo the opportunity as I did today! And yet, there is something simpler that can be done to increase professor happiness. It is to ask yourself, when lesson planning “do I like this activity?” or, to use the language of Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, “does this lesson ‘spark joy’”? If your lesson plan does not spark joy for you at least half the time, you may consider selecting an alternate approach. One moment when I realized my lessons were not sparking joy related to subject and verb agreement. I love teaching sentence boundaries and created an acronym to help students remember the parts of sentences, linked the acronym to Philly pharmacies, and even created a scavenger hunt activity where students look for run-ons and fragments on bulletin boards throughout the campus.  I genuinely believe that being able to know where a sentence begins and ends is a huge step toward literacy and success—and a form of my own cultural capital that should be shared. However, subject verb agreement…not so much. Correcting students’ use of third person singular verbs (i.e., she knows rather than she know) frankly felt racist to me, especially because it lacked any regard for or mention of Black English. How did my unhappiness about this topic translate to the classroom? Instead of speaking about my true belief that what I was about to teach was racist, I would apologize for a lesson that was about to be “boring” but was part of the “student learning outcomes.” I would stumble through lectures and give out worksheets for practice—a far cry from the way I like to teach. Eventually, it dawned on me that because of my perception that teaching subject/verb agreement was racist, it was not sparking joy. And yet, I couldn’t really stop because this was a student learning outcome. I’m sure many of us can relate to simply being required to teach something that we may not want to teach. However, I felt that there had to be a way to spark more joy. I changed the subject verb agreement lessons so that they discussed power dynamics imbedded in language, and I made explicit that I felt uncomfortable teaching this grammar concept as it was originally being presented. I was interested in students’ perspectives. I found some other voices on YouTube on similar issues related to language and power, like an amazing TED talk by Jamila Lyiscott and a clip from a lecture by Ta Nehisi Coates. Then I learned that my colleague, Alexine Fleck, had been doing these kinds of lessons for years and years--far before I came to them--as had a whole host of faculty at Community College of Philadelphia, where I teach. Feeling more connected to my colleague made me happy; hearing student voices about these ideas made me happy; not feeling locked into a certain requirement made me happy. Students no longer glazed over when we went over this concept. They too were energized. If you find that a lesson is not sparking joy for you, do not throw it out completely. Instead, try to figure out why and what can be done about it. It is often only the slightest modification that can make a difference. Maybe it’s just a brief discussion question about the topic—a planned tangent or a walk outside with students for 10 minutes to think more about an idea. I used to think I was beholden above all to institutional requirements, and now, thankfully, I also feel beholden to my own judgement, my own joy, and above all to my students’ success. In terms of getting my laundry done though, I would welcome suggestions. ... View more

The following interview with professors Jami Blaauw-Hara of North Central Michigan College and Mark Blauuw-Hara of the University of Toronto-Mississauga was conducted via email in August of 2022. This is the third of four parts.   David Starkey: You’ve both published quite a bit in books and scholarly journals. Why do you think that’s an important activity for working teachers? It can obviously be incredibly demanding for two-year college faculty, where scholarship often is not only unrewarded, it’s sometimes looked down upon, as a distraction from classroom teaching.   Jami Blaauw-Hara: There is so little support for scholarly work at the community college level! My dean announces faculty publications in emails, but this was often met with some amount of side-eye from colleagues for trying so hard. Since the community college is not oriented around producing original scholarship, I often need to convince administration and colleagues that I have knowledge in a particular area because I have published on it. Using teaching lore to inform practice more than scholarship is strong at community colleges. I also understand the struggle. At my school, we teach 15 credits per semester, except for summer, and many add overload onto that. We are rewarded more for taking on overload than we are for the time spent writing articles. However, scholarship has been invaluable in my teaching. I bring in drafts, discuss my roadblocks, share editor feedback, and help my students understand that writing is a highly detailed, interactive, reflexive process that changes you in the end. I believe I’m a better writing teacher for spending the time on scholarship, even if it’s just to share how writing scares me too!   Mark Blaauw-Hara: There are three main reasons that I think publishing and presenting regularly is important for two-year college faculty. First of all, and probably most importantly, putting a publication or presentation together forces you to examine what you’re doing in the classroom and articulate why you do it. That leads to better practice. Secondly, I think it’s great to work with others in your department or across the country–we can learn from one another, and it builds a sense of community among two-year folks. It can be a lonely job otherwise. And thirdly, although I greatly appreciate it when four-year scholars write about the two-year context, we really need to be a part of that conversation as well. We shouldn’t just be written about–we need to have our own voices out there.   DS: Mark, you’re the author of From Military to Academy (Utah State, 2021), which focuses on the writing and learning experiences of student military veterans. What are some of the main lessons you learned from writing the book?   MBH: I wrote that book because I like working with student veterans, and I myself wanted to understand them better. One of the main things I learned is that they come to college with some very important strengths that they developed in the military, and those strengths can help them in college. For example, they are great at achieving clearly defined missions, and they actually have quite a bit of experience with reading and writing, it’s just that in the military, writing tends to be much more direct than in academia. If we can help them transfer those skills to college, we can set them up to be more successful. And for the record, I think we should approach all of our students similarly–instead of thinking that someone who has been out of school for awhile in the workforce, say, has a lot to make up, we should ask what strengths and skills they’ve developed that will help them in the classroom.   DS: And Jami, you’ve led the Reading Apprenticeship program at North Central. We hear so much talk about how writing instructors need to become better teachers of reading. What elements of the program are particularly conducive to making that happen?   JBH: Reading Apprenticeship (RA) was a part of our work as an Achieving the Dream college, so there was institutional support for the training we needed. For me, it transformed reading much like my participation in the National Writing Project (NWP) transformed writing. We were asked to return to our own reading and understand our strategies as readers and see ourselves as mentors for apprentice readers. It reminded me that reading skill goes far beyond the ability to decode words and made me aware of all that I bring to reading that my students don’t yet understand. Just like the NWP helped me focus on my own writing to inform how I teach writing, RA helped me focus on my own reading to inform how I teach reading. One strategy that really stuck with me is returning to a place of confusion by working on very challenging texts. When I was asked to read cellular microbiology, my strategies for reading became very clear to me. I was aware of practices I did not even realize that I use like reading context clues, looking at sentence structures, annotation, slowing down, and asking questions. If I talk about how I read, I can help my students understand how to read with purpose and skill. Just like I share my writing projects in progress, I share reading that initially leaves me flummoxed and what strategies I used to understand it.    ... View more

A colleague recently shared this meme on her Facebook page, condensing a sentiment I’m hearing again and again in the hallways and Zoom meetings: what will it take for students to take responsibility for keeping up with their classes? We’ve all heard the comments and the questions: I couldn’t come last week. Did we do anything important? So what are we doing? (I’ve written about this one before!) I didn’t really understand the reading. (But I had asked them three times for questions.) Was the paper due today?   What was the topic again? When is it due? (After I’ve distributed and reviewed a handout with the due date.) Could you give me an example? (After I’ve just gone over 10 examples.) I couldn’t find it in the online course shell.  (And the online program shows the student has not logged in for two weeks.) Could you send me a list of everything I’ve missed for the last two weeks? Could you send me a list of my missing assignments? Could you tell me what my current average is and which assignments I have to finish in order to pass? (When all grades and the current average is posted online.) Did you see my email? (I answered the email within an hour after it was sent.) Could you just text me when something is due? (Reminders are set to go out in the online course shell, and we have a chat group, too.) What can I do to get extra credit? (The student asking has not done over a third of the written assignments.) And so it goes. When I started teaching, I could never have imagined the resources available to us as instructors to keep students informed: social media groups, weekly planners, assignments guides, online course shells with calendars and reminders, syllabi with links, mass emails/texts, etc. Yet some students—particularly students in my corequisite writing courses—still find themselves completely bewildered by the process of finding course materials.   My colleagues and I are equally bewildered. What else can we do? Many of our students are taking courses like University 101, designed to help them figure it out. And in our classes, redundancies are built in: information is repeated and posted in multiple places. We review, we remind, we send instructions, we conference, and we walk students through the process (sometimes more than once).  We remind ourselves that “doing college” is a lot like learning a new language; the rules that govern behavior are implicit, so we do what we can to make those rules explicit. We build partnerships to support students, we walk them to the writing center, and we repeat ourselves (without rolling our eyes).   And then at times, we get fed up and rant a little in our offices or in a Zoom meeting. But even after the rant, some of us wonder if there’s a strategy we have not tried yet.   How are you helping your students—especially first-generation, non-traditional, or multilingual students—build strategies for navigating college on their own? How are you responding to those difficult questions? 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

Antonio Hamilton (recommended by Kristi McDuffie) is pursuing his PhD in Writing Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches first-year composition courses and is a member of the Rhetoric Advisory Committee. His research interest focuses on how writing is remediated and potentially restricted in online writing environments, such as Automated Writing Evaluation software and Language Models. He is specifically interested in writer agency when writing with these programs, and what forms or styles of writing are prioritized. His research draws on intercultural rhetoric, algorithmic knowledge, and rhetorical genre studies perspectives to assess how writing is digitally transformed. How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid? I think engaging students in my course is probably one of the most difficult things, especially post COVID-19. But it is definitely one of the most important things to establish at the beginning of the semester. For me, engagement is not just teaching relevant material or having exciting in-class activities but also doing my best to ensure that every student feels comfortable in the class. I try to do this by using the first few weeks of class to establish trust with my students individually and as a group. For the most part, the first few weeks of my course allow a decent amount of in-class brainstorming time. I use this time to go around and talk to each of my students and help them work through or develop their ideas for whatever the first major assignment is. I believe this encourages them to feel that my classroom is a safe and collaborative environment where the instructor regularly engages with everyone. Basically, if they see I am engaging with them, then hopefully they engage in the course and realize that engagement is a two-way-street. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? The most important skill that I aim to provide my students is independence and ownership of the work they produce. I believe that oftentimes, students are accustomed to producing work that is either strictly a regurgitation of their instructor’s thoughts or having the feeling that they are producing work for the instructor and not work from themselves. I try to make sure that students know that I care about their ideas, and I will always do my best to help them to achieve their goals. Doing this helps them build that independence and ownership of their work because it is intrinsically their individualized ideas. I try to avoid questions such as “What do you think I should do” or “Do you like this idea?” I always center it back to the student by responding “Is this an idea that you produce?” If it is, then I encourage them to stick with it! What have you learned from other Bedford New Scholars? Having the opportunity to meet, discuss and work with other Bedford New Scholars was an enlightening experience. Because of Covid, I think that we often think about what is going on outside of individual departments. For me, hearing what other graduate students are doing in their composition/rhetoric/writing related courses was reaffirming and motivating. It was assuring to hear that other scholars have the same classroom concerns, teaching goals, theory applications, etc. It showed me that what I am doing in my classroom is not so different than what others are doing around the country at their own institutions. I also was able to learn about new in-class activities and assignments, one of which I implemented in one of my courses this semester! Essentially, interacting with the other scholars allowed me to grow as an instructor myself. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? Professionally, this was my first time participating in something that gave me the opportunity to interact with other graduate students, as well as getting a peek at what goes on behind the scenes with a major publisher. It was all quite enlightening and informative. In regard to the other graduate students, it reaffirmed the collaborative nature of our field and showed me that the sharing of ideas can potentially lead to connections down the line. This may sound simple, but I think that in the past, I would just listen. If I did not perceive what was being said as immediately relevant, I would hold on to those ideas. But something does not immediately need to be relevant for it to be important. In regard to my classroom, listening to and having conversations with speaker Dr. Wonderful helped me consider how to maneuver through potential difficult classroom conversations. I have worked on having a more self-aware classroom environment that tries to prioritize each student’s opinions and thoughts equally. This has always been something I try to do, but through hearing the other scholars and Dr. Wonderful speak about this, I feel that my approach is becoming more refined. Antonio’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Antonio’s assignment. For the full activity, see Remediation Remix. For the Remediation Remix assignment, students are asked to remediate their research paper into a new genre. The assignment applies Bolter & Grusin’s (2000) concept of remediation. The goal is for students to think about the varied ways information can be communicated and asks them to consider accessibility. Additionally, they must think about how certain information may be more effectively communicated in certain genres. The students are asked to write a proposal that I provide feedback on, and then they go on to create the remediation. Accompanying the remediation is a rationale statement where they detail their choices and reasons to explain why they successfully remediated their research paper. I enjoy this assignment a lot because it shows students that writing and communication is not just bound to the traditional academic essay. ... View more

  One ballot initiative that  Arkansas voters will decide on this year is whether to legalize recreational marijuana. Voting for or against this measure would seem to be a fairly clear-cut decision: either you are for or against letting those twenty-one and older purchase small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Thus far, marijuana use is only legal for medical purposes in Arkansas. The choice of claims is clear: You should vote for Issue #4, or you should vote against Issue #4. This is a perfect example, however, to let students see the subtleties of argumentation as they play out in the real world. Frankly, most students would not oppose legislation that would allow the purchase of recreational marijuana. Students who do oppose would argue the physical harm that comes from smoking marijuana or the dangers of driving under the influence. They would need to provide support for their assertions from states where marijuana has already been legalized. Let’s focus, though, on why even those who support the legalization of marijuana are split over this vote. Consider the first portion of the long legal title of the amendment: “An amendment to the Arkansas Constitution authorizing possession and use of cannabis (i.e., marijuana) by adults, but acknowledging that possession and sale of cannabis remain illegal under federal law; authorizing licensed adult use dispensaries to sell adult use cannabis produced by licensed medical and adult use cultivation facilities . . . .” (That is about 10% of the title.) So, under the new law, an adult in Arkansas could legally possess one ounce of marijuana for non-medical purposes, recognizing that the drug is still illegal under federal law. Users cannot grow marijuana for their own use. Medical marijuana users can use the recreational allowance and medical marijuana would no longer be taxed, but non-medical would. Students can be pushed to see the limitations of what seemed like a “no-brainer” in voting for recreational marijuana. Users can only have a small amount in their possession at any time. Recreational marijuana will be taxed. Users cannot grow their own marijuana. Marijuana retailers will be limited. Small growers will have a hard time competing with large dispensaries due to planting restrictions. The price of marijuana will go up. Some students may find the restrictions imposed on small marijuana businesses appealing because it will lessen the amount of low-quality marijuana in the market. This amendment also makes it more difficult for people under the legal age to get marijuana due to the tight dispensary restrictions. These restrictions have unfair implications for small businesses and marijuana users, which does not reflect the changes that Arkansas voters desired when they called for a recreational marijuana amendment. This all began as a grassroots effort by voters, but in the hands of the state legislature, the amendment has failed its voting population. Now Arkansas voters face a quandary: Vote for an amendment that would allow them to buy marijuana according to very strict guidelines rather than completely miss the opportunity to legalize recreational marijuana or hope to pass a more fair amendment in the future. This example shows why it is important for students to understand and consider the implications of their arguments. A good argument in theory can have adverse effects when applied to a real-life situation. "Vote"  by Alexander Beeby is licensed under CC BY 2.0   ... View more

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