I’m just reading a new and fascinating book by Jillian Hess: How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information. In it, Hess examines the tradition of commonplace books—“a system of collecting quotations and other bits of information for personal use”—arguing that the tradition “continued to structure literary practice throughout the nineteenth century [and] facilitated engagement among commonplacing and associated traditions, especially the scrapbook and album” (3).  I hope to write more about this book when I have been able to absorb it carefully. But for now I want to suggest that writing classes might well introduce students to this tradition (it’s quite possible that some of their grandparents kept commonplace books of their own, perhaps with another name). Some students may already be keeping such collections—in diaries or journals, for instance. In Black or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics, Louis Maraj writes extensively about hashtagging, relating it to the commonplace tradition and making a strong case for including it in our writing curricula. Hess comments on the commonplace tradition’s ability to evolve “to fit new epistemic virtues and technological capabilities”—so, not much of a stretch from commonplacing to hashtagging after all! In a time of information overload, when students are overwhelmed with what amounts to an onslaught of data every day of their lives, an act like commonplacing (or hashtagging) calls on them to be carefully selective, to choose pieces or bits of information that are worthy of being remembered and perhaps studied—or perhaps simply enjoyed for their inspiration or consolation. So, here's an assignment idea: begin with engaging students in discussion of what topics, ideas, or questions they see as important enough to devote a collection to, then ask them to brainstorm criteria for selection together. Then, ask them to spend a week looking for and collecting quotations, images, snippets of podcasts or videos, pieces of music—whatever they find that brings their topic or idea to life. Finally, ask students to present their collections, explaining how and where they found the entries and how the entries, taken together, illuminate the topic or idea. The presentations should be wide open in terms of language and style, inviting students to connect to their audience in the way that seems most suited to who they are and how they want to represent themselves—and their ideas. I’d surely like to be in class to listen to and enjoy their work, and I hope that at least some students may choose to continue commonplacing; it turns out to be a very good way to learn and to transfer learning from one situation to another. ... View more

  From the time students start learning the terminology of argumentation, they can start seeing examples in the headlines they see every day, starting with the claim of an argument. This can keep class discussions timely and relevant. The term thesis may be more familiar to first-year students than the term claim that we draw from Stephen Toulmin. A simple way for students to discover the claim of an argument is to ask, “What is the author (or speaker) trying to prove?” Answering that statement in a single sentence will usually reveal the claim. More often than not, the claim of an argument is explicitly stated, and in a single sentence. It can be useful to ask students to find the sentence that most succinctly sums up the argument an author is making or, if there is not one, to sum up what that single sentence would be.   There are three types of claims: claim of policy, claim of fact, and claim of value. The differences among the types of claims can at times be subtle. Actually, the type of claim that is most difficult to support is the one that is easiest to recognize. That is the claim of policy, which states or implies that something should or should not be done. Students can easily locate examples of these any day in the headlines: Abortion laws should be decided by the states. The growing and selling of non-medical marijuana should be legal in Arkansas. Books about non-traditional families should not be allowed in elementary school libraries. The popular vote should decide who wins the presidency. Remember, the classification of a claim has nothing to do with its validity, but rather with the form the claim takes. The opposite of each of these examples would also be a claim of policy. The difference between the other two types of claims, the claim of fact and the claim of value, is suggested by their titles. It may seem strange to think that an argument would have to be made for a claim of fact. It would seem that simply stating a fact is enough. There will be times, however, when the goal is to prove a fact, but one that is not immediately apparent to all readers without support. We are not talking about the simple statement of fact such as the average annual amount of rainfall in Alaska per year, but statements such as these: Growing non-medicinal marijuana would revitalize the economies of some small Arkansas towns that are struggling financially. Some states’ abortion laws are putting the lives of expectant mothers in jeopardy. A smaller percentage of residents in Arkansas are registered to vote than in any other state. Actions by Russian citizens reveal widespread discontent with their government's policies in Ukraine. On the other hand, a claim of value makes a judgment. Students can recognize these by the presence of evaluative language in the claim. Many of these will have to do with arts or aesthetics since the value of art is a matter of subjective taste, but evaluative statements about other issues would also fall into this category. The conflicts during the filming of Don’t Worry, Darling are more interesting than the plot of the movie. The book Where the Crawdads Sing is better than the movie. Protestors in both Russia and Iran have shown tremendous courage in recent weeks. Flying refugees from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard was a cheap political stunt. Asking students to apply what they are learning about argumentation to the headlines should help them see the relevance of what could otherwise be viewed as a mere academic exercise. Our hope, of course, is that it will also make them better critical thinkers and citizens.   Photo: "Newspaper Collection, Three Headlines, July 2016"  by Daniel X. O'Neil is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Jennifer Smith Daniel, Director of Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs at Queens University of Charlotte.   Restoring Your Tongue... Earlier in the Center, you’d encouraged a first-year with her assignment. Then sat in the comfy red chair of my office as essential oils penetrated our masks to cry out your anger at the professor who commented on your writing with his elitist, prescriptive perspective. He never learned the story of how your family stopped speaking Spanish at home because you didn’t get registered for preschool after migrating from Mexico. Later, I stood in the front our class as another white women teacher and offered you Anzaldúa. You found restoration in the new word - Chicana.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

 This image was generated by OpenAI's DALL-E.   In the September 14, 2022 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeff Schatten asks “Will Artificial Intelligence Kill College Writing?” He then goes on to describe GPT3, a software program developed by an Elon Musk-supported nonprofit that offers writers a kind of Siri-for-writing: give it a task and it will come up with a written response to it—an often impressive response, as Schatten discovers: I asked the AI to “discuss how free speech threatens a dictatorship, by drawing on free speech battles in China and Russia and how these relate to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” The resulting text begins, “Free speech is vital to the success of any democracy, but it can also be a thorn in the side of autocrats who seek to control the flow of information and quash dissent. There are lapses and drawbacks, of course: the program will write about anything, even nonsensical requests, and it isn’t capable of generating text about questions for which it has no access to data that would help it create a response. Nor can it deal with highly complex topics—yet. Plus, it is free, and can’t be detected by anti-plagiarism programs. And it is certainly robust enough to suggest to Schatten and lots of others that that the need for instruction in writing may soon be obsolete. As Schatten puts it: Given the rapid development of AI, what percent of college freshmen today will have jobs that require writing at all by the time they graduate? Some who would once have pursued writing-focused careers will find themselves instead managing the inputs and outputs of AI. And once AI can automate that, even those employees may become redundant. I take these warnings seriously, and teachers of writing should be at the forefront of grappling with them. I also take seriously the fact that writing (not to mention writing instruction) changes as its circumstances change, and that we need to be carefully observing such changes and, if at all possible, staying at least a little ahead of them. In that regard, I was deeply encouraged when I attended what the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford calls “September Sessions,” the days before classes begin when the staff meets together to prepare for the coming year. Marvin Diogenes, who along with Adam Banks directs PWR, gave the sessions’ concluding remarks, a tradition I have come to look forward to every year. And with good reason. This year, Marvin began by recalling a new name he had proposed for PWR: the Program in World-Building and Relationship, “with world-building in place of writing and relationship in place of rhetoric.” This view imagines the work we do as aspirational, as a path or a journey. As such, our classrooms are alive with the vibration and burgeoning force of language always moving into more language… every language moment matters. It may seem to stay still on the page, on the screen, on the slide, but language lives beyond. We teach assignments, skills, practices, and habits: more than that, we teach a way of being in the world with language, open to all its possibilities for making sense, making meaning, making connections. Marvin went on to describe how writing can be, must be world-building in addition to being about reporting information, performing intelligence, or expressing opinions. In addition, we create opportunities for students to experience world-building, teach them how to become world-builders, “with that purpose becoming an organizing foundation for all the other purposes they’ve encountered and absorbed in their lives.” So: writing as world-building. In suggesting that we define rhetoric in relational terms, Marvin pointed to the inherent give-and-take, the dialogism, the conversational nature of rhetoric, which posits audience not as an abstraction but as living people we invite into a relationship and rhetorical strategies become ways not of manipulating or even persuading but of connecting. “We demonstrate intelligence,” he concludes, “not as an abstraction set forth for admiration but as a guide or light revealing the written world in the spirit of sharing ourselves and with the hope that readers/listeners will do sharing of their own.” Rhetoric, one of the three original disciplines in the ancient Western world, has always been a plastic, supple art, adapting to changes in modes and methods and means communication. And writing has been similarly supple, developing to meet the needs of different cultures, languages, and times. We live in such a time, when our modes and methods and means—and purposes—of communication are changing, often so fast it leaves us gasping. Into this mix steps AI, with all that it offers, and all that it threatens. As teachers of writing and rhetoric, we have a front row seat: I see reason to be observing and listening and learning everything we possibly can about the changes taking place around us. But I see no reason to expect that such changes will “kill” writing or rhetoric. Or the need for their teaching.     ... View more

Alt: iPhone emanating "Like" and "Love" social media reactions. There is a daft scene in “A Hard Day’s Night,” the Beatles’ groundbreaking music-video-turned-feature-film, where George Harrison opens the wrong door and winds up in the office suite of an arrogant advertising executive. Mistaking Harrison for a random teenager who has been invited in for a kind of market-test interview (the whole joke of the scene is that the exec doesn’t know who Harrison is), the ad mogul quizzes him on some teen fashion that his firm is marketing at the moment, as well as on his opinion of the young woman who is currently serving as the “face” for the advertising blitz that he is directing. Harrison bluntly responds that he and his pals think she’s a joke and proceeds to make rude comments about her when she appears on the telly. Today, almost sixty years later, we can easily recognize who this (albeit fictional) young woman was supposed to be: she was an “influencer,” someone who convinces consumers to buy something not on its merits but instead capitalizes on their desire to be just like the influencer. In the past, such figures were chosen in accordance with the results of extensive market research campaigns conducted in order to discover just what the target market wanted and desired. But, as the scene from “A Hard Day’s Night” illustrates, this could be a rather hit-and-miss affair, with plenty of misses. Now, as I discussed in my last blog entry, the world of mass-market advertising is changing rapidly due to lightning-fast developments in digital technology. One of these developments has been the emergence of an ever-growing legion of home-grown influencers who are leveraging their YouTube and TikTok accounts as lucrative personal enterprises. Importantly, they exist independent of the giant mass marketing corporations who once ruled the air waves. So the semiotic question is: what might this shift signify? A good place to begin such an analysis would be the rise of the internet influencer, which has upended the semiological theses of the late Jean Baudrillard. He described what he called the “era of the sign” as a world of top-down semiotic bombardments imposed upon a passively receptive mass audience by corporate media masters. The famous television commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer to the world at the 1984 Super Bowl offers an ironic illustration of Baudrillard’s vision (ironic because, after all, it was a corporately created advertisement aimed at passive television viewers). The message of the ad has turned out to be largely true, however, because the era of the personal computer has upset the era of the sign, disrupting the traditional monopoly on mass communications once held by governments and media moguls. But as is so often the case in cultural-semiotic analyses, our interrogation reveals a significant paradox: the inversion of the old media order, which has placed so much power in the hands of private individuals, has turned out to be an enormous boon to corporate marketers and advertisers, who no longer have to rely on guesswork to read the mass consumer mind. These days, all they have to do is purchase data-mined information describing the online behavior of the followers of the most popular influencer sites that they want to advertise to. It is evident that today’s influencers are ultimately still a part of a corporate net; or, to put this another way, the liberation that Apple’s “1984” commercial heralded has only resulted in a more efficient way for marketing moguls, like the hapless character in “A Hard Day’s Night,” to get you to buy what they want you to buy. Meet the new influencer, same as the old influencer.   Image: "Checking social media account statistics" by Marco Verch is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ... View more

**Content alerts for racist violence and sexual violence.**    On a recent Saturday in September, I attended a neighborhood street fair in Queens, New York. Since it was the day before the beginning of Banned Books Week, my local bookstore offered a table to support and sell banned books. The table included a selection of the most frequently banned books, postcards to support the authors and publishers of banned books, and a tablet with a link to the  PEN America's Index of School Book Bans (July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2022). There are 2,435 titles on Pen America’s list, beginning with Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé and ending with Grandpa Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate, from Farm to Family by  Elizabeth Zunon. The books are banned, challenged, and being investigated in schools and libraries across the United States.     In scanning the list, as well as the American Library Association’s lists of Top Ten Most Challenged Books, I found books I remembered very well. There were books I taught in my  first-year writing and literature classes, books I had given as birthday gifts to young relatives assigned by my high school teachers, and books I read for my doctoral comprehensive exams. The list also offered my memories of my first encounters with some of the books in question. At the street fair, I offered my first memory of realizing that book bans existed back in junior high in the early 1970s at my town’s public library in suburban Chicago.   One afternoon, I brought my books to the library’s front desk to be stamped with the due date, only to be met with resistance. “You can’t check those books out,” the librarian said. “Why not?” I asked. “Because these are adult books and children are not allowed to check out books from the adult stacks.” Again I asked why, but the explanation was vague and dismissive. I left without the books. But a few weeks later, I discovered them back on the shelves, and for many visits afterward I found cozy and secluded sections of the adult stacks, and I read the books I wasn’t allowed to read.    I could not stop asking why. Why did the library not allow a tween or young teen to check out books from the adult stacks? The books I wanted to read had no provocative pictures, no offensive language. Mostly I wanted to read history. There were gaps in the school curriculum that needed filling. For instance, there were no lessons about race, class, or gender, and no indication that our textbooks contained contradictory information.    For instance, I learned U.S. history from the perspective of colonizers, not the colonized. After the Civil War, the textbooks said, carpetbaggers and other outsiders from the North tried to change the way of life in the South, but ultimately the carpetbaggers weren’t successful. However, there was no mention that Northerners tried to eliminate a way of life that included lynching, convict leasing, and other forms of de facto slavery. My reading in the adult stacks was a revelation, and having to hide this reading from the librarians was deeply disconcerting.     In high school, there were limited changes, but still more censorship. The sex education classes focused on menstruation (for girls only), reproduction, and sexually transmitted diseases. The complexities of gender, and the basics of sexual assault, rape, consent, birth control, and abortion, if addressed at all, were perfunctory and confusing. But there were other means of discovering information, and this happened through several books that are now on the Pen America list. This discovery begins with Brave New World, an assigned reading for my first-year high school English class. I did not yet have enough background to fully comprehend Aldous Huxley’s dystopia, and the links between the disturbing images in the book, and the disturbances unfolding in the early 1970s. Because of this disconnect, I could not find a way to process the messages of the book.    However, another dystopian world was unraveling below my desk. Someone in the class had procured a copy of another banned book, Go Ask Alice: A Real Diary.  We carefully passed the text back and forth among students, underneath the desks and beneath the teacher’s line of vision. Alice’s diary dealt with sex and sexual violence, drug addiction, and rebelling against parental authority. Even as Alice’s diary turned out to be fake, the topics it addressed were deeply intriguing to me and, before the internet, scant information about them was available to me through my health classes, my family, or the public library. Our Bodies, Ourselves, yet another banned book in print at this time, addressed all these topics and more; . however, I was unaware of its existence until my sophomore year of college.    A few years after Go Ask Alice, I encountered I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the high school library. I still remember the front cover of that book. Showing through the clear protective plastic against a red-orange background was a blackbird soaring upward from the sun. Finding this book in the library was life changing, as it was the first book I ever encountered that centered Black lives. Angelou was part of the same generation as my parents and many of my teachers. Yet Angelou’s first memoir of racism, poverty, sexual assault, segregation, Black community, and Black joy was never listed as a text or acknowledged throughout the entirety of my schooling. I bought my own paperback copy and reread it often, even as the book is yet another entry on the Pen America list.   Destiny, an orange tabby cat, sits next to a paperback copy of a banned book: Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Photo by Susan Bernstein.   The lesson I learn from the experiences of reading all of these books, then and now, is that I could not rely on school for my education, because the parameters of what was acceptable, or what counted as literature, were narrow and opaque. Even as white privilege shapes my view, the current book bans, although not supported by a majority of people, attempt to replicate perspectives of everyday life that are as insufficient and constricted as the views I encountered in and out of school half a century ago. The banned books that lifted me out of that restricted thinking changed my world, and allowed me to understand two contradictory ideas: First, I was not the first young girl in history to suffer the tribulations of coming of age. Second, I needed and still need to interrogate my own privileges as I continue the lifelong work of building beloved community.   Read banned books, teach them, and absorb what they have to offer. The lessons might not seem immediately clear, but processing them over time and distance can open the heart and the imagination to new possibilities.   ... 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.     For many years in my role as a professor at Community College of Philadelphia, I would dread “going over the syllabus” with students. I value the syllabus as a space to share expectations, desired outcomes and, of course, the assignment schedule. However, students were always bored when I read them parts of the syllabus, and I was bored too. Reading the syllabus to students did not help them retain information either. I know this because students would routinely ask about information covered in the syllabus all throughout the semester. There had to be a better way to present syllabus content. I tried having students present parts of the syllabus to their peers during the first class. There was nothing terrible about this, but trust was not yet built among students. As a result, presenting was a challenge, and many students felt anxious. It also took up too much class time to define presentation expectations and have students present their work. Back to the drawing board. Literally. I started to research ways to make the syllabus itself look more visually engaging. There are some amazing ways to do this, from font selections to infographics to cartoons! However, when I tried it, I couldn’t pull it off. For example, indicating the location of my office via a map with stick figures was now maybe more “fun,” but the overall document was less readable. Third time’s the charm? I created a scavenger hunt where teams of students would look for pertinent syllabus information to win stickers—college students love a good sticker. Unfortunately, this activity started to become more about trying to win than learning content. Students bonded, but they remembered very little about the class requirements. The activity that works for me now happened purely by accident. I sent the wrong version of the syllabus to our copy center and decided not to pass out a syllabus until I could get students the correct version. So on one first day of class there was no syllabus. On the fly, I asked students to pair up (or work individually) and write down three questions they had about the class. I gave examples. This could be anything from “what’s your attendance policy?” to “what are three topics we will study?” to “do we have a lot of group work?” or “how much homework is there?” Then students shared their questions with me. Did they ever share! I learned a lot about their main academic concerns and emotions about taking the class in addition to questions they had about the syllabus. Some I didn’t know the answer to, but their queries forced me to reflect about my teaching. Am I a hard grader? I wondered. Is this my favorite class to teach? Like my students who had to be courageous and vulnerable in asking questions, I too had to be courageous and vulnerable in answering. The shared experiences connected us. And because students didn’t have the syllabus in front of them, there was no shame in asking about something that may have already been on it. Furthermore, when students are the ones asking the questions, their brains are ready to receive and integrate the answers. This phenomenon was definitely at play. Students listened eagerly to what their peers wanted to know as well, which resulted in a foundation of safety and trust among students. And, importantly, no one was bored. I’m a professor who has always been attracted to complex, multisensory activities. However, 15 years into teaching at the collegiate level, I have found that sometimes relatively simple plans like this one can be the most engaging.  Now on the first day of class, I complete this syllabus Q and A activity with students, and only afterwards do I pass out the print syllabus. We take five to seven minutes to address any content that didn’t come up during the activity. This also works in the online format; I simply open a discussion board about class expectations and the syllabus before I post the course syllabus for students to review. Students are equally communicative in the discussion board for this activity, and in addition to receiving my responses, they often will receive syllabus information from their peers. As the semester goes on, it’s a very rare occasion that someone asks me something I’ve already defined in the syllabus, and starting with day one of class, my students are more prepared and a lot happier.   ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview [Generational] cohorts give researchers a tool to analyze changes in views over time; they can provide a way to understand how different formative experiences interact with the life-cycle and aging process to shape people’s view of the world. (Pew Research 2020) This post is the first in a three-part series through which I detail a rather expansive Generation Project with multimodal components and sub-projects. I broke down the project into concurrent parts that can also be used as stand-alone activities. Stay tuned as I present these assignments over the next couple of posts. In this first post, I present the project overview and the historical context, the second post I detail the popular culture component and the third is the collaborative presentations. These assignments are easily modified for all teaching modalities (online, f2f, and hybrid). Image of timeline between 1962 and 1966 with events placed This series demonstrates that we can integrate multimodal composition in thoughtful ways throughout assignments and processes and is not just about end products. In designing this project, I imagined something that involved students in deep research – both individual and collaborative – on a subject that is interesting and current. I wanted to offer opportunities throughout the project to engage in multimodal work – both the analysis and composition of multimodal artifacts. Students house the project on individual websites created through Google Sites to allow for composing and sharing of interactive and visual content. Generation Project Overview This generation project helps students move beyond their insular views and challenges them to understand the perspectives of others by immersing themselves in generational research. We live in a society with polarized discourse and this project will help students engage with ideas outside of their generational space. These ideas motivated me to design this generation project in which students work together to research one of the five living generations: The Silent Generation (born 1928–1945) Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) Generation X (born 1965–1980) Millennials (born 1981–1995) Generation Z (born 1996–2010) Students research both primary and secondary sources to define and create a portrait of their assigned generation. The purpose is to understand the historical context, popular culture artifacts, values, and cultural ideologies. Each student will individually research a couple of focus years within the generation and then contribute to a collaborative project in which they overview and interpret the generation. Sources: Students will locate and analyze the following scholarly and popular sources: Historical context (timelines, historical portraits, economy, values, important figures, oral stories, theoretical perspectives, etc.) Media and Popular culture artifacts (images, music, advertisements, literature, film, fashion, food, etc.) Defining Moments (Headlines, Articles) Ideologies, ideas, behaviors, and values of the time Anything else that might be meaningful Steps to the Assignment This first part of the assignment orients students towards generational research and introduces them to definitions of the five living generations. 1. Background Resources: Understanding Generational Research It is important for students to understand the nature of generational research and gain a general overview of the generations. This helps them understand the ways generations are constructed and the trends that affect them. I allow students to choose the generation research group they want to join so these background readings help them make those choices. Generation Research Resources: The Whys and Hows of Generational Research Pew Research Center (2020) Generations Throughout History – Buzzfeed Video (2017) Fast Facts: American Generations – CNN (2022) Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen X Labels: Necessary or Nonsense The Conversation (2020) 2. Online Discussion - Students engage in an online discussion in which they choose a passage, idea or related ideas from the generation readings. I encourage them to speak about the characteristics they observed along with assumptions and stereotypes they might have about the different generations. I require them to also post one representative image (from Creative Commons or other copyright free sources). 3. Choose a Generation and Focus Years – After the initial background work, students choose the generation that they want to research as part of a team. I try to make sure that the groups are evenly distributed to have the same number of members. Students assemble in their teams (online or f2f) and then choose a couple of focus years within their generations. The focus years give students responsibility for individual research that they will contribute to their research team to create a representative span of their generation years. 4. Research Historical Context: Students compose an Historical Overview of their focus years. They should include events, defining moments, trends, important figures and ideas, observations about politics, economy and values. I encourage them to go beyond just listing facts and interpret and synthesize their findings. They search for academic and popular articles and learn how to attribute their sources. 5. Interactive Feature Article: Students compose their historical overview of their focus years as an interactive document that includes specific references, purposeful embedded links, and captioned multimodal components (images, video clips, etc.) to tell their stories and contextualize their research. They create a page on their site to host the post. 6. Teamwork: Defining Moments: Students get together with their teams and share their research. Each team creates a Google doc in which they list the defining moments and significant events of their focus years. Together, they discuss the overlaps and the ways their focus years fit together to define their generation. 7. Interactive Timeline: Data Visualization: As a team, students select the most important defining moments from their extensive list and create a multimodal timeline. There are many open-source platforms for creating interactive and visual timelines. I give them some resources but allow them to choose their own. They will include the defining moments along with representative images for each entry on the timeline. They will also use this timeline as part of their collaborative presentation later in the project. Some timeline resources: Best Free Timeline Maker Tools for Students Timelines in Canva Adobe Timeline Creator Reflections on the Activities This generation project gives each student a research role and ways to contribute to the larger community knowledge on the subject. The level of individual responsibility creates genuine research teams that invite strong analysis and synthesis through collaboration. These activities engage students in a range of research, writing, and multimodal composition practices. I find that when students are asked to engage in meaningful curiosity and collaboration, they demonstrate a stronger sense of ownership and motivation. Stay tuned – next post – Part 2: Generations through Popular Culture ... View more

I wrote in my last blog about a major overhaul to grading in my FYC/corequisite course this fall.  What have I learned four weeks into the semester?  All course activities need to align with the grading strategy—assignments, online discussions, feedback, and peer review. I am committed to peer review in my FYC courses, for reasons shared by many of you:  when well-designed, it encourages close reading, audience awareness, and attention to writing choices.  But in corequisite classes—particularly when students come from a variety of language backgrounds and classroom experiences—it can be an exercise in frustration.  Students come without drafts, and those that have drafts may resort to cheerleading and repetition of pseudo grammar rules (Don’t start a sentence with “because”), despite explicit instructions and instructor modeling of more appropriate feedback.  To address these concerns, I’ve used rubrics to assess peer review, and I’ve provided feedback on the feedback.  But with corequisite students in particular, the gap between what I envision and what actually happens remains significant.   So did the alternative grading make a difference? To receive process credit for the first peer review, students needed to meet basic specifications: prior to class, they had to watch a short video about peer-review and read Richard Straub’s classic, “Responding, Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing.”  For both the video and reading, I gave short verification quizzes online (to be completed at home, with open resources).  Students also needed a draft of at least 750 words for their literacy narratives; most students had completed this draft during class the week before.   On the morning of the scheduled peer review, all students had an acceptable draft, and 16 of 18 students had completed at least one of the two preparation assignments; 14 completed both.   In class, students received written instructions before meeting with their groups: they were to add three specific questions to their drafts for their reviewers to address, and for each paper in the group, they were to provide 3 to 5 in-line comments or questions, using the comments feature in Google Docs, and offer short answers to the three questions posed by the author.  Comments had to be written, but they were welcome to discuss as a group as well.   I allotted a full hour for the groups of three to work; I did not participate in their discussions unless they explicitly invited me to do so.  Because students knew the specifications for process points, I did not hover or insist that they stay “on task” the whole time; groups that lost focus for a few moments eventually got back on track. After class, I skimmed through the comments on the drafts.  Despite the preparation and my encouragement to focus on thesis, development, and considerations of a reader’s experience, there were still many comments related to grammar and mechanics in snappy directives: Capitalize this!  Run-on! Don’t start with and!  There was also a considerable amount of cheerleading: Good job! Your story’s great! Fantastic. But there were also hints of deeper engagement with the content:  more specific encouragement (This part was really amazing), questions and information requests (Could you tell me more about…?), and thoughtful suggestions (Would it help to talk more about how you felt at that moment?).    I recognize how unfamiliar this style of peer review is to my corequisite students.  Despite that unfamiliarity, this semester, students made reasonable efforts to meet the specifications I had set before them.  Nearly all had prepared.  The grading scheme seemed to have made a difference—so process points were awarded. A desk with a lamp, laptop, and books on top of it. Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash. In the following class, I asked students to complete a reflection to earn additional process credit:  Which comments from peer review (and the instructor) were most helpful, and why?  They also needed to identify what information or resources they needed going forward.   Students had about 15 minutes to complete the review, in class, to earn points for the activity.  And the results were eye-opening: Some students admitted, honestly, that they had not received useful feedback.  They had specific questions but did not get answers to them.  Others acknowledged they got encouragement from students, but they were not sure what to do with it. A few students mentioned specific comments that helped them narrow their focus or hone their thesis. It was clear to me that the peer review itself fell short of what I had envisioned.  At the same time, student reflections demonstrated that deeper purposes were accomplished: students recognized possibilities (if yet unrealized) in peer review, they saw the power in a thesis, and they identified the types of comments that would not help improve a paper (whether given or received).   I won’t chide students who only gave grammar corrections or cheerleading.  I won’t use a rubric to assign grades for the peer review.  Instead, we will review their collected comments as part of the assigned preparation for our next round.  I will ask them to reflect on what they need from peer review and take the initiative to make sure they get it.  Students who meet the specifications will receive their process points.   Has my alternative grading scheme transformed peer review with corequisite students?  Hardly.  But I had full participation in the process for the first time in many semesters, with progress towards more strategic engagement for many.  I’ll take that. What’s working for you in corequisite peer review? ... View more

Madhu Nadarajah (recommended by Nick Recktenwald and Tia North) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Cultural Rhetorics at the University of Oregon where she is researching the discursive practices within the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. She is currently serving as the Assistant Director of the Composition Program where she worked on redesigning the Composition Policy Handbook, helped with graduate teaching instruction, and facilitated the annual Composition Conference. She is also a Culturally Responsive Teaching Fellow in which she draws on her work in Cultural Rhetorics to provide anti-oppressive teaching principles for the wider Composition community in the classroom.     How do you ensure your classroom is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive? For me, community building exercises are crucial to ensuring the classroom is inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive. Through community, students learn to trust the classroom space and become more comfortable having transparent conversations. One approach I take to help build community in my classroom is through the readings I assign. Part of my writing pedagogy is to inform students about the complexity surrounding writing studies. Many of my students are taking my class to fulfill their writing requirement and therefore are unaware about the history of writing in institutionalized settings. One reading in particular that helps students situate themselves within the history of writing studies is CCCC’s “Students Rights to their Own Language” (1974). While the article was published a little under fifty years ago, many of the concerns brought up still remain true for writing students, particularly that surrounding a student’s agency. By framing the classroom through readings like “SRTOL,” we began to have transparent conversations about voice, power structures, and community. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? A skill that I aim to provide my students is for them to have a greater awareness of their own rhetorical traditions. In my classroom, we define rhetorical tradition as not only a means of communicating, but also the cultural and material effects that have led us to these communicative practices. I want students to become aware of the rhetorical tradition they are bringing in, how they have come to gather those traditions, and how it interacts with the rhetorical traditions of their peers. Moreover, this awareness leads students to understand how their rhetorical traditions are part of the larger constellation of rhetorical traditions. In other words, how do these rhetorical traditions exist with one another? I believe this awareness of rhetorical traditions is an important skill for students that they can carry over to their other classes and to their lives outside of school. In particular, understanding the cultural and material effects that inform their way of communication allows students to intimately understand the weight of (physical and cultural) space.  One assignment that helps students understand their own rhetorical traditions is my “Social Literacy Assignment” (provided later in this post). I define a social literacy narrative as an exploration of a rhetorical moment that informs your awareness of a social issue (or issues) that directly impacts you and how that shapes how you communicate and interact with others. In this assignment, I also ask students to pay close attention to how subject-position cannot be separated from how you perceive and are impacted by the rhetorical moment you are reflecting on. I find this assignment (especially since I assign it early on) allows students to have a more nuanced understanding of the importance of rhetorical practices.  What is it like to be part of the Bedford New Scholars Program? The Bedford New Scholars Program provided me with an incredible opportunity to be in community with other graduate students who are also passionate about teaching and rhet/composition studies. Additionally, while we all had a background in rhetorical studies, our approaches to the field varied greatly. In turn, this offered me a great opportunity to collaborate and network. My favorite part of the Bedford New Scholars virtual Summit was the “Assignments at Work” session. This session was an opportunity for the Scholars to share and workshop an assignment or lesson plan. I received valuable feedback on my teaching assignment and I was able to learn about the exciting materials from the other instructors. The other parts of the Summit that I really enjoyed were the sessions led by the guest speakers, Dr. Andrea Lunsford and Dr. Wonderful Faison. Their individual talks were incredible and I learned so much about their pedagogical approaches. Moreover, the Bedford New Scholars Program provided me with a greater understanding of what higher-ed publishing looks like. We tend to view higher-ed publishing as these “big bad guys.” However, the Bedford New Scholars program has opened my perspective to how nuanced publishing really is. While publishing is definitely not without its faults, what I appreciated about the Bedford New Scholars Program is learning how Macmillan Learning prioritizes student perspectives in the development of their textbooks. How will the Bedford New Scholars Program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? The Bedford New Scholars Program is a collaborative and engaging experience. In particular, I learned a lot about the behind the scenes of higher-ed publishing. I think this new knowledge will help me tremendously in my professional development. One of my roles is that of an Assistant Director of Composition. Within that role, I often discuss textbook options and reflect on the newest trends in textbook content. The Bedford New Scholars Program gave me an inside look into the most current trends for writing textbooks and how that information was determined. I will be taking this new insight back into my role as we start to discuss the textbook options for the new academic year.   Madhu’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 Dilara’s assignment. For the full activity, see Social Literacy Narrative. My assignment asks students to write a social literacy narrative in the form of a letter. I typically assign the “Social Literacy Narrative” within the first week of the quarter in place of an “Initial Reflection” assignment. This is a great way for students to reflect and expand on their understanding of rhetoric, especially as it applies to their own space and place. The assignment asks students to consider the rhetorical moments that helped shape their awareness of social issues that directly impacted them and how that shapes the way they communicate and interact with others. It also requires students to reflect and interrogate how their subject-position plays an integral part in those rhetorical moments, especially as it informs how they communicate with other people and different communities. I offer four different examples of what I regard as a social literacy narrative so the students have an idea of how they should model their assignment. I have students write the assignment in the form of a letter because it is a style that allows for personal expression and is addressed to someone the writer specifically designates to be the recipient. Find Madhu on Twitter @MNadarajah9. ... View more

  If you haven’t gotten a chance to look at the March 2022 issue of College English, I recommend it: every article is well worth a read. I call attention here especially to Elizabethada A. Wright’s piece, “The Colonialism and Racism of the “English” Department: A Call for Renaming” (College English, Vol. 84 (4), pp. 356-375). I can’t say that I agree with all of Wright’s assumptions or conclusions, but I admire the historical context this article provides in the move away from classical languages and toward vernaculars and the careful analysis of the effects that names have: naming is indeed important. I do not assume that language departments in general (Spanish, German,  Chinese, etc.) are by nature colonialist and/or racist, nor that a similar department devoted to teaching writing, speaking, and reading in English would necessarily be colonialist or racist. Rather it is the attitudes that surround such teaching that create the basis for the charge brought by Wright (and many others).  In any case, I am all for renaming departments of English, having first suggested that approach some forty years ago—and repeated in 2020—to the Department at Ohio State.  I did so then and so now primarily for the major reason Wright puts forth: the title “English” does not convey what it is that such departments are doing here in the first quarter of the 21st century.  Of course, teachers of writing and rhetoric began recognizing that fact decades ago: hence the separation of those groups from Departments of English and the founding of new departments, such as the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas, the department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State, the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Utah, or the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State. And, as Wright points out, some renaming of English Departments is already occurring, as at Oregon State where they now have a School of Writing, Literature, and Film.  The efforts to clarify what we are doing—not to mention why we are doing it—when we teach writing, reading, and speaking in any language is in my estimation an important and necessary move, especially in terms of probing our assumptions, preconceptions, and biases. And that goes for examining and re-examining what it is we call or name what we are doing. What’s in a name? is a crucial question. And it’s one our students should be engaged in answering, from students in first-year writing and rhetoric classes I taught at Stanford, to graduate students in writing, rhetoric, and literacy programs like the one I used to participate in at Ohio State—along with students at many other departments of English and of writing and rhetoric at colleges throughout the country. It’s worth asking our students what they think they are studying—and why—and also what they would call/name it if given the opportunity. What might students at North Carolina A&T say? Or at Diné College? Or at Mt. Holyoke, or a hundred other places, where students bring with them many languages in addition to English as well as many different Englishes? As Wright points out, at this time of movement toward adopting transnationalism and transnational dispositions and what Maria Lugones called “world traveling,” it seems especially timely ro examine the names we use for what we do with special care and urgency. Were I given a chance to name (and create) a department, its name would have “rhetoric,” “writing,” and "media” in it—though I’m not sure in what order or what else I might include. I would assume that I have some things  to teach but also many things to learn from those in my classes, and that we will do so using and sharing a variety of Englishes, at the very least. And so—what would you like to call the department you belong to? How would you describe its parameters and goals?  While you contemplate these questions, you might take a look at Elizabethada Wright’s essay as well as James Slevin’s amazing 2001 book, Introducing English: Essays in the Intellectual Work of  Composition.  I think you’ll find Jim was asking many questions that consume us today—just some twenty years earlier. "Close up of lessons on the chalkboard" by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ... View more

I don’t know when we’ll start an academic year without reflecting on the impact of the pandemic, but this is not yet that year. This semester is the first time since March 2020 that I have taught without a mask in a classroom, and it still feels odd. I keep forgetting to floss after lunch and before teaching. (Masks had ancillary virtues!) While many of our incoming first-year students had some semblance of a “normal” senior year of high school, they still seem to be stumbling through social interactions. I asked my new students how many of them consider themselves to be introverts, and every single person raised a hand. I waved my arms like a conductor, inviting them to take in the data in the room. “See? We’re all in this weirdness together.” They laughed, nervously. How can we, in our writing classrooms, best rise to this occasion? Our campus theme for first-year students seeks to address this challenge: “You belong here. You can do this. We are here to help.” Those sentiments may feel too pat—too easy. If you are reading this, however, you are likely someone who is thoughtful about putting those claims into action for your students. "'Get to Know You' Bingo," Photo by April Lidinsky, Sep 2022Given the pandemic’s atrophying impact on our social skills, I have worked with the peer mentor in my classroom to design strategies in building empathy, connections and, dare I say it, occasional consensus. We’re starting with very low stakes. For example, we created a “Get to Know You Bingo” activity for the first day (pictured), which invited empathetic connections right off the bat. “You’re a singer/cat person/only child/etc., too? That’s cool.” The vibe was fun. (OK, I’ll admit I may have sweetened the stakes with a prize for the first “bingo” — a set of new highlighter markers.) In our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing, co-authored with Stuart Greene, we introduce students to the “Rogerian” approach to argument, based on psychologist Carl Rogers’ theories. Rogers guides us to reduce the sense of threat in a conversational encounter in order to open the possibility of finding common ground. For writers, this means: Conveying to readers that their different views are understood; Acknowledging conditions under which readers’ views are valid; Helping readers see that the writer shares common ground with them; Creating mutually acceptable solutions to agreed-on problems. When students practice empathetic encounters in classroom conversation, we help them see that their voices matter, that they will be listened to, and that they belong on our campus and in academic conversations. Practicing Rogerian moves helps students see these moves in other writers’ texts, and helps them use them in their own writing. Certainly, I hope we are also offering students skills that are much-needed far beyond our classrooms. While we’re already a couple weeks into our semester, we continue to start class with connection and conversation activities, such as having students count themselves off into different small groups and asking them to find 3 or 4 traits in common in 3-4 minutes (extra props for the more unusual commonalities). These not only serve as ice-breakers, but also help students see the value of finding common ground. I’d include here the value of communal laughter, as students discover they share a love of the same flavor-blasted snacks, brand of hot sauce, or number of tattoos. Sure, these activities “take up time,” but they are an investment in the whole semester (and beyond, as friendships spark). These conversations are a reminder that when we write, we write for real readers who want to be persuaded, not bullied or lectured, and with whom we might have much in common. What strategies work for you as you help students see the value of empathy and finding common ground as we help them settle into yet another weird year? ... View more

The divided nature of our country makes arguments a common topic in the daily headlines. People argue about whether the FBI was justified in searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, whether the throne of England should have passed directly from Queen Elizabeth to Prince William, bypassing King Charles, whether there should be any exceptions to the abortion ban passed by many states recently, and whether the structure of the Supreme Court should be changed. These days we argue about anything and everything. You’ve probably been in arguments where you were pretty sure no one was going to “win” because each side was wholeheartedly sure that they were right and no one was really listening to the other side.  So why study argument? Let me add a bit of emphasis: Why STUDY argument? Doesn’t arguing just come naturally to people? Yes, but recognizing and building good arguments are skills that can be learned. You may not convince everyone even with a sound argument, but at least you will know that your case is a good one. Elements of Argument and other argument textbooks teach you what the pieces of a good argument are, from clearly stating your thesis—called a claim in argument—to supporting that claim with good, sound reasoning, to linking all ideas into a coherent whole that considers the audience.  The role of the media has been seriously compromised ever since then President Trump convinced his supporters that he was the only one they could believe and that the media is the enemy of the people. He alone, however, did not move us away from a time when news reporting used to be objective. There has been a slide toward bias in the news which has made it difficult to identify whether networks and news sources are liberal or conservative. Now we must find a way back somehow to a place where the person making the argument is less important than the truth of the argument; the future of our democracy depends on it.  The more you read or listen to other people’s arguments, the more you will be able to analyze them for soundness, to recognize flaws in the logic, and to explain their faulty reasoning. You may even find yourself shifting your own thinking when you try to justify your opinions and find the proper evidence lacking. Sometimes there is common ground in the middle that makes compromise possible, but the more firmly beliefs are held, the more inflexible the believer will be. Firmly held beliefs can be a good thing, but examined beliefs are easier to defend.   Photo: "Couple fight each other"  by Afif Kusuma is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

  Semester system schools are already in full swing and quarter system schools are just about to start up. Fall 2022 is here, a new school year—one that brings us students who have been through the pandemic of the last two and a half years. Many haven’t been on campus in some time, haven’t been in classes with other students and teachers. Others have been fairly isolated, or isolated on phones, which is a special kind of isolation. For the last month I have listened to stories—as I’m sure you have—about mental health issues among young people today, and I’ve listened especially to those about college students and the difficulties they are reporting. Just yesterday I heard a first-year college student being interviewed: when asked what she had lost during the last two years, she answered, simply, “myself.” I know you can fill in similar examples from your own experience, maybe even from your own family. This has always been my favorite time of year: the new school year, the new class of students, the excitement of beginning college study, the excitement of meeting, and teaching, first-year students. My favorite. Time. Of. Year. But the last two and a half years have chastened and sobered me, as I’ve spoken with so many college-bound students who are feeling distress and even fear. In such a time, my steadfast belief is that teachers of writing/reading/speaking have a special opportunity and a special obligation. We may be teaching the smallest class our students will take. We almost certainly will be meeting students one-on-one more than other faculty, either in office hour sessions or in writing center sessions. We will absolutely be sharing writing with students, reading and responding to what they have to say and, we hope, establishing a two-way connection with them.  This year, more than ever, we need to make the most of these opportunities. But I think we need to do something more: we need to introduce students to the ludic nature of rhetoric and remind them of the crucial importance of play and playfulness to their learning and to their lives.  In this endeavor, I am guided and inspired by Lynda Barry, whose One! Hundred! Demons! I have taught for eons and whose comics and especially books on creativity (Picture This, What It Is) are always on my desk, along with her brilliant syllabus.  Barry is convinced that there is an artist in each of us and that playing—playing!—is the best way to let that artist emerge. And to release anxieties of all kinds and to become creators rather than recorders or responders only. (If you’ve ever had a chance to participate in one of Barry’s workshops, you’ll have seen the magic happen: if you haven’t, take some time to read about them or find out if she will be giving workshops anywhere near you in the coming months.) Barry says that when she is working with graduate students, almost always uptight and anxious and focused laser-like on one objective—she pairs them with 3 and 4 year olds: she says sixty to ninety minutes playing with these little ones loosens everything up, shifts patterns of thought, and leads to some brilliant problem solving. And when she says playing, she means playing:  down on the floor, making things together, defining things together, even just hanging out. While I don’t have access to a bunch of preschoolers (wish I did!), I can still introduce play into our classroom: activities where I ask students to listen hard for three minutes and then describe what they heard, or hand them objects they must describe and name without opening their eyes–you can probably think of more. And we can be playful with writing: trying for limericks or witty haikus; writing a very long sentence about the process of writing a very long sentence; trying for a sentence with the most double negatives, or the most metaphors or similes. Anything to be playful and to loosen up, to relax, and then to create. I would like to make all our writing projects more fun, with more potential for play—even a research-based argument; even a research project itself. I will write more about these possibilities soon. In the meantime, I am thinking of all writing teachers and students everywhere, and hoping that, together, we can have a healthy—and a healing—year.  Image used under a standard Adobe Stock license.  ... View more

Boy using computer in classroom. "classroom-laptops-computers-boy" by R. Nial Bradshaw is licensed under CC BY 2.0. When Sonia Maasik and I published the first edition of Signs of Life in the USA in 1994, the Internet was only just emerging as a new medium in American life—one that had not yet significantly affected the way we consume products and entertainment, nor the ways in which goods and services are advertised. As we now know, the exponential growth of the Internet since then has changed all that. Entertainment is increasingly streamed across myriad digital platforms, and marketing has become a highly targeted matter: calculated algorithms match certain advertising to certain consumers, whose profiles have been constructed using data-mined information that has been gathered through what amount to digital spy networks. Gone are the days when advertising professionals (can you spell Mad Men?) cast about for a way of determining what, exactly, their target markets wanted through organic means; and equally gone are the days when there were but three national television networks broadcasting the same content to a relatively undifferentiated mass audience.  As I say, all this is commonly understood, but I think that this paradigm shift has reached a point where those of us who analyze popular culture through the lens of cultural semiotics in order to take the pulse, as it were, of American society, must revise our approach. This blog will be a sketch in that direction.  I was prompted to make this my inaugural topic for the 2022-23 Bits blogging year while visiting some friends over the Labor Day weekend who were watching a baseball game on TV when I dropped by. The game itself was rather dull, which wasn’t much of a surprise, but what really struck me was how dull and repetitious the advertising was. There seemed to be only two or three sponsors (insurance companies of one kind or another) who kept repeating the same uninspired advertisements. “What happened to all the car commercials and fast-food spots?” I wondered, as the same few ads rotated through each commercial break. “Where are the razor blades and after shave lotions?”  Being the incorrigible cultural semiotician that I am, I shared my thoughts with my friends, who weren’t much interested in the game either. They also happen to be very well versed in all things Internet (well, of course! they are millennials), and in the course of our conversation I learned that today’s television sets are essentially big-screen computers that are completely integrated with the Internet—which means that watching TV is no different than surfing the Web insofar as a viewer’s every move is being monitored and mined for data. And at that moment a light flashed on in my head: no wonder the advertising for the game was so half-hearted and so bereft of sponsors! Why bother with the expense of traditional, scatter-shot advertising spots when all you need to do is buy viewer data from the data marketers and then shoot targeted advertising at them on their smart phones?  The implications of all this are profound, because it means that mass culture has now been so sliced and diced into ever more granular consumer markets that attempting to determine the tenor of American life and consciousness simply by interpreting mass media content is doomed to failure. What we must do now is interpret what we don’t see on our TVs, as well as what we do. We must seek out the many sources of information and content that do not get covered in such mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Atlantic, Slate, Vogue, and Vox, for example. We must research and analyze what those who still use outmoded technology to discover what they are seeing in the way of television content advertising, and what this tells us. It is apparent that there are now essentially two Americas when it comes to entertainment and marketing: the younger tech-savvy audiences who get their news, entertainment, and advertising exclusively via digital media, and the traditionalists who go under the radar when it comes to cultural analysis. These two groups represent a split that parallels that of the great divide in American political culture, as the latter group has, accordingly, blind-sided the high-tech pundits of political prognostication in election after election in the new millennium. ... View more