This is the scene outside my campus office right now. The phrase “bleak midwinter” comes to mind while I dwell on the absurdity of typing “Spring 2019” on my syllabi. No matter the weather on your campus, it can be tough to summon the mojo for new classes in the middle of the teaching year. But, as I tell my students every snowy January: We may begin in a deep freeze, but we’ll end in flowers.   So, with a New Year’s buzzword – “intentionality” – in mind, I’ve appreciated posts like Miriam Moore’s “Be It Hereby Resolved” on what to commit to in the coming semester.   It might even be worth reflecting on our late-summer teaching goals, as in Traci Gardner’s stimulating post, “My New School Year Resolutions.”   Both of these posts remind us that being an effective teacher doesn’t always mean doing one more new thing. Instead, it may mean doing the things we do best, but with more intention.   So, I’ll share a short list of classroom practices I’m re-committing to this semester that ask little more of me than being intentional. I’d love to hear yours.   Coming to class a little early to chat with students informally. It’s easy to forget how much more quickly this fosters community. At the end of each class, I’m making an effort to hang by the door and say goodbye to students individually, and by name, if possible. (For online classes, a chat space can offer room for informal community-building.) Learning students names early and using them often, both aloud and in written comments. It’s a simple, effective way to let students know they are seen and valued. And speaking of seeing: In face-to-face classes, I’m intentional about making solid, clear eye-contact with every single student during the class period. Rather than just repeatedly scanning the room, I am deliberate about making a real connection that says “I see you.” I remember how much this meant to me as a student. Students sit up when I really “see” them, and they often speak after I’ve engaged with them visually. They know I’m paying attention to them, and they pay attention to the class. Ensuring every student speaks right away, every day. Breaking the silence in the first five minutes makes it more likely students will participate during the rest of the class. This might mean a lightening round of “Question of the Day” — something silly to get to know one another (“What’s your favorite candy?”), or something more pedagogically nutritious (“Two words to describe your reactions to today’s reading,” or “Read a sentence you’d like to talk about from today’s text.”). Including reflection opportunities for students as often as possible. I wrote last fall about incorporating student journals into my class. This semester, I’m duplicating this effort but with a lighter touch — more consistent written reflection at the end of a class, or in the middle for five minutes after we’ve addressed a challenging concept. I’m trying to teach self-reflection as a habit, rather than an assignment.   Unsurprisingly, these intentions feel good and help me do good beyond the classroom, too.   Snowflakes may be flying, but these practices remind me that teaching well can feel like bursting into bloom.   Photo Credit: April Lidinsky ... View more

“I heard it on NPR” is an often-spoken truth among my friends, as we tend to listen to our local stations and compare notes. Recently, I “heard on NPR” a story about a bridal boutique in England that put a wedding-dressed mannequin sitting in a wheelchair in their window display. The store itself didn’t seem to think the display was “a big deal.” But a lot of people who saw it disagreed. One woman, who uses a wheelchair, tweeted: The new wedding shop in town has a wheelchair using mannequin and it shouldn’t be exciting but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen disability portrayed in a shop window. pic.twitter.com/N5sco2fLJf — Beth Wilson (@doodlebeth) January 9, 2019 Her tweet went viral as people around the world tweeted and reposted. As the shop’s co-owner said, their display had created “an absolute frenzy and this outpouring of messages on this debate that more shops should follow suit.” Indeed. I expect (and hope) that more shops everywhere will follow the lead of this bridal boutique.   But I was taken with this story because of a serendipitous coincidence: as I was listening to NPR in the background, I was working on a revision of one of my textbooks, The Everyday Writer, and in particular on a section dealing with language and identity. I was working with an illustration that’s been created for the new edition showing a young woman in the foreground at a protest rally—using a wheelchair. The speech bubble above her head says “I am a bilingual woman and a student activist.” I’m asking students to look at the illustration and analyze it for what it says about language and identity—and then asking them to think carefully about what words and images they would choose to illustrate their own identities—and to take a careful look at the words they tend to use to describe the identities of others: what assumptions may underlie those word choices?   With this particular image, I ask students to begin by observing it attentively. Then, make some notes, answering these questions: What is your eye first drawn to, and why? What is in the background of the illustration, and how does the background inform the image in the foreground? How would you describe the mood or atmosphere of the illustration? How does color contribute to establishing that mood? How would you describe the facial expression of the woman in the foreground? Look again at the speech bubbles: what words has the person chosen to describe herself? What do those words suggest about what she identifies with? How might the words differ from what you might have expected, and why?    So perhaps textbooks will join Britain’s bridal shop in depicting people as people, rather than people with disabilities. If so, I’m very happy to be in their company! Image Credit: Pixabay Image 2588238 by StockSnap, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

As always at this time of year, I’m checking to see what words have been called out as especially characteristic or indicative of the year we have just endured. The first one I came across was from Merriam-Webster, which chose “justice,” their Editor-at-Large Peter Sokolowski saying that “the pursuit of justice and the potential of obstruction of that pursuit are at the eye of the storm” today. Sokolowski goes on to note that people looked up the term “justice” in surges, especially around the time of the Kavanaugh hearings and the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, and during President Trump’s many attacks on the Department of Justice.   The venerable Oxford English Dictionary opted for “toxic,” defining the word as “poisonous” and noting that it captured the atmosphere in many countries this last year. Dictionary.com went for “misinformation” for absolutely obvious reasons, as we are currently awash in what the dictionary calls “false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead.” And the Cambridge Dictionary chose “nomophobia”—the fear of being without a mobile phone or being able to use it—as their word of the year.   Others weighed in with their own nominations. In an article for the Cleburne Times Review, Steve and Cokie Roberts lamented the government’s current “amnesia” regarding two important words: “debt” and “deficit.” They argue that “rapidly rising debt payments will squeeze the government’s ability to serve as a safety net for needy Americans,” that our government will spend more money on interest than on children in the coming year, and that the fact that half of our national debt is held by China and other foreign countries all means we face “a dire threat to our economic and national security.” They then choose their word of the year, saying “But when it comes to that threat, the word of the year from most official Washington is simply ‘silence.’”   Of all these offerings, I gravitate most to “toxic,” which seems to capture in five letters the sense of ill-will, distrust, and sickness—both physical and mental-- that seems to permeate the air we are breathing these days. So I could certainly go with that as a word of the year. But as I’ve tried to think what one word I have heard over and over and over in the past year, another one comes to my mind: “unprecedented,” meaning something that hasn’t been done before. I believe I have heard this word at least several times on almost every newscast I have heard during 2018, most of them attached to something that our current President has done—or not done. From “unprecedented actions on asylum,” to “unprecedented actions against gun control,” to “unprecedented move to install a right-wing activist on the National Security Council,” to “unprecedented number of unfilled government positions,” and to “unprecedented unilateral decisions affecting national security”—not even to mention unprecedented tweeting. During one evening news cycle during December, I counted 18 uses of the term! Of course, unprecedented things can be good or bad, but my informal survey suggests that when this word is attached to the current government, its connotations are almost always negative.   Maybe teachers of writing should get in the act, naming our words of the year and asking our students to do the same. I wonder, for example, how students would evaluate the words offered here, how they would define them, and what better nominations they might have in mind. We could do a lot worse than begin the new year with a careful and thorough analysis of words that characterize our current moment. For my part, I’m going to be watching Congress closely to see if they take some unprecedented actions that will help lead to justice and to peace.   What is your word of the year? Leave a comment below!   Credit: Pixaby Image 698538 by StockSnap, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

The last three assignments in the Incubator series of assignments that I have designed for my technical writing courses are directly related to one another. Students write a Short Proposal for the White Paper and the Research Poster projects that they will complete during the second half of the term. In today’s post, I will share this proposal with you. Because I want them to focus their energy on the major report (the white paper), I ask for a short, memo-based proposal, rather than a longer document. The topic proposal assignment gives students very specific guidelines to follow so that the more in-depth coverage from the textbook does not lead them to do more than they need to. My underlying goal for the activity is two-fold: I want them to learn how to write a research proposal, but just as importantly, I want to spot-check their topics for the white paper and research poster before they get too far into the project. As with previous assignments in this series, the proposal assignment below is an example that has some minor changes to remove specific information that is relevant only to the students in my classes. References to “Markel & Selber” in the assignment refer to chapters in the class textbook Technical Communication by Mike Markel and Stuart Selber. Technical Writing Proposal Assignment Background You will write a short proposal that presents the topic you will explore for your white paper and poster presentation. Your proposal should explain not only what the topic is but how it relates to your company (and therefore your career field and major) and the incubator goal of public outreach and education. The Scenario Today, you received the following memo, asking you to submit a proposal for a white paper and related poster presentation:  Ut Prosim Incubator    1872 Inventors Way, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060      Interoffice Memo     To: All Incubator Companies From: Traci Gardner, Ut Prosim Director Subject: RFP: White Papers and Poster Presentations for December Publication Date: October 1, 2018 Our Public Outreach Office is requesting proposals for white papers and research posters that will inform non-expert readers about a technical topic relevant to the work and mission of your company. These documents will share what we do and why we do it with the university, alumni, and local community. Your documents will also contribute directly to our goal of public outreach and education by adding to our growing library of documents that inform website readers about how science, technology, and engineering work. As an objective white paper, accepted documents will either provide knowledge or information about a subject relevant to your company or provide solutions to a problem or challenge that relates to your company—or even a combination of both goals. These white papers will also be the basis of a presentation that will be part of the quarterly poster session we sponsor for the local community in December. As an extension, additional investors and clients also attend the session, so you have the potential to make critical connections for your business. These white papers and poster presentations are due by November 26 [Portfolio 2 due date] and will be published in the December 2018 release on the Incubator website. White Paper Expectations Length: 25 pages or less. Document Design: Polished, professional layout that relies on design strategies that increase the document’s readability. You are encouraged to use a non-traditional format that incorporates sidebars, columns, and other visually-interesting design strategies. Please do not include a cover page. Graphics and Visual Elements: Include relevant graphical elements (e.g., photos, illustrations, graphs, tables). All graphical elements must be your company’s intellectual property, or you must provide complete documentation. Graphical elements that are not your own intellectual property must meet fair use guidelines. Research Support: Information must be supported by fully-documented research, including relevant quotations. In addition to citing published research studies, you can take advantage of the campus community by tapping university experts on the topic you are discussing. Documentation Format: APA citation style (or the appropriate style for your field, if desired—for instance, an electrical engineer can use IEEE). Submission Format: *.doc, *docx, *.pdf, or Google Document link. Additional criteria and examples will be provided once proposals are accepted. Poster Presentation Expectations Size: 48" X 36", presented in landscape orientation (horizontal). Document Design: Polished, professional layout that relies on design strategies that increase the document’s readability. Must use appropriately-sized headings, text, and images. Graphics and Visual Elements: Include as many relevant graphical elements (e.g., photos, illustrations, graphs, tables) as necessary to present your ideas. All graphical elements must be your company’s intellectual property, or you must provide complete documentation. Graphical elements that are not your own intellectual property must meet fair use guidelines. Research Support: Information must be supported by fully-documented research, including short, relevant quotations. In addition to citing published research studies, you can take advantage of the campus community by tapping university experts on the topic you are discussing. Documentation Format: APA citation style (or the appropriate style for your field, if desired—for instance, an electrical engineer can use IEEE). Submission Format: *.ppt, *pptx, or Google Slides link. Additional criteria and examples will be provided once proposals are accepted. Proposal Requirements Your proposal should be in memo format, be no more than four pages in length, and provide the following information to help us gauge the appropriateness of the topic for December publication: Background (or Introduction) Give some background on your topic, your experiences with it to date, what you already know, etc. Then clearly state, “[We, OR your company name, OR similar] would like to produce a white paper and poster presentation on [your topic] for the following reasons: . . . .” In your statement, explain your motivations for sharing information about the topic with the public. Areas to be Studied Provide more details on the proposed topic for your white paper and poster presentation so that the Public Outreach Office understands the approach you will take. Consider the following questions: What are the key points you will explore or explain? What are some questions you will ask and try to answer in this white paper and poster presentation? How do the areas to be studied relate to your company’s mission? What ethical and/or intercultural and global issues will you consider as you examine the topic you have chosen? Methods of Research Explain how you will gather the information that you present in your white paper and poster presentation. Tell the Public Outreach Office your research strategy by outlining exactly how are you planning to gather information and find answers to your questions explored in the white paper and poster presentation. Timetable Share a calendar that includes the target dates for various milestones that will lead to completion of your white paper and poster presentation. Be sure that your schedule allows you to finish by the white paper and poster presentation due date, November 26 [Portfolio 2 due date]. Qualifications Explain why you are qualified to do this research and outline the skills you have that will help you deal with this topic effectively. Request for Approval Ask for approval; ask for guidance, articulate your biggest concerns at this point; ask for suggestions about next right steps; provide contact information. Due Dates October 8, 2018: Proposal submitted as a memo, addressed to me and to Manolito Reyna Bautista, Manager of the Public Outreach Office November 26, 2018: Finished White Paper and Poster submitted [in Canvas, as part of Portfolio 2] Any Questions? If you need any help with your proposal, please let me know or contact my assistant, Leslie Crow <lcrow@utprosimincubator.org>. Relevant Details Note: These details apply to all of the projects you include in your portfolio. Your company’s address is [Your Company Name], Ut Prosim Incubator, 1872 Inventors Way, Suite #[you choose a number], Blacksburg, Virginia 24060. Your company’s phone number is 540-555-5555. You may create a fictional Internet domain for your company, and use that domain for a web page address and your email addresses. If you’d like, you may create other information (including a logo) for your company as appropriate. Be sure that you use the information that you create consistently across all of your projects. The Project Assignment Step 1: Decide on the focus for your white paper and poster presentation(which you will write as future projects). Your focus will be to inform non-expert readers about a technical topic that is related to your company (and therefore, related to your career field and major). Try to limit yourself to topics with which you have some expertise (or at least some experience) to simplify the research process. These example white papers may help you think of appropriate topics and/or approaches: White Paper on Studying the Safety of the Childhood Immunization Schedule (CDC) The Flint Water Crisis and Its Health Consequences (AccessScience) Funding Trees for Health (The Nature Conservancy) Microsoft Password Guidance (MSFT)  The Model of Good Health (ASME) Step 2: Examine the information about proposals in Markel & Selber. The textbook provides complete details on how to write proposals. Follow the textbook as you work on your project. In particular, be sure that you do the following: Follow the “GUIDELINES: Demonstrating Your Professionalism in a Proposal” (starting on page 430 of Markel & Selber) to ensure you adopt the appropriate tone. Use the “ETHICS NOTE: WRITING HONEST PROPOSALS” (starting on page 430 of Markel & Selber) to make your proposal professionally acceptable. Work through the “GUIDELINES: Introducing a Proposal” (starting on page 432 of Markel & Selber) to gather information for your proposal’s Background section. Explore the information in the “Tech Tip: Why and How to Create a Gantt Chart” (starting on page 436 of Markel & Selber) to see an effective strategy for explaining your timetable. Step 3: Write the proposals for your white paper and poster presentation. Compose your proposal, as requested in The Scenario above, with all the details you have gathered. Review the assessment guidelines below to ensure you have met all the requirements for the proposal. As you work, also keep the following points in mind: Use plain language to make the ideas in your proposal are easy to find and read. Refer to the resources from Module 2 as needed. Follow all relevant ethical guidelines as you work using the Writer’s Checklist at the end of Chapter 2 (on page 40 of Markel & Selber). Follow the suggestions for emphasizing important information, using the Writer’s Checklist for Chapter 9 (on page 211 of Markel & Selber) to check your work. Use the Writer’s Checklist for Chapter 11 (on page 288 of Markel & Selber) to ensure that your document takes advantage of design principles to make it reader-friendly. Make a good impression with accuracy and correctness. Your document should be polished and professional. Step 4: Check your draft against the Writer’s Checklist. Be sure that you include the required features for instructions. Review your project, using the Writer's Checklist for Chapter 16 (on page 439 of Markel & Selber) and the Assessment Criteria below. Step 5: Review your draft for design and basic writing errors. Everything you write should use accurate/appropriate image editing, grammar, spelling, punctuation, mechanics, linking, and formatting. These are important basic writing skills that you should have developed in high school. Review your project, using the Writer’s Checklist at the end of Markel & Selber, Chapter 10 (on page 242 of Markel & Selber). You can also consult the information on “Sentence-Level Issues” in Markel & Selber, “Appendix, Part 😧 Guidelines for Multilingual Writers (ESL)” (on page 683 of Markel & Selber). While the section is labeled for multilingual writers, it is useful for everyone. It includes explanations and examples for many common mistakes writers make. Step 6: Submit your draft to your Writing Group in Canvas. Post a rough draft of your Proposal to your Writing Group in Canvas in the 10/04 Draft Feedback Discussion in Canvas. Additional instructions are in the Discussion. If you do not post your draft by noon on Sunday, October 7, your group may not have time to provide feedback. Step 7: Provide feedback to your Writing Group in Canvas. Provide feedback to the members of your writing group in the 10/04 Draft Feedback Discussion in Canvas, by October 8 (end of the grace period). Use the information on the Writing Groups page to provide constructive feedback that will help your group members make concrete improvements to their drafts. You are not obligated to provide feedback for any drafts posted afternoon on Sunday, October 7. Step 8: Revise your draft. Use the feedback that you receive from your group members to revise and improve your document. You can share your draft again with your Writing Group if you desire. As you revise, keep in mind the advice in the steps above, as well as the Assessment Criteria below. Step 9: Include a polished version of your project in Project Portfolio 2, due November 26. Have your Proposal finished and ready for submission in your Project Portfolio 2, which is due Monday, November 26. The grace period for Project Portfolio 1 ends at 11:59PM on Thursday, November 29. Assessment Criteria For All Technical Writing Projects All technical writing projects should meet the following general criteria: Makes a good first impression as a polished and professional document. Meets the needs of the intended audience. Demonstrates how to emphasize important information. Uses layout and formatting that makes information easy for readers to find and read, and that follows the standards you have set for your company. Is written in plain language, which communicates the ideas clearly. Follows all relevant ethical guidelines. Uses accurate/appropriate grammar, spelling, punctuation, mechanics, linking, and formatting. For Proposals Your project should meet the following criteria for effective proposals, based on the checklist at the end of Chapter 16 of Markel & Selber: Meets the guidelines established in the request for proposals (see The Scenario, above). Demonstrates professionalism and honesty. Includes an introduction that indicates the following: the problem or opportunity. the purpose of the proposal. the background of the problem or opportunity. your sources of information. the scope of the proposal. the organization of the proposal. the key terms that you will use in the proposal. Provides a clear, specific plan for research and justifies that methodology. Describes the qualifications and experience clearly outlining relevant skills and past work. relevant equipment, facilities, and experience. Includes full documentation for all ideas, words, and visuals that the work of others (see Part B, “Documenting Your Sources,” in Markel & Selber). This assignment has gone relatively well. The most frequent issue has been confusion about memo format. Students either didn't follow the instructions and used other formats, or they did not follow the format accurately. The most serious issue that has come up has been a failure to provide enough details and the development of the proposal. I wonder if the emphasis on a “short” proposal has misled some to think that general and underdeveloped ideas were adequate. When I use this activity again, I will work to address both of these issues. My next post will share the instructions for the white paper, which is the next project students worked on. Be sure to come back to read more about that activity, and in the meantime, if you have any feedback to share, please leave a comment below. Photo credit: Typing content by Search Engine People Blog on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license. ... View more

One of the more interesting recent news items from the world of American popular culture has been the announcement that Netflix, rather than cancelling its streaming reruns of that Gen X TV blockbuster, Friends, on January 1, 2019 (as many viewers feared), has actually decided to up its payments for the rights to the series from $30 million to $100 million per year. The continuing popularity of this pop culture icon in an era decades later than the period in which it originated offers a particularly good topic for semiotic analysis, revealing how the same cultural sign can signal entirely different meanings when the context in which it appears changes. When we look at those contexts, the striking thing about the early 1990s and the mid-twenty-teens is their similarity. For the early 1990s, too, was a time of reduced expectations in the wake of a searing recession. Though Millennials and iGens today may not be aware of it, Generation X too was identified as the first generation that expected to do more poorly in life than their parents. Theirs was the Grunge era, when youth culture, making the best of a bad situation, turned to a shabby-chic aesthetic, reviving the thrift-shop consumer ethos of the late 1960s and shrugging off the glitz and glam of the "go-for-the-gold" 1980s. The cast of Friends—in a thoroughly unrealistic evocation of the new spirit with their West Village digs—accordingly made personal relationships more important than material possessions, and thus became role models for a generation that felt left out of the American dream. Sound familiar? After all, today's young, whether Millennials or iGens, are coming of age in the long shadow of the Great Recession, and so can find much in common with these six young adults whose portrayers are now, after all, the age of iGen parents. So with both Gen X nostalgia, and iGen relatability, on its side, it's no surprise that Friends should be worth $100 million to Netflix, as the streaming service maneuvers to survive in an era of intense competition. But a little more research into the enduring popularity of Friends reveals something of a surprise, a difference upon which we can hang a semiotic interpretation. For it appears, according to an article in the New York Times, that for iGen viewers the appeal of Friends lies not in the personal relationships but in the thoroughly laid back lifestyles of the friends in question. This group of people prefers hanging out with each other at their favorite coffee house—and otherwise taking time out from their jobs—to the frantic pursuit for career success. It isn't that they don't have certain career aspirations, but they don't get all worked up about them. They'd rather fool around.   This reveals the dismal reality facing today’s youth – the worst of all possible worlds. At a time when the gateways to socio-economic prosperity and career satisfaction are either narrowing or slamming shut entirely (especially if technology isn't your thing), the cultural pressure is to achieve a big money, career success – to be the next Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. The Grunge era said, in effect, "if the opportunities aren't there, wealth isn't where it's at anyway: learning to live with less in the way of material prosperity by turning to your friends and lovers is the way to go"; while the Google era says, "if you can make it to the top, join the club, your TED talk invite is in the mail; otherwise, tough." No wonder at least some young fans of Friends feel nostalgia for an era they never experienced.   I think that there may be an added dimension, another difference, that accounts for the enduring popularity of Friends in a new era. For in that dim and distant time before smart phones, when these six friends wanted to get together, they really got together, in person, not via text, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever. Today, the smart phone is the center of social attention, and a continuing stream of news reports cite an accompanying teen despondency over an inability to socialize with others in person. Facebook has swamped face-to-face.   Thus, it is highly likely that younger fans today are responding to something that has been taken away from them. So here is a case where popular culture, which so often reflects the need for each generation to step out of the shadow of the previous, presents the spectacle of youthful nostalgia for what is effectively the world of their parents. Once a sign of Gen X adaption to tough times, Friends is now a signifier, paradoxically enough, of loss. Photo Credit:  Pixabay Image 3774381 by mohamed_hassan, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

I just returned from a meeting sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the subject of strengthening undergraduate education. Led by Pam Grossman, Dean of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and Mike McPherson, former president of the Spencer Foundation, the meeting included scholars from many disciplines and universities as well as from foundations and other agencies. Topics ranged from how students learn best (active learning, evidence-based practices) to how to assess student learning, to methods for advancing “skillful teaching practices” and ways in which disciplinary organizations can support such practices.   At the opening session, speakers identified three major trends across colleges and universities and organizations: increased attention to teaching and professional development; increased attention to practitioner inquiry/teacher research; and a disconnect between research on teaching in K-12 settings and in higher education.   I came away encouraged about the field of rhetoric and writing: more than other disciplines, and often much more, our field exemplifies the first two trends and has answers to the questions the meeting leaders posed—along with a rich and now voluminous volume of research to support what we know. The intense efforts of teachers and researchers in our field over the last forty years have certainly paid off: in terms of questions of pedagogy especially, we are far ahead of other disciplines.   What I was most impressed with during this meeting, however, was the clear connection established between research and teaching. Anna Neumann from Teacher’s College reported on a study that followed forty university professors for five years following tenure, asking them how and where they pursued their ongoing scholarly learning: 66 percent reported that they did so through research, and 90 percent said that they did so through teaching. I was surprised by this finding because her study covered a number of fields—but it is exactly what I would have expected for the field of rhetoric and writing studies, though the 90 percent might have been closer to 95 percent!   Another study conducted at San Francisco State also caught my attention. This study was conducted as part of that university’s Metro College Success Program, which focuses on preparing teachers to practice what they call “social justice pedagogy,” which aims at truly inclusive practices, on presenting material through low-stakes practice and timely and relevant examples, and that recognizes that students who arrive “underprepared” do so not through some deficit in themselves but because a system characterized by conscious and unconscious biases doesn’t allow them to be “prepared.” The study attempted to measure the learning and pass rates of students in four different groups: a control group that received no intervention; a group that received supplemental instruction; a group that had small classes; and a group that had faculty trained in social justice pedagogy. The results: those in the control group had a 64.5 percent pass rate, which matched the average pass rate for the entire program. Those in the small group experienced a 69.2 percent rate, in the supplemental instruction group a 72.3 percent rate, and in the social justice pedagogy trained faculty group a 74.4 percent rate. Students who had all three advantages—small classes, supplementary material, and trained teachers—achieved an 88 percent rate.   Again, I am encouraged to know that many rhet/comp programs are already firmly grounded in research and that they work steadily for smaller classes, for excellent supplementary materials, and for ongoing professional development for those teaching in the program. But I also see many programs whose ability to embrace a social justice pedagogy is impeded by the dependence on more and more contingent and part-time faculty and brand new graduate students whose working conditions leave precious little time for training, much less for research. Nevertheless, the argument scholars in writing studies have been making for many decades now clearly holds true: the more research and teaching mutually inform one another and the more teaching faculty are engaged in research aimed at improving not what we teach but HOW we teach, the more likely the curriculum is built for student success. And that’s a goal all writing teachers embrace.   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 918449 by Free-Photos, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

What happens when your plans for a term suddenly don’t work? How do you adjust? This fall, I’ve had to do some hard thinking about these questions. If you follow this blog, you know that I disappeared in mid-October. On the evening of October 14, I fell, after tripping over a small baby gate that we use to separate the dogs when they are eating. I ended up taking an ambulance ride to the emergency room. After many x-rays, I was diagnosed with a severe hematoma and sprained knee. I was sent home with prescriptions for pain killers and instructions to use a walker for the foreseeable future. That night, I didn’t think a knee injury would upend my teaching plans. I am teaching fully online, so I didn’t need to get to a classroom. I had everything for the week of October 14th already queued in Canvas (our LMS), so there was nothing to worry about. Wow, was I wrong! When I attempted to get out of bed the next morning, I realized how badly injured I was. Just getting my leg off the bed was a major adventure. I had to loop a rolled sheet under my foot, like a stirrup, and then lift my leg onto the floor. I found that sitting at the computer for any length of time was impossible. Without my usual time at the computer, I couldn’t keep up with students, prepare materials for future classes, or grade their work. Coping Strategies Let the department stakeholders know ASAP. Even though I didn’t need my department to do anything to help me, I wanted them to know what was going on in case students came to them with questions. Let students know next. If I were teaching in an on-campus classroom, students would have noticed immediately if I were to hobble into the classroom with a walker and a bandaged knew. My online students had no way to know. I not only told them what happened, but I also told them what kinds of delays to expect as a result. Look for shortcuts. I have a cache of daily posts that tie to various topics I teach, and I raided that collection for discussion and instructional ideas. I normally try to write several new things each week. With the injury, I had to take the shortcut of using what I already had. Get ahead on whatever you can. Since I could only sit at the computer for short sessions, I had to find a way to use that time effectively. I found that I could copy over one or two of those daily posts, revise lightly, and queue them to publish later during those short sessions. I was able to set up daily posts for a few weeks in advance this way. Change what you need to. After a few days of struggling to get work done, I knew that the original plan was not going to work. I reworked the course schedule so that I could drop a major writing assignment. I hated giving up the activity, but it was the right choice. Ultimately, the change gave me some extra time to grade and let students have more time to write their longer reports. Realize that it’s okay to lower your expectations for yourself. Probably the hardest task for me was recognizing that I simply couldn’t be the teacher I wanted to be this term. Last spring I used screencast feedback on students’ projects. They loved it, and I planned to use it again this fall. Unfortunately, that kind of feedback takes two or three times as long to produce, so I had to lower my goals and go back to a combination of annotations and end notes for feedback. Fortunately, the term is nearly over, and I am doing much better. I can even sit at the computer for as long as I want to again! It’s been a challenging term, but I think I will make it through just fine. Perhaps more important, I gained a lot more sympathy for students who suffer major setbacks during the term. I certainly don’t want to fall again any time soon, but all in all I may have improved a bit as a teacher as a result this fall (pun intended).   Photo Credit: WRONG WAY by David Goehring on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Dustin Ledford, a graduate student at Kennesaw State University working toward a Master’s Degree in Professional Writing with a concentration in Composition and Rhetoric. He teaches First-Year Composition courses at KSU and also teaches diploma- and certificate-level composition at Georgia Northwestern Technical College. Dustin’s experience in the technical college system leads him to specialize in professional and workplace writing, which he incorporates in his course design to provide his students with experience writing for a variety of genres and audiences.   How often have you asked students questions like “How does this sentence sound when you read it?” or “When you look at this image, what does the author want you to feel?” Chances are, if you’ve taught a class involving multimodal rhetoric, questions like these (or some variation thereof) have come up countless times during lecture, office hours, or even in assignment comments. What do you do, though, if a student’s writing is too verbose or too fragmented, but the student is hard-of-hearing? How do you explain visual rhetoric if a student can’t see the image because of a visual impairment? Would you be able to cope, or would you be at a loss? How do you think the student might feel in that situation? This is a challenge that I’ve faced many times as a composition instructor: I have worked not only with many hard-of-hearing students, but also with students facing cognitive disorders, learning disabilities, and visual impairments. Instead of just accommodating, best educational practices encourage us to build accessibility into courses from the ground up. So what does that look like? For a practical example, I’d like to share a lesson and accompanying low stakes assignment discussing visual rhetoric. This assignment takes the idea of a relatively simple accessibility practice — writing alternate text attributes for images — and combining that practice with analyzing visual texts. Due to the nature of alternate text attributes, this exercise can also help students practice concise writing. Background Readings and Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook:  7Reading Critically; Ch. 16, Design for Print and Digital Writing; Ch. 18, Communicating in Other Media The Everyday Writer(also available with Exercises😞 Ch. 9, Reading Critically; Ch. 22, Making Design Decisions; Ch. 24, Communicating in Other Media EasyWriter(also available with Exercises😞   3: Making Design Decisions; Ch. 6: Learning from Low-Stakes Writing; Ch. 32: Conciseness Everything’s an Argument: 14: Visual Rhetoric; Ch. 16: Multimedia Arguments WebAIM: Alternative Text Assignment Learning Outcomes Students will be able to identify and evaluate rhetorical elements of images. Students will recognize the importance of alternative text in making their texts accessible. Students will practice concise, descriptive writing through the genre of alt-texts. Assignment Preparation Assemble (or locate) two short documents that are dependent on images to convey their full meaning. These text can be as simple or complex as desired, so long as students are given adequate time to read each document. Draft a short, simple quiz for each document (no more than five questions) that includes questions which cannot be answered without at least a basic understanding of the content of the document’s images. These can be simple questions (e.g. “According to the text, what’s an example of a fossil fuel?” when the example is only pictured rather than mentioned) or they can be more complicated questions involving simple charts or graphs. Remove all the images from one of the documents. (We’ll call this Document A.) Additionally, if any of these images have existing alt texts, be sure to remove (and save) them as well. Leave the spaces for the images, and number the spaces. Repeat this process with the second document (Document B), but be sure to keep the images grouped with the appropriate document (A’s images and B’s images). Assignment Procedure Break the class into pairs. (We’ll call members of each team Students 1 and 2). Provide Student 1 with Document A, and provide Student 2 with the images. Be sure to tell them not to share either with their partner. Instruct Student 2 to write 5-15 word alt texts for each image they were given, then give the descriptions (but not the images) to their partner. Have Student 1 use Document A and Student 2’s alt texts to complete the quiz on his or her document. Have students repeat the process with Document B, but reverse their roles (the student who did not have the pictures writes the alt-text for the other student). Review the quizzes as a class (or provide an answer key) and have students score themselves. Afterwards, have them look over the images from their respective documents. Have each student revise the alt-texts they were given based on their experience taking the quiz. Be sure to take some time with students afterward to discuss their experiences, particularly in terms of how images were important for conveying ideas and how the loss of that resource affected their ability to grasp the full meaning of the texts they read. Ask students to volunteer some of their alt-text descriptions and provide some of your own for comparison. Discuss what details took priority in each image and how having context changed their understanding of each image. Reflection on the Activity When I recently taught a student with a visual impairment, I became acutely aware of the difficulties students can face in our image-centric culture. Before we discussed visual rhetoric as a class, I contacted this student by email and asked if she would be comfortable sharing her own experiences with navigating her readings (and the Internet in general). This became a learning experience for my class (myself included) because it gave us insight into how difficult it can be to lose out on some of the intended meaning of writing when authors don’t take everyone’s needs into consideration. Additionally, while I am still learning, this experience taught me to rethink some of my teaching methods and even the language I use to express certain ideas so that it is more inclusive to all the students with whom I work. What strategies, activities, or assignments do you use to make your class accessible or teach accessibility? ... View more

As I've noted before, I once participated in an online forum where the participants quarreled a lot. One of the things they griped about was the way that some members "padded" their post count with lots of very brief entries intended to run up their score. Their goal—due to the fact that every forum member was ranked individually against the entire membership—was to make it to the top of the heap.   I thought the whole thing was rather silly at the time, but I did find myself on occasion being dragged into the competition. I recognized that the larger motive behind the forum's incentives to "reward" quantity over quality was to encourage site activity, and that the forum owners themselves were engaged in a post-count competition with similarly themed forums. What I didn't know at the time was that there is a name for the way that the site was designed: it's called "gamification."   Gamification is the process by which an activity that is not, in itself, a game, is turned into one. "Players" are ranked according to their levels of participation. This website, for example, is gamified, with all of us ranked, badged, and labeled according to a rather bewildering number of criteria, some of which I still haven't wholly figured out. And, as Stephanie Miller's "The Power of Play: Gamification Can Change Marketing" reveals, a lot of marketing campaigns are being gamified as well, like Domino's Pizza Hero mobile app feature (you can find her article in the 9th edition of Signs of Life in the USA). Even educators are looking into gamification as a way of transforming American education.   "Well so what?" you may be thinking. "What's the harm in making things fun?" The problem (and there is a problem) only appears when rampant gamification is subjected to a semiotic analysis. For when it is considered in the context of the larger system of contemporary American culture, we can see how gamification is a reflection of an overall hypercapitalistic tendency to turn everything into a winner-takes-all competition, with all of the "losers" that that entails.   Gamification looks even more sinister in the light of Sarah Mason's exposé of the way that it is being employed to incentivize worker productivity without a corresponding increase in actual income, "High score, low pay: why the gig economy loves gamification." Going beyond her own personal experience as a Lyft driver subject to the sirens of the game, Mason reveals a form of worker exploitation that is intentionally grounded in the psychology of gambling addiction. Here's how she puts it:   In addition to offering meaningless badges and meagre savings at the pump, ride-hailing companies have also adopted some of the same design elements used by gambling firms to promote addictive behaviour among slot-machine users. One of things the anthropologist and NYU media studies professor Natasha Dow Schüll found during a decade-long study of machine gamblers in Las Vegas is that casinos use networked slot machines that allow them to surveil, track and analyse the behaviour of individual gamblers in real time – just as ride-hailing apps do. This means that casinos can “triangulate any given gambler’s player data with her demographic data, piecing together a profile that can be used to customise game offerings and marketing appeals specifically for her”. Like these customised game offerings, Lyft tells me that my weekly ride challenge has been “personalised just for you!” Former Google “design ethicist” Tristan Harris has also described how the “pull-to-refresh” mechanism used in most social media feeds mimics the clever architecture of a slot machine: users never know when they are going to experience gratification – a dozen new likes or retweets – but they know that gratification will eventually come. This unpredictability is addictive: behavioural psychologists have long understood that gambling uses variable reinforcement schedules – unpredictable intervals of uncertainty, anticipation and feedback – to condition players into playing just one more round. In short, what is happening here goes well beyond mere fun. Gamification is at once a form of behavior modification and an extension of the surveillance society in which we live, where everything we do is tracked and data mined on behalf of corporate profits that are not shared with the vast majority of the population. With artificial intelligence—which is grounded in mass data collection and algorithmic analysis—emerging as the newest breathlessly hyped game on the block, we can see that this hypercapitalistic cultural tendency is only going to continue its expansive intrusions into our lives. And that's not just fun and games. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 1293132 by OpenClipart-Vectors, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

While many of us are hurtling toward the end of the semester, we are also pressed to decide next semester’s book orders and ancillary readings. So, I want to celebrate how many of you are blogging about assignments that place marginalized voices at the center of the classroom. (The photo to the right is from a recent New York Times article with rich images you might consider for classes around the upcoming holiday.) For example, Susan Naomi Bernstein recently described a redesigned assignment drawing on the film Black Panther. I also appreciate the insights about the politics of citation and authority in Dara Liling’s “Source Credibility as a Matter of Social Justice.” Many more of you, of course, are sharing inspirational texts for the rest of us to consider in our classrooms as we work hard to ensure our classrooms are inclusive, challenging, and aware of the politics of the academy and our historical moment.   My title for this post comes from bell hooks’ 1984 text, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, which has influenced my teaching for decades. hooks has been on my mind since I had the great good fortune to gather with thousands of feminist scholars and instructors at the 2018 National Women’s Studies Association conference in Atlanta just after the midterm elections. Conversation fizzed and popped about the implications of expanded representation – political and academic — by women and people of color. The plenary sessions, too, amplified the potential tectonic shifts happening in scholarship and our classrooms. For example, the conference launched with a richly textured discussion between celebrated poet Elizabeth Alexander and sociologist Alondra Nelson, author of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome (2016). That conversation — interdisciplinary, intersectional, political, and delightfully personal (Alexander and Nelson are longtime friends) — was a reminder of how crucial it is that we invite students into these conversations, so they understand that knowledge production is a human effort, shaped by power in myriad ways, but also a shaper of power. Another evening featured Alice Walker, who spoke with quiet intensity to a packed ballroom about the transformational experience of learning from Howard Zinn during his time as a professor at Spelman College. Yet another plenary brought together activists who reflected on lessons we could learn from social movements of 1968, and I could hardly scribble notes fast enough to capture the sparking conversation between Angela Davis, Bernadine Dohrn, Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Ericka Huggins of the Black Panther Party, and Madonna Thunder Hawk. Thunder Hawk’s leadership in the Red Power movement is featured in the new documentary Warrior Women, which I plan to teach next semester.   My co-author, Stuart Greene, has blogged recently on the empathy we try to inspire through our work in From Inquiry to Academic Writing. We have worked hard, with each edition, to include voices that speak to the pressing issues of our time, from perspectives that often bring insights from the margin to the center, as hooks might say. It is work that never ends – for which I am thankful. Like you, we are always listening hard for new voices to invite our students into new conversations.   What are you most excited to teach? What can you recommend?   Photo Credit: April Lidinsky ... View more

In my first-year writing courses this fall, I’ve asked my students to explore James Gee’s concept of Discourse as a means of interpreting their previous literacy experiences. A common theme in their first essays is a sense that prior schooling often suffocated their voices, leaving them with little interest or personal investment in classroom writing. They “know” they shouldn’t write in the first person or use textisms, emoji, contractions, or “I think” statements.    For their course projects, students select and explore one of the Bad Ideas about Writing—some of which are written in first person. They seek out blogs, TED talks, newspaper articles, peer-reviewed journal articles, and a range of other online and print sources related to their chosen “bad idea”—and to their own experiences, majors, and career choices.  As they work with sources, I ask them to consider how the various writers represent themselves in the texts. Do the students hear a voice there?  Where?  What gives the readers a sense of that voice?   To help students recognize multiple ways of expressing voice within academic contexts, I have them read Ken Hyland’s “Disciplinary Voices: Interactions in Research Writing,” which approaches voice from a disciplinary perspective. Hyland says,   “Writers have to display a competence as disciplinary insiders to be persuasive and this is, at least in part, achieved through a writer-reader dialogue which situates both their research and themselves. This means adopting a disciplinary voice; using language which establishes relationships between people, and between people and ideas…. All this is done within the broad constraints of disciplinary discourses” (7).     Specifically, writers position themselves using “stance” markers, and they connect with readers using “engagement” strategies. My students look for ways their source texts demonstrate both stance and engagement, noting how these concepts are instantiated differently according to the context and purpose of the piece.   The course project builds throughout the semester; shortly after mid-term, students have found, evaluated, and summarized four sources, and they have matched quotes or paraphrases to show how sources confirm, expand, complicate, or contradict each other (and their own experiences). As we move into the home stretch of the project, students need at least one additional text or audio source, as well as an interview.  But many of the students hit a snag at this point: they struggle to find an additional source that fits smoothly into the conversation that is taking shape among themselves and their sources.   To address their concerns on a practical level and to reiterate our on-going discussion of voice, during one recent session I asked students to think about hashtags in social media contexts. What is the purpose of hashtagging a post on Twitter or on other social media platforms? How do hashtags express stance? Engagement?    I have just over 40 students in two sections, all of whom are working on the Bad Ideas about Writing project. After our hashtag discussion, students posted the citations for their first four sources on a shared Google doc, and for each one, they added four to eight hashtags to represent both their reaction to the source and the shared purposes of the classroom.  Their hashtags thus demonstrate both stance and engagement, as these examples from our document suggest: #scholarly, #wedontalllearnthesame, #lengthy, #Teachersneedbettertraining #Easyread, #longggggggg, #getadreamjournal, #goodread, #notaboutwritingbutstillgood, #literacyinstruction, #realworldexamples, #teacherPOV, #findyourvoice, #videoincluded, #fingeredspeech, #conventionalphrases, #howto, #followthesteps, #don’tbesohardonyoself, #followurownrules, #researchbased, #textingislikeasecondlanguage, #shortandsweet, #thanksPerelman,  #downwiththeessay, #outdated, #PurposeOfRevision.   The shared Google Doc, when complete, contained nearly 150 citations and accompanying hashtags, giving students a number of choices (vetted by classmates) for their fifth source. First drafts of annotated bibliography entries for these sources came in last week, and many students commented on the value of “shared legwork” on their research, while others noted how helpful the information packed into the hashtags was.   Do you use hashtags in your classrooms?  Do you teach voice, stance, or engagement? I would love to hear what is working for you. ... View more

Carl Rogers, for whom Rogerian argument is named, took a concept that worked in couples and small-group therapy and extended it to large groups, even nations. Rogerian therapy is based on nonconfrontational communication. This communication is hampered, whether in dealing with individuals or nations, by the fact that there is no longer anything approaching a shared worldview. Rogers wrote, “Although society has often come around eventually to agree with its dissidents . . . there is no doubt that this insistence upon a known and certain universe has been part of the cement that holds a culture together.” In the Rogerian approach to argumentation, when views of what that worldview should be collide, effective communication requires both understanding another’s reality and respecting it. I was reminded of Rogers’s emphasis on shared common ground after the recent midterm elections when I saw headlines like this one from the Wall Street Journal: “What the Midterm Election Shows: America’s Two Parties Live in Divergent Worlds.” Almost half of voting Americans revealed through their choices that they feel very real threats to their “known and certain universe.” There is no place in that universe for abortion, same-sex marriage, gender fluidity, or immigrants. Throughout the Obama years, as liberals cheered change, there was a seething hostility that the election of Donald Trump brought to the surface. America’s (liberal) dissidents, those who threaten the security of a white Christian worldview, have increased in number to the point that they too constitute around fifty per cent of the voting public. Rogers would advocate that the two sides come together by seeking common ground—seeking that which they can agree on as a starting point for discussion. That’s hard to do, though, when the two sides live in divergent worlds. President Trump’s strategy as the midterms approached was the opposite of Rogerian argument. He went on the offensive, attacking the other side rather than seeking common ground. He rallied his supporters around causes by attacking liberals and condemning them as threats to nationalism—which many on the other side read as white nationalism. He played on the fear of the “other.” He intentionally broadened the gap rather than trying to bring the two sides together because establishing common ground among his supporters was more important. He created common ground within his base by constantly stressing how the other side advocated policies that threatened his supporters’ world. A group of families traveling from Honduras to seek asylum in the U. S. became the equivalent of an armed force attacking our Southern border—and a threat to our way of life. A search for common ground could have focused on how to control our borders, but, with the elections looming, it was more expedient to constantly refer to the liberal desire for open borders, making liberals appear to be as far as possible from protecting the American way of life. Having a Democrat-controlled House next year may make compromise more essential, if not more palatable, for conservatives. There are just too many differences in worldview between Republicans and Democrats to make common ground appealing to either party. While the Right can argue that they are protecting the most basic of American values, the Left can argue that their beliefs are firmly grounded in our country’s beginnings as a nation of immigrants seeking freedom from tyranny.   Photo Credit: “Anger! A couple arguing :(” by Free Images on Flickr 08/09/17 via a CC BY 2.0 License ... View more

For a number of years I was an active participant, and moderator, on a hobby forum. I was well aware at the time that the experience of forum participation was quite unlike anything else I had ever encountered, and, from time to time, I posted analyses of that experience onto the forum itself. I no longer participate on that forum (it got taken over by climate change deniers and such like—this will be relevant to my following analysis), but I do visit the site to see what is happening there. It's a kind of time travelling experience, thanks to the existence of searchable archives, in which I can see something of myself frozen in the amber of digital memory. But I see something else: namely, some striking signs of what has been happening in this country over the last ten years, not the least of which is the role of Facebook as both symptom and cause of those changes.   I'll start with something I posted to the site at the time when I was first coming to appreciate the affect it was having on me. Here's what I said, way back in 2005:             What an  forum provides is a historically unprecedented combination of carnival and holiday. That is, the ancient tradition of the carnival enabled Europeans to drop their everyday social hierarchies and limitations, to don masks, and enjoy a freedom that ordinary life doesn't offer. Here on Site X, what we are in everyday life doesn't matter at all. The hierarchy here, and there is a hierarchy of sorts, comes from technical expertise, or experience, or sheer  congeniality and cleverness. I'm very glad to note that it does not come from equipment. Many of the high-rung folks on Site X do not own the best equipment. You can't buy your way to the top here—which is a lot different from everyday life. More important is the masked nature of an  forum. Because we can   conceal as much of ourselves as we like, the stakes of ordinary social interaction are lowered. We aren't risking anything, as happens in any ordinary social interaction. This enables us to relax, to be playful, even a bit childish. We can also be more authentically ourselves, which is very refreshing. On top of this is   the fact that while we can interact at literally any time of the day, the virtual rather than spatial nature of that interaction eliminates most risks. In spatial interaction we have to worry about having to see a person again whom we have may made a goof with. Here, we don't risk that. Again, this enables us to relax enormously. This relates to the holiday-like characteristic of Site X. Just as on a travel-related vacation (a cruise, say), one finds oneself making extraordinarily close friendships that rarely last beyond the voyage because one knows that when the cruise is over everything can be erased, on Site X we are on a kind of permanent holiday. We can let our hair down safely, knowing that if too much is revealed or dared, we can always jump ship, so to speak. Since most of us feel this way it makes for an extraordinarily relaxed atmosphere, with most of our defenses down. Our usual defenses make ordinary social interaction fraught with tension; with them down, we are just more fun to be around.   As I read these words now I realize that there is a deep irony in them, the snake, so to speak, in the garden I thought I had found. This irony lies precisely in the anonymity and virtuality of  social interaction, whose benefits can cut two ways. For without the controlling factors inherent in face-to-face and fully-identified human interactions, the Internet is also a place of unbridled hostility and vituperation where people say things they would not dare say to someone else in person.   And there doesn't appear to be anywhere to hide when it comes to those  forums that still thrive, as Amy Olberding's essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education laments. Her title says it all: "When Argument Becomes Bloodsport: Philosophy is mired in wanton pugilism."   Which is where Facebook comes in. Facebook first appeared at a time when all-too-many  forums were becoming cockpits for the ever-increasing political and cultural divisions that are now so visibly tearing at our society. Forbidding anonymity and offering opportunities for  interaction in which everyone could be a site administrator with the power to exclude unwanted voices, Facebook was quickly embraced as a means of escaping the flame wars and troll fests the Net had become. Indeed, on Site X most of my friends ended up retreating to Facebook—where I did not follow due to personal concerns for my privacy (a topic ripe for its own analysis).   So in one sense, Facebook is a symptom, not a cause, of American divisiveness. It offered a way out. But in another, it is a cause: as more and more people have retreated into their own  silos, wherein they can interact only with those people with whom they already agree and be supplied with newsfeeds that deliver only the news and the opinions they want to hear, in the way they want to hear them, the divisions between what is emerging as the Two Americas are only growing. This is not mere correlation, for when a divided people are experiencing a different reality via their social network connections, they are increasingly living in a different reality, making it impossible to understand where the other "side," if you will, is coming from. And this is clearly making things worse.   So we have another spoiled paradise on our hands. And I really don't know where we go from here.   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 390860 by PDPics, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

The Global Opinions editor of the Washington Post, Karen Attiah, delayed publishing Jamal Khashoggi’s final column in hopes that they could edit it together, as had been their habit. It gradually became apparent that this was not to be, as reports of his disappearance after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul were replaced with reports of his torture and murder. Ironically, his final column was about freedom of the press—ironic because it was his history of outspoken criticism of the lack of freedom in his native Saudi Arabia that led to his death. In the column he lamented the lack of freedom throughout the Arab world that left its citizens ignorant of or misinformed about the larger Arab world. He wrote, “They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative.” Critics have been imprisoned; print journalism has been suppressed: “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.” Jamal Khashoggi was silenced permanently on October 2, 2018. As news of Kashoggi’s murder spread, the eyes of the world were on how America would respond. Then last week a single word he used in the final sentence of his final column was picked up by President Trump and immediately began ricocheting all over the media: nationalist. Definition often finds itself at the heart of political discourse, particularly leading up to critical midterm elections. Trump’s declaration that he is a nationalist certainly fits this bill, centering discourse on the connotations of nationalism. So much depends on how nationalism is defined. In its denotation, it seems innocuous. Merriam Webster defines it thus: “loyalty and devotion to a nation, especially: a sense of national consciousness . . . exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” That sounds pretty much like patriotism, which President Trump may have had in mind when he stated, “A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. Okay? A nationalist. Use that word.” Yet, when Khashoggi used the term, it was in the context of “the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda.” CNN reporter Jim Acosta was quick to pick up on one negative interpretation of the term. In the Oval Office the next day, he asked, “Mr. President, just to follow up on your comments about being a nationalist–there is a concern that you are sending coded language or a dog whistle to some Americans out there that what you really mean is that you’re a white nationalist?”  Trump’s response: “I’ve never even heard that, I can’t imagine that. I’ve never heard that theory about being a nationalist.” Unfortunately, many have. Trump says the word nationalist and hears patriot. Others hear the “dog whistle” of white nationalism. Others hear Khashoggi’s “governments spreading hate through propaganda.” The term’s connotations have everything to do with context. In the context of Khashoggi’s death, its use seems ominous. Image Source: “2018-10-22T103713Z_2_LYNXNPEE9K0IF-OCATP_RTROPTP_2_CNEWS-US-SAUDI-KHASHOGGI” by Bruce Detorres on Flickr 10/22/18 via Public Domain ... View more

This week's features guest blogger is Phillip Chamberlin‌, professor at Hillsborough Community College “I lost six friends and neighbors—all under 25 years old—to suicide. And since then, I’ve lost about five friends to heroin overdoses and suicide. It’s just like this cluster of death that surrounds me, surrounds my neighborhood. It’s kind of a desperate thing.” –John Ulrich, college student from Boston The young man quoted above stands on his apartment building as he gazes into the lens of the camera. He’s about to recite his favorite poem, “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. His personal connection to the poem is obvious, as is his passion.  The rhythm of his performance varies greatly from that of the author’s, but no matter—it’s a valid reading, and he’s moved by the poem, and so are we. This video and many others like it are featured in the Favorite Poem Project, a project founded by Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States, that features compelling videos of ordinary people introducing and then reciting their favorite poems. The website describes the participants as being “Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, representing a range of occupations, kinds of education, and backgrounds.” Most of the people on camera are quite ordinary—they may have interesting stories, but rarely are they overtly eccentric. Because the participants are not famous poets or academics, they could perhaps be called outsiders. But that would be missing the point: In the world of poetry, there are no outsiders. I teach at a community college that serves a population almost as diverse. Some of my students are younger than sixteen (as participants in high school dual enrollment programs) and some are older than sixty. Some have never had a day of employment, and others are changing careers. Some have disabilities. Some are multilingual. Some are already avid readers, and some avoid reading as much as possible. Some even write their own poetry. Others think they hate it. In my experience, these Favorite Poem Project videos have had a welcome role in many of my courses, at least the ones that discuss literature (whether in depth or as part of a brief overview). In elective literature classes, which tend to be full of students already passionate about reading, they work. In prerequisite composition classes, which tend to include a population of students with a much wider range of skills and academic preferences, they also work. Whether I teach in traditional classrooms or in online environments, they work. Students invariably find something intriguing and relevant in these ordinary people, their favorite poems, and their interpretations. Sometimes I assign specific videos, like the Jamaican-American photographer who finds himself surprised by his connection to New England poet Sylvia Plath, or the construction worker who finds inspiration and comfort in the words of Walt Whitman, or the law student who responds enthusiastically to the world view of Wallace Stevens. Sometimes I encourage students to select videos on their own.  Either way, assignments involve viewing, ruminating, responding, writing, and discussing. In face-to-face classes, sometimes I assign groups of students to present a video to the class—that is, they respond to a response and continue the conversation. In online courses, these videos serve as the basis for at least one of our weekly discussions. Even when students don’t respond favorably to a video, something interesting happens: They begin to see poetry in a new light. And to be honest, sometimes I do, too. Imagine where instructors could take these activities to make them even deeper, more involved, more challenging. Instructors could even ask students to create their own videos. (They would need to be brief enough to be digestible for contemporary audiences yet deep and meaningful enough to be worthwhile—a worthy challenge.) Or, instructors could ask students to base an extended essay project about these poetry fans and their responses. The essay project itself could have a multimedia component. The possibilities are exciting, and resources like the Favorite Poem Project will continue to keep poetry relevant for students from many different walks of life. ... View more