What’s your vision for an individual or small group writing conference with first-year and corequisite writers—especially when they have submitted drafts in advance? Do you see the conference as a predictable genre, one that will unfold according to a standard script? Or is it something else? This semester, I am working with a group of junior and senior writing fellows, all of whom are partnering with first-year and corequisite writing classes. In preparation for the fellows’ first week of interaction in their assigned courses, I wanted them to think about what a writing conference looks like. Ideally, we noted, first-year writers will approach fellows with a clear sense of the help they want and a set of questions to address. But in reality, that rarely happens: initial conferences between novice writers and novice fellows may lapse into stretches of awkward silence, and fellows may feel compelled to fill that silence with “you shoulds” and “you coulds.” Queries and suggestions may be met with shrugs, nods, or respectful “oks.”  I asked fellows to consider some sample drafts and think about how they would initiate discussion during the writing conference: what would their opening gambit be? They shared these initial moves—both questions and comments—with the rest of the group, posting anonymous digital sticky notes.   Next, I invited fellows to analyze those opening moves much like they would the introductory paragraphs of a text. How might these comments and questions frame the following discussion? What expectations would those moves establish for student writers? Did the comments and questions give prominence to the student writer, the writer’s process, the form or style of the text, the assignment, language, developing content, the fellow as reader, or something else? Was an invitation to dialogue articulated or implied? Was a stance taken? As we began to evaluate the questions and comments we had generated, I noticed a growing sense of concern among the fellows: “I think I did this wrong.”  In short, they experienced in our preparation session exactly what first-year writers often experience during conferences: what they hear in questioning is that they “did it wrong.”   Of course, the fellows weren’t “doing it wrong.” They had targeted significant concerns about these early drafts. But conference spaces, like developing texts from the first-year writers, are sites of “logogenesis”—the making of meaning—where participants are establishing identities, navigating relationships, testing understanding, and making sense of genre conventions. As experienced college writers, the fellows recognize the complexity of writing choices and the impact of those choices on the resulting text. I want them to see they can apply a similar thinking process to their choices within the conference. In student conferences, we of course want to work on the paper at hand. But with corequisite writers in particular, fellows may also want to affirm student writers as writers, develop empathy, encourage agency, practice metalanguage, and offer opportunities for play. Thus, their opening gambits might include these: What is the big statement you wish to make with this assignment? What’s your biggest struggle with this paper? What part of your paper do you like the best? Why? What part of the paper needs the most attention right now? Wow! What a story—that’s really powerful. I struggled when I first read this assignment. How about you? As the fellows imagined opening moves, they realized they wanted more information:  when they get student drafts for review, where will students be in the process? Will they have received any instructor feedback yet? Are these drafts going to be assessed by a rubric? How many additional revisions will students have? What is the instructor’s goal for the conferences between fellows and students? These questions framed the fellows’ next session, when they discussed logistics and expectations with their assigned instructors.  When the fellows meet with first-year writers for the first time, the conferences may be just as rough as the student drafts they discuss. But if the fellows can reflect on the conferences as texts, critically, they can revise or edit their conference strategies, even as they assist first-year writing students to do the same with their papers.  I am excited about what will occur in the conferences—both for the first-year writers and the fellows. I suspect their reflections will prompt me to revisit my own conferencing strategies. How about you? How do you promote conversation in your individual conferences?  ... View more

  As a new year and a new school term begin, it’s time to look back at the key terms around which Elements of Argument is organized and which can be used to analyze whatever controversial issues appear in today’s headlines: claims, warrants, and support. The claim part is easy. When we react to something we read or hear in the news, unless we phrase our reaction as a question, we are most likely making a statement in the form of a claim, no matter how ill- or well-conceived it is. “He’s an idiot!” and “It’s about time!” are claims, though the type of claims that, in those exact forms, seldom make it into formal written arguments. They happen to be claims of value. Not everyone will agree with all of these statements, but in form, they are claims of value: Joe Manchin is a disgrace to his party. Stewart Rhodes is an American hero. The verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was unfair. Joe Biden is a man of compassion. The advice offered about COVID by the CDC is confusing. If you move in one direction from claims of value, you have claims of fact. These are different from statements of fact because at least some readers or hearers would have to be convinced of their validity – while a statement of fact is always true, a claim of fact may not be: Unemployment is the lowest it has been in fifty years. The Omicron variant in general causes fewer severe symptoms than earlier variants of COVID-19. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will have massive impacts on small towns across America. In the last year, a number of states have passed new legislation restricting voting rights. The 2020 Presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Move in the other direction, and you have claims of policy, the “should” or “should not” statements of argument: The Democrats should end the filibuster to pass the Voting Rights Bill. Mail-in ballots should be allowed in presidential elections. Everyone should be fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19. No one should have to be vaccinated against his or her wishes. Current gun laws should be enforced more stringently. The validity of any claim in argumentation depends on the ability to offer support for it. Students studying argumentation will learn a range of different types of support to use, depending on the subject. They will also learn to analyze the evidence offered in defense of any claim they are being asked to accept. A couple of general observations: Reputable media sources will not present information that they do not have sources for. There are both legal and ethical reasons for not doing so. One of the major reasons for the political split in our country is the willingness of Americans to accept what they hear from any news source or any social media source without demanding support. Too often they are willing to accept statements that they already agree with without demanding evidence of their validity. The element of argument that is most problematic for students—and others—is what Toulmin called the warrant, which we now call the assumption. Recognizing warrants or assumptions in the arguments that surround us takes practice. As students start thinking of the arguments they see or hear in terms of the elements of argument, it helps if they think of the assumption as the bridge linking claim and support. We are willing to accept a claim based on the support offered because of a broader belief that we hold. Why should the filibuster be done away with in order for the Voting Rights Bill to pass? Because of the broader belief that some pieces of legislation are too important to be held to the sixty-vote requirement rather than a simple majority. Why should mail-in ballots be allowed? Because of the broader belief that voting should be as easy as possible. Why should no one be required to be vaccinated against his or her wishes? Because of a broader belief that individuals have the right to make decisions about what is done to their bodies. What about the other side of the issue, the belief that everyone should be vaccinated? Because of the broader belief that the safety of the many outweighs the wishes of the individual.  Headlines are a course in argumentation in and of themselves. In teaching argumentation, we have to stay on top of the demanding task of analyzing them in terms of the elements of argument. We are forced to analyze why we hold the opinions that we do and to present the reasoning behind even opinions that we do not agree with.   Photo: “Newspapers B&W (4)” by Jon S is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Podcasts, like all forms of writing, are defined by specific elements and include a great variety of them. Use this assignment to explore the idea of what a podcast is with your students, and introduce the idea that all forms of writing have their own criteria. Podcasts are well-established, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to encourage student engagement and introduce multimodality.   LaunchPad and Achieve products include assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. You can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.   If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts."  If you are using Achieve, you can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page “Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course.” If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Learn about Evaluation Criteria Pre-Class Work: Ask students to look up the definition of “podcast” in at least two different dictionaries and record the definitions. In addition, choose two episodes of different podcasts for students to listen to. One of the podcasts should be a Grammar Girl podcast; the other can be from any other podcast series (for example: The Daily from the New York Times or Consider This from NPR). Assign these for students to listen to before class, and ask students to take notes on notable elements of the podcasts. Students might consider: How is the podcast titled? Does the podcast have an introduction and conclusion? What information is included in each podcast? Does the podcast episode have a theme or topics? Tip: If you’re using Achieve, see “Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course” and “Create an Assessment” for help with making Grammar Girl podcasts available to students. To add a link to a podcast from another website, see “Add a link (URL) to another website to your course.” Assignment Part 1: In class, place students into groups and ask them to complete the following steps. Compare the definitions they have written down. Together, they should compile all the definitions into one. Compare their notes about the podcasts they listened to and make a list of all the elements they identified. Then, they should make a list of criteria: What makes a podcast a podcast? This should be a combination of the definition and their own notes about the podcasts they have listened to. Assignment Part 2: As a class, listen to one or more Grammar Girl podcasts that are different from the ones chosen for pre-class work. (You might consider choosing podcasts about a topic that will be discussed later in the semester, or topics that you feel your students may need a refresher on.) Each group should then evaluate the podcast(s) based on their chosen criteria. Rank the podcast against each criteria using a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is “this podcast does not exhibit this criteria” and 5 is “this podcast completely exhibits this criteria.” To wrap up, each group should present their list of criteria and outline how well the new podcasts fit their list. As a class, discuss the findings. Were there any criteria that all groups had? Were there any that only one group had? After listening to the new podcasts, what criteria would they add or how might they revise their list to better encompass the idea of a podcast? Reflection: Ask each group to revise their list of podcast criteria based on the class discussion. Then, each student should write an individual reflection. If they’re stuck, they might consider one or more of the following questions: What changes did we make based on the class discussion? Were there any entirely new criteria that came out of the conversation? Were there any criteria I thought would apply to all the podcasts but did not? Are there any podcasts I listen to that do—or don’t—meet these criteria? If I were to create a podcast, what criteria would I use? Tip: If you are using an Achieve English course, consider creating a custom Writing Assignment that students can use to submit their lists and reflections. Refer to the article “Guide to Writing assignments for instructors” for help with Writing Assignments. Advanced Assignment: Ask each student to research a form of writing they enjoy that usually has specific criteria. For example, they may often listen to a type of music, read a specific genre in fiction, or be taking classes in a discipline with particular expectations. After researching, students should write 2-3 paragraphs outlining the criteria for this particular type of writing. They can also include examples where those criteria are ignored, twisted, or changed. As you begin to think about this semester, be sure to check out our other Grammar Girl assignment ideas. You can access previous posts from the Bedford Bits home page or by visiting “30+ Grammar Girl Assignments for Your Next Class” on the Quick and Dirty Tips website (these assignments are based on the blog posts, and six of them include downloadable PDFs!).   Did you plan to use Grammar Girl—or any other podcasts—in your classes? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear from you and learn about your plans for podcasts this semester—or in past semesters!   Credit: "Turntable Top View Audio Equipment Edited 2019" by chocolatedazzles is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

As a kid in the 1950s, I read the “funny papers” and occasional comic books like everyone else I knew, but I didn’t get seriously interested in the genre until I studied rhetoric, until I began to understand the range of communicative tools available to a rhetor/writer, and until I understood “languaging,” as many colleagues are now calling it, to reach far beyond words on a page (or, nowadays, a screen). Given the autonomous view of literacy prevalent at the time, I had a very script-centric view of writing, but one that slowly gave way to what Brian Street called the “ideological model of literacy” as a social practice. And so I immersed myself in reading studies of orality and of the spoken, embodied word—learning especially from Geneva Smitherman—and relished all that these studies brought to writing. I began, to “hear” writing, though not nearly as well as the kind of “listening in print” described in Nicole Furlonge’s Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature. And as my grandmother used to say, “slowly . . . but slowly,” I turned my attention to other graphic forms of communication, realizing that, as Leslie Marmon Silko says, “after all, words are images,” and that words not only invoke but also attract other images and summon them into collaboration. For years before I retired, I taught writing courses themed on graphic narratives, courses that every term drew students from all majors on campus, perhaps attracted first just by the idea of comics but soon enough as intrigued as I was by the rhetorical combination of word, image, and invoked sound. I still remember those courses as among my favorites of all time. (Just a few days ago, a student in one of those courses well over a decade ago now wrote to say that he was, at last, creating his own graphic narrative!). I still read graphic narratives as often as I can, though the veritable renaissance of the genre we are experiencing makes it impossible to keep up with the outpouring of remarkable new works (check out, for example, Harmony Becker’s Himawari House, which features young Japanese American, Korean, and Singaporean women’s adventures in Tokyo and which mixes languages and dialects in delightful and insightful ways—or two dozen other works I could name!). As I do so, I realize more and more the synesthesia that is reading/listening/writing/speaking/drawing. A week or so ago I re-read Gene Luen Yang’s Dragon Hoops: From Small Steps to Great Leaps, a story anchored in his real-life experiences teaching at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland. Yang tells the story of basketball coach Lou Richie and his O’Dowd Dragons, from Yang’s admission that he “hated sports” and “especially basketball;” to his introduction to Coach Lou and the team; to his growing fascination with the complex, deeply meaningful, and often fraught relationships among coach and players and opponents; and to the dazzling heights and depths the team experiences. But it is also so much more than that story, as Yang detours to explore the origins of the sport, its eventual expansion to allow the women’s sport to grow and flourish, and a glorious chapter on the Harlem Globetrotters and the entrance of African Americans and other people of color into the professional game. And all drawn and lettered in Yang’s simple, clean style—so friendly, accessible, and warm. In teaching graphic narratives, I found that students inevitably came away from them with passionate inquiries of their own and research projects that led them to discoveries—and to often astonishing analytic pieces of writing. These pieces were richly illustrated and also presented orally in our class, having students make their own multimodal compositions that appeal to and mix all our senses. “Ah,” I think, “now that’s writing!” Teaching graphic narratives—and reconsidering them today—has led me to contemplate just how to define writing for today’s world and beyond. I know that many other writing teachers are thinking about this same question. How do you define writing today? Image Credit: "Graphic Novels" by morebyless, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

bell hooks, by Cmongirl, is available to use in the public domain.    In the fall of 1994, at the beginning of my second year of teaching at a two-year college in a large mid-Atlantic city, I found bell hooks Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom at a local bookstore. I flipped through the book, eventually landing on the essay “Embracing Change: Teaching in a Multicultural World.” In 2022, we would reframe “multiculturalism” as diversity, equity, and inclusion, and nearly thirty years later hooks’ words feel as moving and as relevant to me as that afternoon in the bookstore.    “Embracing Change” begins:  Despite the contemporary focus on multiculturalism in our society, particularly in education, there is not nearly enough practical discussion of ways classroom settings can be transformed so that the learning experience if inclusive. If the effort to respect and honor the social reality and experiences of groups in this society who are nonwhite is to be reflected inn a pedagogical process, then as teachers– on all levels, from elementary to university settings– we must acknowledge that our style  of teaching may need to change (p. 35).   These opening sentences were thrilling to me, and gave insight into my own teaching and learning about multiculturalism in graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, “multiculturalism,” in practice, often meant changing the syllabus to include writers of color, women, and working class folks. While these changes, in theory, seemed significant to me at the time, changing the sources alone did not lead, in practice, to antiracist classrooms.     For example, as a TA and instructor of record for first-year-writing courses, I taught texts by James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr. to demonstrate how they used rhetorical appeals to structure their arguments. However, in the pedagogical approach introduced in our teaching practicum, teaching the rhetorical situation of audience, purpose, and occasion did not include  historical conditions of racism and white supremacy faced by Baldwin and King as writers and rhetors, and that necessitated antiracist arguments in the first place.     The attention to racism and white supremacy was the gap that bell hooks’ work filled in my education as a teacher. Rather than presenting a generic one-size-fits-all pedagogy, Teaching to Transgress included both theory and practice through a Black feminist intersectional lens.  In other words, hooks suggests why “we must acknowledge that our style of teaching may need to change” ( and offers concrete suggestions for how teachers might approach changing our style.    Years later, in revising Teaching Developmental Writing 4e, my editor and I agreed that “Embracing Change: Teaching in a Multicultural World.” seemed as pertinent as ever. The revision took shape in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street, and the killing of Trayvon Martin, a young seventeen-year-old Black man, shot to death by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, In 2013, George Zimmerman’s acquittal of all charges in Trayvon Martin’s killing was the catalyst for the beginning of #BlackLivesMatter  as conceived by Alicia Garza, Patrisee Cullors, and Opal Tometi.    For 2022 readers, hooks’ work in “Embracing Change” presents a means of activating diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond adding a few more sources to the class reading list. hooks’  description of the major tenets of a multicultural classroom include:   “To recognize the value of each individual voice” through keeping journals and writing paragraphs in class to one another (p. 40) To learn from our students, and in order to gain an openness toward “different ways of knowing” (p. 41) To study, understand, and discuss whiteness (p.  43). This does not mean recentering whiteness, but instead gaining a deeper sense of historical and cultural perspectives on coming to be seen as white, and such perspectives inform racism and antiracism    While these pedagogical tenents might be seen as commonplaces in 2022, in 1994, hooks’ work felt revelatory.  When I finished graduate school in a decidedly rural setting, I moved from a well-funded Research 1 flagship institution to an urban two-year college that was one of the most poorly funded post-secondary institutions in the same state. The contrast in institutional resource was a deeply troubling introduction to the material and economic realities of neoliberalism.    In light of these stark inequities, Teaching to Transgress opened my mind to reframing  teaching, as hooks suggests, as the practice of freedom, and to comprehending the work of this work teaching beyond the surface level. In other words, given the economic disparities so prevalent in funding for public higher education, it would not be enough to merely restate that all students are capable of learning and growing. Instead, as a teacher,  if the world was ever going to change for the better, I would also need to remain capable of  learning and growing from and alongside my students. Nearly thirty years later, I am grateful to bell hooks for sharing this wisdom, and for the opportunity to recommend her work to a new generation of readers.     Keywords: bell hooks; diversity, equity, and inclusion; first-year writing; professional development ... View more

The following interview with Haleh Azimi and Elsbeth Mantler, Co-directors of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program, focuses on professional development for faculty teaching corequisite composition and was conducted via email in December of 2021. This is the first of four parts. David Starkey: First, I want to say how lucky I feel to be able to talk with the two of you about your role in faculty development for instructors teaching accelerated/corequisite composition. Can you tell me a bit about how you came to take on this role at the Community College of Baltimore County? Haleh Azimi: Peter Adams, the founder of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) designed the ALP leadership structure with our Dean of Developmental Education and the Vice President of Instruction. When ALP was instituted at CCBC in 2009, ALP was a co-requisite course sequence that paired Composition I with English 052 (Basic Writing). After Peter retired, Professor Susan Gabriel became the director of the program which shifted to an integrated reading and writing model (IRW). The configuration shifted in 2016 so that Composition I was paired with Academic Literacy 053 (ACLT). Critical reading instruction then became infused in the ALP support course. DS: So, you have a co-curricular model. HA: Yes, and that model influenced the leadership structure because this new course arrangement consisted of an English class and an Academic Literacy class. CCBC looked at this new structure to build the new leadership model, which is a co-directorship. DS: Haleh, you’re an Academic Literacy faculty member, and Elsbeth teaches in the English department. HA: We come from the two disciplines that form the ALP course. The best part of this co-directorship is that I get to work with my colleague, Elsbeth, on such a close basis, and both of us also teach an ALP class every semester. We think this is essential in leading this program because it gives us an opportunity to grapple with the same issues other faculty deal with on a first-hand basis. This has truly been the most collaborative partnership, and one of the most rewarding parts of our work is that we both learn so much from each other regarding discipline-specific practices. One example of this would be ways to address students’ grammar in context. Prior to collaborating with the English department, I would teach discrete skills that had nothing to do with what they were writing about. Now, I focus my efforts on providing just-in-time support based on individual student needs. So, if a student has a chronic writing issue, I will work with them individually with their own writing. Elsbeth Mantler: I’ve learned so much about incorporating critical reading strategies from Haleh and others in her discipline. Before I started collaborating with ACLT faculty, I would assign students complex readings with no context about who wrote it, when it was written, and what it was about. Oftentimes, students would come in having read the assigned reading but not understanding a lot of the concepts presented in the reading. Now that I have learned more about reading strategies, I spend a lot of time scaffolding the readings with pre-reading strategies. I have students research topics, authors, and publications prior to even reading an article. This helps students access prior knowledge, and it provides context for what they are about to study. This cross-collaboration between English and Academic Literacy is the reason why this partnership has been so successful – but I also want to reiterate that teaching as part of my co-director role is invaluable because I love our students, and I am able to remain current on ALP developments. The teaching provides an opportunity for both of us to put in practice new methodologies.  ... View more

While searching for signs of America's increasing division into politically and ideologically hostile camps in the kinds of television programs that "red state" and "blue state" audiences prefer, I have been quite surprised to find how little current data and analysis of the question are available, with most of what I have located so far being three to four years out of date. For example, Melanie McFarland's Salon piece, "Red state TV: Networks are reportedly seeking pilots appealing to Trump voters"—which is just the sort of thing I am looking for—dates back to 2017, and I have yet to find anything equivalent to it. I have no trouble finding all sorts of current television commentary (and viewing recommendations) in such sources as Salon, Slate, Vox, and the Los Angeles Times, but not audience breakdowns. So, crossing over the great divide, I turned to see what National Review and Breitbart have to say about the politics of current TV viewership and found a lot of coverage of various high profile popular cultural controversies clearly intended to provoke outrage, along with a strong dose of nostalgia for the good old days of such conservative mainstays as Dirty Harry and It's a Wonderful Life, but again no data on audience preferences. Variety, for its part, does provide some raw data, offering lists of "THE 100 TOP-RATED SERIES OF 2020-2021 (ADULTS 18-49)" and "THE TOP 100 SHOWS OF 2020-2021, TOTAL VIEWERS," but no breakdown of who these viewers are. Still, a look at these lists does provide some clues as to who is watching what in America these days, so I'll begin with that. One of the more striking revelations to be found in the Variety rankings is the total absence of any programming from Netflix or any other of the high-buzz streaming services, nor even from HBO. Significantly, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, TLC stands out among the subscription networks for the number of shows that appear in the top 100, while the traditional networks otherwise dominate the lists, which reveal that the top 20 programs in overall viewers are, in this order: 1. NFL Sunday Night Football (NBC)          2. NFL Thursday Night Football (Fox/NFL Network) 3. NCIS (CBS) 4. The Equalizer (CBS)       5. NFL Monday Night Football (ESPN)  6. FBI (CBS) 7. 60 Minutes (CBS)    8. Chicago Fire (NBC) 9. Blue Bloods (CBS) 10. Chicago Med (NBC) 11. 9-1-1 (Fox)       Chicago PD (NBC) 13. This Is Us (NBC) 14. Young Sheldon (CBS) 15. 9-1-1: Lone Star (Fox) 16. FBI: Most Wanted (CBS) 17. The Voice-Tuesday (NBC) 18. Bull (CBS)     19. The Voice-Monday (NBC)  20. Law & Order: Organized Crime (NBC) The trend here is obvious: football and crime/medical/firefighting-themed shows dominate the top 20—a pattern that can be interpreted both in the light of middle America's traditional appetite for televised team sports, and by what McFarland describes as Republican voters' predilections for “crime-time” programming. Briefly put, in spite of the high media profile of such award-winning series as "The Handmaid's Tale" and "black-ish," America's overall television viewership appears to slant towards a red state predominance. It is worth noting in this regard that NBC's "This is Us" not only appears as number 13 on Variety's total viewership rankings, it also ranks as number 4 on its Adults 18-49 Top-Rated Series list for 2020-2021, just behind (you guessed it) NFL Sunday Night Football (NBC), NFL Thursday Night Football (Fox/NFL), and NFL Monday Night Football (ESPN). How it got there can also be explained by McFarland, who reports that "NBC’s 'This Is Us' .  .  .  appears to be more popular among Republicans 'by a significant amount,'" as a spokesman for the polling firm E-Poll observes, adding that Republicans "'prefer programs that are family-friendly'"—or, it might be added, family themed. And this, in turn, can explain why TLC, the nexus for reality series involving families, does so well, especially when compared with channels like HBO, in the Top-Rated Series rankings. What this all comes down to is the fact that while readers of such publications as the New York Times, Salon, The Atlantic, Slate, Vox, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and the Los Angeles Times (which happen to be among my go-to media choices for television and other popular cultural commentary) may get the impression that progressive, and even transgressive, TV is where America's heart lies, the data seem to indicate otherwise. Here, then, is one of the many ways in which a lot of what is going on in American consciousness flies under the radar of cultural analysts and political strategists whose television and journalistic preferences trend left rather than right, and helps explain how Democratic pollsters got things so wrong in 2016 and 2020. For no matter which side of the cultural divide one identifies with, popular culture remains a medium with a message, and to understand who we as a nation are today, we need to look in both directions.   Image Credit: "Set it off" by Scouse Smurf is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 ... View more

This week I stumbled across a familiar 1994 essay of Peter Elbow’s called "Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment,” published in College English. Finding the essay again was like finding an old friend. Peter Elbow is actually an old friend, and a treasured one, but this essay in particular stuck with me over the decades for its focus on liking, and the importance of liking to improvement in writing. After discussing and dismissing ranking as completely unhelpful, and discussing, critiquing, and then offering a revised model of evaluating, Elbow turns to the concept most attractive to me in this essay, and sums up his argument about liking here: It's not improvement that leads to liking, but rather liking that leads to improvement. It's the mark of good writers to like their writing. Liking is not same as evaluating. We can often criticize something better when we like it. We learn to like our writing when we have a respected reader who likes it. Therefore, it's the mark of good teachers to like students and their writing. (13) Elbow concludes his essay not by rejecting evaluation out of hand but by asking that teachers of writing “learn to be better likers: liking our own and our students’ writing, and realizing that liking need not get in the way of clear-eyed evaluation.” I think I remember this article so clearly also because Elbow talks about what happens when we don’t like our own or our students’ writing, or ultimately when we don’t like students. I have had numerous colleagues who didn’t like students and were proud of it—and I have seen the effects such attitudes have over time. On the other hand, I’ve seen and felt what it means to like students and their writing—or to love it and them in the way bell hooks describes in Teaching to Transgress. As I reread and rethink Elbow’s article, however, I find myself concentrating not so much on teachers but more on how to engage students in being better “likers” of their own writing, and even more important, of doing the hard work of understanding where that liking comes from. So I find myself rethinking the questions I ask students to address with every draft they give me: When did I start writing this piece, and how long did it take me to get a draft? What is still worrying me about this draft, and why ? If I were starting over completely new, what would I do differently and why? What sentence or passage in this draft do I like best—and why? I’d now add to that last question, “What do I like about my writing?” And then, “Where does that liking come from? What influences in your life have led you to like some things about your writing—your parents and teachers? School in general? Your friends? Writers you admire? What else?” In other words, I’d like students to probe what they like, to figure out why they like it and especially whether they “like” something in their writing because they’ve been told, explicitly or much more likely implicitly, by someone or something that it’s good and worthy of being liked. This kind of exercise is hard to do—so students need to work with it several times before they may begin to uncover the sources of their own likes and dislikes in their writing. And they probably will be surprised to find that those likes and dislikes have developed, often unconsciously, from societal cues and reinforcements, and especially from what schools and other institutions (religious ones, for example) have taught them to like and value. At that point, they can begin to ask whether they question any of those likes or values—and why. And then, they may be in a position to reconsider what they like (and dislike) and to make plans for improving or changing their writing accordingly. And, I hope, to like it even more. In the meantime, thanks to Peter Elbow for prompting me to think about the role that liking plays in writing and writing development. Image Credit: Photo 216 by rawpixel.com, used under a Public Domain license ... View more

Count me among the multitudes mourning bell hooks, a teacher of teachers. My copy of her essay, “Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education,” in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989), is so inked up I can hardly read the text through my blue ballpoint comments. I have both starred and underlined her reminder that students bring expertise to our classrooms. She urges us to maintain those connections by “knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one’s past that have enabled and do enable one’s self-development in the present, that sustain and support, that enrich” (79). Her commitment to sharing power with students in a classroom is a lodestar for me. Compare hooks’ pedagogical humility with the recent viral post by a professor who tested whether students read his syllabus by hiding information deep in its pages about a campus locker with money in it, free to the first finder. No one claimed the money. Aha! Supposedly, this proves students are too lazy to read the fine print of a syllabus, yet another version of the much-memed complaint: “It’s in the syllabus!” But are all syllabi really worth reading? What could be gained by this “gotcha” approach, which positions students as disappointments, unable to appreciate an academic genre that is so often boiler-plate, by this professor’s own admission? What would bell hooks say about this power dynamic, and the conversations it shuts down? Our students, in my experience, are quite prepared to see the classroom as bell hooks does — as “… the most radical space of possibility in the academy” (Introduction to Teaching to Transgress, 1994).  Last month, on the last day of the fall semester, I invited first-year students to compose a list of advice to next year’s class. One student took notes at the front of the room, and I sat back to enjoy their spirited debate and (sometimes hilarious) editing by consensus. Among the items on their “Advice to Next Year’s Students”: Make personal connections in the class — with classmates and the professor. (Try putting down your phone when you come into class.) Be open and willing to put forth time and energy. Ask questions! Don't be afraid to ask for help. Take advantage of campus resources and support systems, including your professor’s office hours. Have fun! Be willing to make mistakes. Get the embarrassment out of the way by trying new things right away! They debated the wording of #6 for several minutes, trying to figure out how to explain that learning means taking risks, and being vulnerable. “But we don’t want to freak them out!” one student said, wondering if there was a friendlier word than “embarrassment.” Another countered, “Yeah, but let’s be real — weren’t we all embarrassed at first? And then it got better and less weird?” I basked in their self-reflection, their flush of confidence after 15 weeks of college, and their protective tenderness toward these future students. At the end of the hour, my voice caught as I thanked them for their wisdom and care and told them we all share a vision of the risks and promise of education. As our Spring semester begins, I sent these students their own suggestions hoping they will hear their wisdom. I imagine bell hooks cheering them on as they make the most of the “radical space of possibility” in our classrooms this semester. May we be worthy of them.   Image Credit: Photo of Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, taken by the blog’s author, April Lidinsky ... View more

“Is that the best you can do?” “It’s the best I can do under these circumstances…” “Just do your best. It will be fine.” “Yes, the roster changes weekly with Covid absences, and we could go online overnight.  It’s not ideal, but do your best.” “Dr. Moore, I’m really sorry. This isn’t my best work.” I’m hearing a lot about the best these days, usually qualified with a personal possessive marker (my, your, our) or a phrase (under the circumstances, right now, given the time limits). A word that would otherwise capture an intended target has become instead a reality check, an apology, and at times, an excuse.  “Is that the best you can do?” In my family, this question usually provokes a smile. As a somewhat precocious four or five-year-old, my son was also a finicky eater. One day, surveying pizza we had ordered for a family gathering, he looked at me quizzically. He didn’t care for tomato sauce, cheese, or pepperoni. (Basically, he wanted crust.) So, I carefully scraped all the toppings from his slice onto my own and presented him with his “pizza.” He scowled. “Aww Mom! Is that the best you can do?” Now at seventeen, my son struggles with the notion of best for a host of different reasons. His teachers are telling him to “do his best” for standardized essay exams. The problem, as he sees it, is that his best is not going to fare well when assessed by countable elements on standardized writing rubrics. He will do his best to articulate all the ways in which has wrestled with theology in Dostoyevsky, but he expects to receive feedback telling him what he should have done instead of his best (which, apparently, would not have been his best). I cannot fault his teachers here: they are required by a pantheon of educational institutions to measure learning in this particular way. But as his mom, I am grateful when his instructors find ways to acknowledge his intellectual efforts, as idiosyncratic and sometimes iconoclastic as they are.  My son calls it the game: doing his best means playing the game, subverting what he is actually learning to meet requirements that may or may not have anything to do with that learning.  I have been thinking about that game plays out in higher education, especially as the pandemic has upended our traditional classrooms. Since our initial shift online in 2020 to our current version of F2F courses, I have expressed my frustration over courses:  they weren’t my best. What I envisioned, what I planned and crafted—that did not happen, and given our current context, it will not happen this semester. In fact, that’s the theme of this lovely Twitter thread from Dr. Lindsay Masland, author of the opening chapter of Resilient Pedagogy. We can be resilient as we adapt our pedagogy, but we can also grieve: this wasn’t what I intended. It wasn’t my best. But if it wasn’t my best, was it thus invalid? Less valuable? Students learn about writing through assignments I design—and sometimes, in spite of them. In many languages, the verb for teach is actually a causative form of the verb for learn – teaching is causing learning. Yet truthfully, we know we cannot make learning happen. Humility requires that we anticipate and acknowledge learning that occurs regardless of our pedagogy. And we can look for evidence of learning in what was not our best, or perhaps not our students’ best. One student this past fall contacted me before submitting her final paper with an apology: it was just not her best work. But during the poster presentations of projects for that course, I began to talk to her about what she had originally envisioned for her poster: a multimodal exploration of the ways that syntax created and embodied light in a novel she had read. The digital presentation I saw was certainly not her best, but I could see how she was applying what we learned about syntax to the language in the novel, and the energy she poured into her analysis—along with the insights she discovered—made that short presentation come to life.  She had said, “It’s not what I hoped, not my best.” But all she needed was a simple follow-up: “Hmmm…. Tell me what you were hoping for, what you wanted to do. Talk to me about it.” That student didn’t ace the project, at least not by rubric standards. But she learned—and the growth in her ability to talk and write about syntax from August to December was standard-defying. I will take that: not her best, and maybe not mine. But some mighty powerful learning occurred. My spring semester starts tomorrow, and I’ve already received the first excused absence notice. My carefully constructed first-day plans must change, and I am already disappointed. Still, when I evaluate my pedagogy as not my best—and when students apologize for not doing their best—I want to open space to talk about that disappointment. Was it the best we could do? Maybe, just maybe, that’s not the question I need to be asking. Where have you found unexpected learning during the past three years? How has your approach to your best shifted? I’d love to hear from you.   ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Michelle Graber, Instructor of English and Communications at Mitchell Technical College.   Superheroes Students sit six feet apart – eyes beaming up at me expectantly, masks askew. I’ve never noticed so many of my students’ eyes: shades of blue, brown, green, and hazel. I wonder what the rest of their faces look like, this sea of superheroes tolerating the mandated masking of their identities for the sake of public approval. Wow. I’m teaching superheroes. I face the class during the pandemic peak and push them through their studies. One student raises his hand to ask a question, and I find myself contemplating Charlie Brown’s problems understanding his teacher. She must’ve been wearing a mask, too. “A little louder, please,” I say, trying to resist leaning forward to hear better as I meet the grass-green orbs of the student whose name I can’t associate with a face and whose words I cannot hear.    Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Two years ago, a good friend commemorated her 50th birthday by traveling to Selma, Alabama, to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and then visit as many places along the United States Civil Rights Trail as she could manage. The Trail, officially designated on January 1, 2018, and sponsored by the National Parks Service and the Trust for Public Land, includes hundreds of sites across fifteen states, like Monroe School in Topeka, Kansas, where Linda Brown Thompson had to ride a bus to school rather than attend the one in her own neighborhood (which led to Brown v. Board of Education); Martin Luther King’s childhood neighborhood in Atlanta; and dozens of other sites the Trust helped local communities preserve and honor. Students can use an interactive map to follow the trail—or to plan their own trip—here. My friend had limited time, so she focused on Alabama—Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, and Selma. It was in Selma that she discovered the Selma Interpretive Center, which is self-described as “a welcome center for the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail and located at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Visitors can explore exhibits and a bookstore dedicated to telling the story of the movement.” It was in this small center, near the very back, that my friend saw a round button/pin with the word “NEVER” on it—a white supremacy statement against integration worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan and others. This pin inspired her to come home and create her ALWAYS button, “a proud anti-racism statement to be worn by those who always support racial equality #AlwaysPin.” I’ve written about my Always pin before; two years on, I am still getting lots of questions about it. And as Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaches, I’ve come back to it again and to the Civil Rights Trail and what is to be learned by visiting it, even virtually in these pandemic times. Today, I traveled virtually across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and listened to President Obama’s speech on March 7, 2015, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march, during which peaceful marchers were beaten bloody—and John Lewis nearly killed—as they stood up for civil rights and for freedom for all. I also explored the US Civil Rights Trail’s video gallery, which houses oral history videos such as Mississippi State Senator David Jordan’s haunting description of scraping together $1.00 for gasoline to drive to Sumner to witness the December 1955 trial of the two white men who murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till—a crime they clearly committed but for which they were promptly pronounced “not guilty.” In quiet, understated tones, Jordan tells of deciding to go to Sumner with his brother to see for himself what a US trial was all about and of hearing rumors that Emmett Till was alive and well, recently seen in Chicago, and that his murder was just a “gimmick” by the NAACP to increase membership (!). Of hearing Till’s broken body described in dramatic contradistinction to the misinformation and lies. Of watching the defendants drinking Coca-Cola and laughing. Of realizing that “no one was serious,” and that “this trial was just a mockery of justice.” I have just begun to scratch the surface of the oral histories and other materials available, all of which make me hope to travel at least part of the Civil Rights Trail in real life. More important, they make me hope that our students take an opportunity—soon—to visit some of these virtual sites, that they see which of the hundreds of civil rights sites are closest to them so that they might visit in person, and that they take time to travel back to 1955 to see what they can learn about that year in our history and to write about what they find. If they have relatives who remember 1955 (or another year during the height of the movement), perhaps they can even gather oral histories of their own. Regardless, I would ask students to focus on at least one key moment in the civil rights movement, one particular spot on the Civil Rights Trail, and reflect on its meaning then, and now—on its meaning to their lives and hopes and dreams. That’s my wish as we commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. in 2022. Image Credit: "Edmund Pettus Bridge" by miketnorton, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

This article was originally published on January 6, 2022. I have never been more glad to see the back end of a year than I am of ushering out 2021: good riddance and please don’t come again, I say. But 2022 hasn’t started out too well, either. A couple of family crises, in fact, so I am taking a week off from the blog, accompanied by my new companion, an Apple 7 watch. The orthopedic surgeon who treated me after a fall a few months ago that left me with a fractured pelvis and wrist recommended it as an “alert system,” saying he urged all his patients who live alone to get one. Mine arrived around mid-December and has been my constant companion since. I have never worn a watch, so it’s taken some getting used to, but I’ve managed to load all my medical information into it and to set up a few other things, though I have a long way to go to get it fully operational. Of course, now if I fall, it will check on me and then call 911, emergency contacts, and in general alert the universe that I may need help. But it also talks to me. A few days ago, as I was waiting for my car to be serviced and decided to walk up a hill to pass the time, my watch suddenly said, “Hi Andrea, I see you are beginning a workout.” I was not, but pleased that it thought I was being industrious. And at 8:00 every evening, it says something like, “Hello, Andrea. It’s a good time for some mindfulness. Concentrate on your breathing. Breath in . . . and breathe out. Breathe in . . . and breathe out.” It carries on in this vein for about a minute and then says, “Well done!” So that’s my New Year’s advice to everyone: it’s 2022—time to take a deep breath in . . . and out. See you soon. Image Credit: "ATTIZ Apple Watch 40mm Metal Snap Silver Limited Band Strap" by TheBetterDay, used under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license ... View more

As the new year approaches (just two more days!), I am thinking of teachers of writing, of all our students, and of the world we inhabit. In my long life, I can remember some very fraught ends-of-years, but perhaps none as perilous as this one. The ongoing deadly pandemic. Social chaos. Factionalism and extremism on the rise. Threats to democracy from within. An inability, or refusal, to distinguish facts and truth from misinformation, crippling conspiracy theories, and lies. A planet teetering on the brink. And yet. We are still here. We are still teaching. We are still helping students learn to think and act for themselves—and for others. We are still creating small acts of kindness, small pockets of hope, small gestures of grace every single day. Resilience. Persistence. Perseverance. What my granny called Stick-to-it-ivity. We have all that, and more. So here’s to you and yours, with wishes for good fun, good food, and good friendship in the new year, along with safety and good health. And most of all, happy teaching. Andrea Image Credit: "Fireworks, New Years Eve, V&A Waterfront" by Derek Keats, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

I have two friends who have what seems to me a slightly odd annual tradition: at the end of each year, they work to list things they are grateful for—one for every calendar year! So this year, their list will include 2,021 entries. They say that the first few hundred are easy enough, but that beyond that, the going gets increasingly tough. Yet they persevere until they reach the year’s number, or occasionally go beyond it (!). Then they pore over the list, analyzing it and, literally, counting their blessings. I thought of these friends and their tradition last week when I corresponded with a writing teacher in Galveston. He described being worn out from a heavy day of work (he teaches six classes, after all) but deciding, in spite of everything, to stop by the Writing Center. There, to his surprise and delight, he found a number of his students from different classes, all working away on their writing. That they were doing so in spite of multiple out-of-school obligations and needs lifted his spirits: and the photo he sent me of this scene lifted mine as well. This teacher, passionate about his underserved and underprivileged—and deeply underestimated—students, is someone I am thankful for this year. It strikes me that he and his students are involved in mutual gift-giving of a very high order. These two anecdotes have me thinking, this holiday season, of the gifts I am giving, and receiving. Not just the material gifts—toys, books, and so on. But the gifts of love and friendship and learning and togetherness. So I am making a list of gifts, both given and received, that are most meaningful to me this year. And I think this would make a very fine assignment for students everywhere: no matter our circumstances, to take some time to write about what we are giving others and others are giving us that is most significant, most deeply meaningful, at this particular moment in our lives. Image Credit: "Christmas Presents" by Ravi_Shah, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more