Over a dozen years ago now, the inimitable Cynthia Selfe published “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing” (see the June 2009 issue of College Composition and Communication), in which she reviews the history of aurality/orality, demonstrates how and why it was subsumed by writing and the written word, and calls for significant change, particularly in light of the rise of multimodal composing: [I]n light of scholarship on the importance of aurality to different communities and cultures, I argue that our contemporary adherence to alphabetic-only composition constrains the semiotic efforts of individuals and groups who value multiple modalities of expression. I encourage teachers and scholars of composition, and other disciplines, to adopt an increasingly thoughtful understanding of aurality and the role it—and other modalities—can play in contemporary communication tasks. (616) Here Cynthia, in her typical understated way, points out what should have long been utterly obvious: that many communities of color, and particularly Black communities, value the “multiple modalities” that include sound and rhythm—and that, moreover, they have a great deal to teach all of us about those modalities. I come back to this article often, and it certainly bears re-reading now in light of current attempts to make good on promises of critical awareness of many language traditions and of anti-racist pedagogies. I’ve written before about Nicole Furlonge’s Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature (2018) and of the lessons it teaches us about how to access—and to value—the aurality in work by Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Aretha Franklin, Zora Neale Hurston, and others. How to “listen in print.” I got my first lessons in how to listen in print from Dr. G, beloved professor Geneva Smitherman, whose Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America (1977) changed my life. Over the decades, I’ve worn out three copies of this book: it has taken me many re-readings to grasp even a portion of its wisdom. But among its many lessons is its deep understanding of the role sound and rhythm play in Black language and Black rhetoric. One of my favorite passages in this book deals in detail with what she refers to as “tonal semantics”—the way speakers use intonation and rhythm and inflection to create emphasis and command attention, using the voice like a musical instrument. Smitherman connects tonal semantics to the importance of African drums and drumming (I think always of the brilliant “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk,” which opens with a riveting series of drum beats) and the evolution of that culturally important sound into combinations of words and sounds to “achieve spiritual equilibrium and psychological balance” (137). She goes on to describe types of tonal semantics, including talk-singing, intonational contouring, repetition, rhyme, alliterative word play, and narrative sequencing, all Black rhetorical strategies that we can learn to recognize and value by “listening in print” and in person. Listen to any Martin Luther King, Jr. speech and you will hear tonal semantics at work. Or think of the features of spoken word poetry and of how the sound of speakers’ voices themselves do so much to carry the meaning. I am thinking right now of Amanda Gorman’s spoken word performances: as Smitherman says, she uses her “voice, body, and movement as tools to bring the story to life” (149). If Cynthia Selfe’s article deserves re-reading, the work of Geneva Smitherman deserves multiple re-reading. In fact, it should be by every writing teacher’s side. I’ve been grateful to Dr. G for over forty years, for helping me learn to listen in profoundly new and important ways. Image Credit: "Transistor Radio with Casette Tape Recorder" by richardclyborne, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

The roof of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi.  As a neurodivergent learner, I did not receive an accurate diagnosis until fifteen years after graduate school, yet my disabilities were never invisible to me. In high school, for example, my “D”s in geometry took just as much, if not more, work than “A”s in my literature classes. My teachers often told me that I was not working up to my potential and needed to try harder or, conversely, that I took life too seriously. But they did not understand, and I did not know how to explain, that the processes of working in geometry or literature felt often felt very different, and those differences were deeply related to attention. Decades later, my struggles with attention seem relevant to fully remote teaching and learning. In an online space with infinite distractions, how do we draw in and hold onto the attention of our students, and how can we allow them to focus their attention to grow their writing and learning?   Since moving online beginning in the emergencies of March 2020 through the uncertainties of December 2021, every semester has brought its own insights and frustrations, and there is obviously not a single answer that fits every class in every semester. This semester, however, students seemed to ask for more directions than in past online semesters, but the directions seemed to inadvertently stymie students’ writing, to bring students to a stopping point. Students did a good job of following the directions, but they generally did not seek to move beyond the minimum threshold, no matter how much encouragement I offered. At times, students appeared to follow the directions as if the directions were formulas to solve proofs in geometry step by step. The hyper-focus was on attempting to follow the directions exactly as they were written, and the directions themselves became a distraction from the writing process. They could follow the directions specifically as written, but following the directions alone would not produce a sufficient amount of writing. Following the directions would not yield enough writing to meet the length requirements for the grades students were hoping to earn. After much reflection this semester, I realize that the directions contain two unstated assumptions. The first assumption was that, encouraged by group and individual activities, students would write to process their thoughts about the text. Processing thoughts would involve building on class activities, reading the text closely, and trying to make sense of their own interpretations of the text. The second assumption was that students would use the directions not as a formula, but as a recipe. A formula must be followed in the same fashion by everyone to achieve the same result. A recipe offers basic directions but invites the cook to switch up the ingredients as desired. In other words, writing, for me, does not mean filling out a template, or finding one singular answer to a straight-forward question-based prompt. Yet without a template some students struggled with organization. Without the prompts, some students struggled to find their own motivations for writing. Even as students and I had grappled with these writing process issues before 2020, the constraints and the confusions of the pandemic brought increased distractions and even more difficulty finding flow. One of the distractions of geometry was that my teachers assumed students would come to the course with general knowledge that could be applied to learning how to use formulas to solve proofs. The teachers did not expect to teach that general mathematical knowledge, but they expected all of us to adapt that knowledge to geometric proofs. Because of my undiagnosed disabilities, I had fallen far behind in general mathematical knowledge and could no longer overcompensate for what I had not yet learned. That left me hyper-focused on the directions, with not enough room in my working memory to figure out why proofs matter. Without this understanding, I was constantly distracted by the directions, and because of the distractions I could not concentrate enough to find the deep flow of my thoughts. I could not take ownership of geometry. In a global pandemic, fully remote teaching and learning collapses time and condenses space. Zoom is not a normal classroom, and cannot be retrofitted to fit traditional expectations. There is no formula because we cannot predict the results. Moreover, even if we had a formula, not everyone would be able to follow it. But we can create a recipe, and we pay attention to adaptations and changes. In this way, I am beginning to see templates and prompts not as barriers, but as conduits to learning and as a means of learning to concentrate more fully on the purposes and processes of writing. In other words, in muting distractions perhaps we can begin to imagine the aspiration of reaching flow.   Photo "The roof of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi" by Thomas Drouault on Unsplash. ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition    Overview “Protest music has always been an essential form of political expression in the US. And at times of political and social unrest, it becomes a crucial refuge — both for musicians, as a release valve for their frustrations and convictions, and for listeners in need of a rallying cry.” – Bridgett Henwood, “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar”   One of the courses I teach is an American Literature survey course that provides opportunities to explore a broad range of texts and genres. As we study these texts, I do my best to teach strong interpretive reading strategies and to incorporate multimodal texts and representative visual composition. I work to expand students’ definition of literature and encourage them to practice critical reading strategies to interpret cultural and historical texts and contexts along with traditional texts. This assignment does all of these things, and so I think it can work for a composition course as well as a literature course. Music and lyrics are a popular form of literature that students easily connect to through their lives. I have talked about the ways I have used music in my classes in previous posts (see Music and Class Playlists), but in this assignment, I ask students to look specifically at protest music as a genre. Although protest songs are in their repertoire, students are often unaware of their historical and cultural significance and the ways they have initiated social change. As referenced in the article “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar,” “Protest music has been around for centuries: As long as people have been getting fed up with the status quo, they’ve been singing about it. And because music styles, human emotions and social issues are so wide ranging, protest songs are too.” This assignment immerses students in the history and variety of protest music and asks them to interpret particular protest songs. They also work collaboratively with others to read across the examples and present them in a multimodal slide show.   Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook – Ch. 9, Reading Critically The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 7, Critical Reading EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 8, Reading and Listening Analytically, Critically, and Respectfully   Steps to the Assignment Historical Context and Genre Examples - Introduce students to the genre of the protest song. I take students through an exploration of protest music and have them read a couple of sources that show the span of the genre. I like the article “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar” by Bridgett Henwood, along with some aggregate resources such as Rolling Stone’s Top Protest Songs, Best Protest Songs in History, and a protest song playlist on Spotify. I also show them the brief video “The Evolution of American Protest Music” and guide them to the Spotify playlist (both linked in the Henwood article), which provide an overview with examples. Individual Protest Song Interpretation – Each student will focus on a protest song and search to find lyrics and a video link of an example of music as protest literature or social awareness. I ask them to think about issues and ideas that are important to them and focus on the ways the song creates awareness. They should choose something that has meaning for them—one that has specific cultural, social, or historical implications in which they might be interested. Students then write a short summary that provides artist information (name, year, title, etc.) and an analysis of how and what the song is protesting, including several significant passages from the song that speak to their claims. Have them include the link to the video, and look for them to forge a strong, substantiated interpretation. Like any literature with controversial content, I urge students to be sensitive in their choices and the ways they frame their discussions. Teachers can decide to let students include explicit lyrics or edited versions of the songs based on their own classroom contexts. Individual Slide – Each student then creates an accompanying Google Slide in which they include the song title and artist, a representative image, a meaningful passage from the song, a statement of protest, and a link to the song. Collaborative Slideshow – Students work in teams for this next part and add their individual slides to a Google team slideshow. They review and listen to their teammates’ songs. As a team, they shape the collaborative slideshow to include: An original, engaging title Team number and member names Team members’ individual slides A collaborative slide for takeaways—They should read across all the songs to look for patterns, connections, larger meanings, and meaningful ideas. References Presentation – Each team presents their slideshow to the class (both individual and collaborative takeaways and connections). This allows students to discuss the range of possibilities and artists and the ways these songs affect social change and awareness. It also introduces students to songs they might not have heard before to consider for future analysis (and listening pleasure). I encourage them to take notes along the way to select songs to which they might want to return. Students then post their team slideshows to a common space (Google Drive or a course LMS). Review and Listen – Students review and listen to at least 5 unfamiliar songs from other teams' protest music collections. They post a bulleted list of their choices along with a sentence or two comment about something they considered for each song. Playlist – As a fun addition to the assignment, teachers can compile a class playlist to share with students for their own music libraries. Check out the Protest Song Playlist from my Fall 2021 class.   Reflections on the Activity The assignment draws on many multimodal components: music, representative visuals, digital representation, and collaborative digital composing. Students enjoy this assignment because it helps them appreciate the ways their critical reading skills can be applied to cultural artifacts and to their lives. And . . . almost everyone loves music! Students focused on songs that protested issues such as: Unity, peace, and strength War involvement and political change Government corruption and abuse of power Civil and human rights Violence Media influence and distortion Gender identity and empowerment Many students said that they heard these songs before but did not stop to consider their meaning or the impact they might have on social awareness and change. I always find it interesting to hear new songs and themes they select and add to my own playlist as they share their work. ... View more

Brendan HawkinsBrendan Hawkins(recommended by Elias Dominguez Barajas) is pursuing his PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at Florida State University. His research, teaching, and faculty development interests and experiences span rhetorical genre studies, histories of rhetoric, online writing instruction, and general education composition classes. He serves as a College Composition Program assistant director where his primary responsibility is mentorship for first-year teachers. How do you engage students in your course, whether f2f, online, or hybrid? When I started teaching online, I made weekly activity sheets that described the goals for the week as well as the readings and activities students would do. I have adopted a similar practice for my face to face, onsite teaching as well. I keep a running Google Doc with my lesson plans typed up for students to see. I project it on the whiteboard and use it as a reference point for class. It is a simple practice, but it helps students who are unable to attend that day (because I’ve essentially taken notes for them already) and it helps me both visually and verbally indicate where we are in the day’s plans. This move is a simple act of transparency that I try to implement throughout my teaching. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? I aim to help students understand the complexities of genre and how the concept functions in their everyday decision-making processes. They typically think of “genre” as a classification system but don’t realize the role it plays in not only how they understand but also how they respond to situations, particularly those in the writing classroom. We examine the contexts in which genres typically happen and how those genres shape how folks act and interact with each other. My favorite example is the small, unassuming genre of menus. If students can see how texts—produced and received as genres—function and interact with other texts and people(s), I think students are set to be effective communicators in a variety of situations, both curricular and extracurricular.  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? I’ve enjoyed the chance to meet other instructors from across the U.S. Conferences are hard to attend (especially when they’re cancelled for pandemic-related safety concerns), so being part of Bedford New Scholars was a great way to meet other folks in the field and share ideas about teaching and about the ways we use instructional materials. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? It’s a vague and/or cheesy answer, but I have lots of notes from the summer summit that I plan to revisit ahead of my next semester of teaching. I appreciate the time to sit and listen to how other teachers approach their teaching. It’s also great to hear about other courses and about other institutions, since I—as many other folks might—get tunnel vision when thinking about my own institution’s curricula and policies.   Brendan’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Brendan's assignment. For the full activity, see Rhetorical Analysis Activity. We have a common syllabus for our 1,000 and 2,000-level courses, which means our major assignments are the same across all sections. Therefore, I chose to share an activity I do with students that helps them build genre and rhetorical knowledge they’ll need both in these courses—particularly the 2,000-level course—and in their other classes. I provide the framing for the day’s activity (Figure 1) in a Google Doc I share with my students, which we use all semester for our lesson plans, notes, and activities.   Figure 1. Screenshot of the day's Lesson Overview.   The lesson I’m sharing is a two-part lesson that asks students to (re)define key rhetorical terms we had been covering ahead of a rhetorical analysis project. Rhetorical definitions often remain too abstract for students to sese how these aren’t just terms but actual practices. As Figure 2 demonstrates, I ask students in the first activity to define the rhetorical term assigned to their group and then describe how it functions within the speech we were analyzing.   Figure 2. Grid students use for small group activities.   As they completed the activity, students were able to both define and apply the definitions. I was able to move from group to group (via Zoom breakout rooms in this case) and challenge the ones who provided a vague or brief answer and help those who were struggling. We then turned to practice rhetorical skills in another way. Students struggled in their previous activities to determine the difference between summary and analysis. The second half of the day’s lesson, depicted in Figure 3, asks students to summarize a section of the speech we were analyzing and then provide a separate analysis or evaluative statement about that part of the text. By the end of the activity, we were able to use students’ answers to the activity to build a rough outline of a rhetorical analysis we could write on the speech.   Figure 3. Excerpt of grid used for the day's second activity.   ... View more

After the Supreme Court heard arguments last week about the Mississippi abortion law challenging Roe v. Wade, liberals in America seemed to give up, assuming that, after fifty years, Roe v. Wade will soon no longer be the law of the land. A decision will not be made for six months, but the language of the conservative justices convinced most news commentators and their various guests—and most liberal Americans—that the matter is all but decided. Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up the despair of many liberals in a statement that will go down in history as a defining observation about the future of the Court: “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it is possible.” Sotomayor’s emotion is clear when she associates the anticipated action by the Court with a bad odor. What about her logic? Is she justified in making the claim that the Court is no longer performing judicial acts, but rather acting out of political motivation? This is a perfect example of how I try to illustrate to my students how to read data and what logical conclusions can be drawn from numbers. It is a fact that over the last 35 years, there have been a number of justices confirmed by a unanimous vote or near unanimous vote, which means that both political parties were in agreement while supporting their nomination: Sandra Day O’Connor, confirmed 99-0; Antonin Scalia, confirmed 98-0; Anthony M. Kennedy, confirmed 97-0; David H. Souter, confirmed 90-9; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, confirmed 96-3; Stephen G. Breyer, confirmed 87-9. It is also a fact that with the three justices confirmed to the court during Donald Trump’s term in office, the vote broke down along party lines with rare exceptions. In the case of Amy Coney Barrett, all Republicans voted for Barrett with the exception of Susan Collins, and all Democrats voted against her confirmation, with Independents siding with the Democrats. The same was the case with Brett Kavanaugh, with the single exception in his case being Democrat Manchin from West Virginia voting with the Republicans. The same with Neil Gorsuch, with two other Democrats joining Manchin in voting with Republicans. Prior to Trump’s term in office, there had certainly been times that the vote for or against confirmation broke down along party lines, including in the case of Sotomayor’s own confirmation. Never, however, had it been so blatant that one issue determined who was placed in nomination and how the vote went. Trump made clear that he would place only anti-abortion justices on the Court. Unlike the earlier unanimous and near-unanimous decisions based on the belief that a justice would uphold the law of the land, we are left with a court that many see as having been handpicked to uphold the will of a minority of Americans on one issue. And how does this problem get resolved since Supreme Court justices serve for life? Is our justice system irrevocably broken? The Founding Fathers did not foresee justices being confirmed to the court for political reasons and deciding cases based on their own moral codes rather than on the Constitution. There is discussion about restructuring the court, increasing the number of justices to overcome the entrenched bias toward the conservative. That in itself might be seen as a partisan political move, but short of change in conscience on the part of today’s politicians, it may be the only way to return the Court to the state of integrity that Sotomayor sees it as so tragically lacking.   Image Credit: 2013.01.28 RITGER_Sotomayor_427 by Commonwealth Club is licensed under CC by 2.0.  ... View more

In my first blog of the Fall 2021 Bits blogging season I observed that "the pandemic hasn't stimulated (at least yet) any significant reflection in American popular culture over the past few months," so it is only appropriate that in this, my last blog of the season, I should note that a theatrically-released documentary—"The First Wave"—on the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic now has appeared, along with a grim review in the Entertainment section of the Los Angeles Times. The film, as Roxana Hadadi writes, "transports us back and places us alongside front-line workers doing all they can to save everyone they can" in the early days of the pandemic, when few but the frontline healthcare workers themselves could have imagined that today, over a year and a half later, we would be facing (what number is it now?) yet another wave named Omicron—not to mention violent resistance to vaccinations and any other measure to control the virus. I will leave it to Hadadi's review to re-illuminate those early days for you, even as we approach another winter of viral discontent. Otherwise, if you are reading this blog at all, you are probably gearing up for that onslaught of end-of-term grading that leaves one strung out and exhausted enough without the extra burden of having to worry now about whether next term is going to be all-remote again. But if you have the heart to think about it at all right now, I would suggest that you prepare a list of relevant questions for your 2022 classes, questions like: How has the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing divisions among the American people? What cultural mythologies come into play when we try to explain and interpret those divisions? How has the myth of "American Exceptionalism" shaped the response of many Americans to the pandemic? Has that mythology been shaken by the pandemic, along with America's long-standing tendency to look at what Barbara Ehrenreich has called the "bright side" of things? Can Americans stand another wave of infection and death, or will they go into full-scale denial and return to "normal," in despite of the virus? And finally, have our lives been changed forever by the pandemic? If so, in what ways? In asking such questions, and any that you and your students may come up with, keep in mind the importance of trying to answer them not according to the way you hope things will come out, but by gathering, in a cultural-semiotic manner, as much relevant information as you can, situated in an historically framed system of associations and differences, while abductively seeking the most likely answers and explanations. As a hint in this regard, my own system goes back to the 1940-50s as I try to explain (at least to myself) the otherwise incomprehensible (to me) ongoing resistance to vaccinations in the face of clear evidence that no one has been transformed into a lizard by any of the available shots, and it is the unvaccinated who are overwhelmingly ending up in the hospital with COVID-19 or are dead. By the time I return to this blog we should have a better picture of where Omicron is going to take us, and since this is a simple fact rather than an interpretation, let us hope that things are not going to get worse.   Image Credit: "Seahouses Lighthouse and Wave" by TomBurley is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

2019’s word was “they,” when searches in dictionaries for that word skyrocketed. 2020 was predictable: “pandemic,” as the whole world tried to take in the full havoc and tragedy the coronavirus was having everywhere—nearly five and a half million dead from the virus as I write this post. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Merriam Webster’s Word of the Year for 2021 is “vaccine,” a word people searched the dictionary 601% more often this year than in 2020. In announcing its word of the year, Merriam Webster noted that the word partially symbolizes hope for a return to our normal lives, hopes that are being severely tested by the arrival of the Omicron variant. But Merriam Webster also notes that the word “vaccine” was “also at the center of debates about personal choice, political affiliation, professional regulations, school safety, healthcare inequality, and so much more.” Its choice, then, perfectly captures the confusion and strife we are experiencing—as hope viewed with skepticism and rejection (often based on misinformation). A complex set of associations for a complex time. The Oxford English Dictionary, while giving a nod to “jab” and “Fauci ouchie,” chose a short form of vaccine—“vax”—for its word of the year. Referring to it as “jaunty,” a senior editor for the OED reported that the word “surged dramatically, occurring more than 72 times as frequently” as it did in 2020. Oxford Languages senior editor Fiona McPherson explained that other vaccine-related words increased as well, but “nothing like vax”; “It’s a short, punchy, attention-grabbing word.” The Cambridge Dictionary took a different approach, naming “perseverance” its word of the year: We can officially announce that the Cambridge Dictionary #WordoftheYear2021 is... 🥁 perseverance (noun): continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time Find out more here: http://ow.ly/e33L50GO1qg   #CambridgeWOTY According to the dictionary’s press release, people around the world have looked up “resilience” 243,000 times in 2021, in large part because of attempts to cope with the pandemic but also because of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which launched in February and is now sending back reports on microbial life from the red planet. I always look forward to seeing what the American Dialect Society chooses as its word of the year, but they are always later in announcing than the dictionaries so we will have to wait for that one. In the meantime, I wonder what our students would choose as word of the year, and I always think this makes a great classroom activity or writing assignment. For months, I was favoring “slog,” which is what I’ve felt I’ve been doing for the last two years. Or perhaps “one-foot-in-front-of-the-other.” “On hold” would work too, if not for word of year then perhaps feeling of the year. At least that’s better than “despair,” which I and millions of others have also been feeling as we wait, and long for, the waning of this pandemic. In the meantime, I think I’ll go with “resilience” and continue to hope. Image Credit: "Yellowed pages from a dictionary" by Horia Varlan, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

We’re limping our way to the semester’s end on our campus, and I can almost smell the anxiety, stale coffee, and giddy anticipation of winter break through my N95 mask.  ’Tis the season of self-reflection, as we invite (ok, require) students to write about how they have challenged themselves and what they have accomplished in a final essay, project, or perhaps over the whole semester, as I have written about here. We know that metacognition is a high-impact practice well worth developing, as Carol Dweck and others have argued (one of the many reasons I teach her work).  Just as many of us share with our students our own writing processes, pains, and joys, I hope we do the same with our own self-reflective work. My next annual report is due in January, and so I have spoken with my students about my process of reflection (ok, this is also required) on the new strategies I am trying in my courses, what worked and what I plan to revise next time around, and my analysis of student evaluations. Their eyes, above their masks, got big. “Will you quote us?” a student asked. “Sure,” I said, “though of course student evals are anonymous, so I can’t cite you. I trust you to offer me effective feedback, just as you have trusted me all semester.” (I write this, well aware of the research that shows the problems with student evaluations, but, recognizing my privilege, I have mostly found them effective tools when framed this way.) Any reflective writing prompt we offer our students at the end of a course could be a good model for our own self-reflection, so we don’t forget the lessons we’ve learned along the way, too. Here are a few I use for students that I plan to respond to in notes to myself. I suspect “Future start-of-semester April” will thank “Past end-of-semester April” for the insights, and (bonus!) this exercise will help me draft my annual report. What have you tried that’s new? What would you do differently next time, and why? What risks did you take, and what did you learn from them? What are you most proud of? What will you remember from this semester in five years? Why? What advice would you give next year’s students (or next year’s instructor, who might well be you)? What self-reflective prompts have you crafted for students that could also work for instructors, before we all “tak a cup o' kindness yet, / for auld lang syne”?   Image Credit: Photograph taken by the author, April Lidinsky ... View more

When many of us Baby Boomers and Gen Xers received our composition training, discussions of how to teach reading were an afterthought, if they were addressed at all. Fortunately, in recent years that has changed, and there’s currently a much-needed emphasis on integrating reading and writing in all composition courses, whether or not the word “reading” appears in the catalog description. While contemporary research about reading has begun to flourish (see the Works Cited and Suggested Reading List in the CCCC Statement below), in this post I’d like to focus on three especially valuable sources for supporting college level reading: the Reading Apprenticeship program, the essay collection Deep Reading, and the “CCCC Position Statement on the Role of Reading in College Writing Classrooms.” The Reading Apprenticeship program began in San Francisco in the 1990s and has become a robust and many-armed national entity. While enrolling in a Reading Apprenticeship class is not cheap—the 7-week introductory course costs $750—many institutions are willing to cover the cost for interested faculty. Moreover, much of the good sense and practical classroom activities covered in the courses are distilled in Reading for Understanding. The book and program employ an equity-minded, asset-based approach, building on students’ previous experiences as readers and creating a safe space for practicing common problem-solving strategies such as collaborative reading, chunking, inference, LINK (List, Inquire Note, Know), and the “Think Aloud” routine, in which a student reports to another student what they are thinking during the act of reading aloud. Throughout the book and courses, the emphasis is on metacognition, a conversation that is “both internal, as individual readers observe their own minds in action, and external, when readers discuss what they are noticing, what they are stumped by, and how they are solving reading problems” (89). Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom (NCTE, 2017) is a “celebration of literacy, intellectual generosity, and classrooms alive with deep reading and deep learning” (xxiv). In the book’s introduction, editors Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg and Sheridan Blau refer to Elizabeth Wardle’s theories of two distinct learning propensities: “problem-exploring dispositions” and “answer-getting dispositions.” Clearly, the latter is preferable for inquiry-based college reading, and yet legislators continually attempt to proscribe the “messiness of deep thinking,” which Wardle argues “can be understood as an attempt to limit the kind of thinking that students and citizens have the tools to do” (xvi). The editors cite another reason for the disconnect between reading and writing in higher education: much of the most vigorous work on reading has been “written by and for secondary school teachers,” which “has helped perpetuate the idea in our discipline that reading instruction is the concern of K-12 educators only and does not require the attention of college instructors” (xvii). Happily, Deep Reading offers a wealth of approaches to reading instruction from a variety of instructors. Among the important areas the collection addresses are the reading attitudes and practices students bring with them from high school to college, strategies for cultivating reading skills students already possess, and the necessity of teaching “rhetorical reading,” which Tinberg argues in his chapter is particularly important in peer review, where “any reading of another’s draft needs to take into consideration the situation that produced the draft and the criteria and set of expectations that helped shape the writing” (253). In March of this year, CCCC released its “Position Statement on the Role of Reading in College Writing Classrooms.” The statement “affirms the need to develop accessible and effective reading pedagogies in college writing classrooms so that students can engage more deeply in all of their courses and develop the reading abilities that will be essential to their success in college, in their careers, and for their participation in a democratic society.” Those familiar with the Reading Apprenticeship program and Deep Reading will find a number of familiar concepts in the statement, including the four central principles for supporting the teaching and learning of reading: Teach reading comprehension. Teach reading approaches that move beyond basic comprehension. Foster mindful reading to encourage students to think metacognitively about their reading in preparation for a variety of reading in different contexts Teach students how to read texts closely and focus on significant details and patterns. Helpfully, each of these principles is accompanied by five specific strategies for employing the principle in the classroom. And the CCCC Statement offers a pointed reminder that instructors are never too old or young “to develop reading pedagogies that serve ever-changing student populations and are responsive to the contemporary moment.” ... View more

In my last column, I asked you to consider the claims being brought before America’s courts regarding religious exemptions to the COVID vaccine, and the arguments behind them. Using Toulmin terminology, the argument can be written like this: Claim: I should not be required to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Support: It is against my religion. Assumption: I should not be required to do something that is against my religion. As I pointed out earlier, a claim is only as valid as its support and the assumption (warrant) that connects claim and support. Because of the spiritual nature of religious beliefs, their existence is hard to prove. That is why the statement that “it is against my religion” is not as simple as it might seem. A starting point in the discussion should be whether there are religions that have a prohibition against receiving the vaccine. According to research done by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “The only Christian denominations who cite a theological reason for opposing vaccines are the Dutch Reformed Church and Church of Christ, Scientist.” Members of those churches comprise a tiny percentage of those requesting religious exemptions from being inoculated. No other Protestant churches forbid vaccinations. What about the Catholic church? Fisher Phillips, one of the largest law firms in the U.S. representing management, summarizes the argument: “Some members of religious communities, including those in the Catholic Church, have concerns about pharmaceutical companies using fetal cell lines derived from past abortions to develop the vaccines. Their objection is the belief that receiving the vaccine constitutes co-operation with abortion. However, in December 2020, the Vatican announced that, in the absence of ethically irreproachable vaccines, the available COVID-19 vaccines were ‘morally acceptable’ given the danger of the pandemic. The announcement said that the use of such vaccines would ‘not constitute formal co-operation’ with the abortions that took place in the past.” No COVID-19 vaccine contains fetal stem cells. The stem cell lines used in developing COVID-19 vaccine are decades old and have been used in developing vaccines that most people have taken without objection in order to attend public school. Non-Catholics have also widely used the stem cell argument to try to avoid being vaccinated. Some businesses have taken an interesting approach to that claim. The right to request a religious exemption is based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires reasonable accommodations for workers who have sincerely held religious beliefs — unless doing so poses an undue hardship. How do you determine what constitutes a “sincerely held religious belief”? Conway Regional Health System in Arkansas provides an example of an employer that has bluntly declared, “Prove it.” Fisher Phillips explains, “In response to the large number of such exemptions requests, Conway decided to present employees with an attestation form. In signing the ‘Religious Exemption Attestation for Covid-19 Vaccine’ form, employees must affirm that ‘their sincerely held religious belief is consistent and true’ and they do not, and will not, use any prescription, over-the-counter, or other medication or vaccines that have used fetal cell lines in their development and/or testing. The form lists 30 medications that Conway states have used fetal cell lines in their development, including everyday medicines like Tylenol, Aspirin, Motrin, Ibuprofen, Pepto Bismol, Tums, and Benadryl.” Before COVID-19, anti-vaxxers were already resisting having their children vaccinated against childhood diseases that vaccines had virtually eliminated. Diseases like measles, mumps, whooping cough, and chicken pox have started making a comeback as a result of the anti-vax movement. Now vaccinations have become so politicized that parents on both sides of the issue have started screaming at each other outside schools and at school board meetings and threatening violence. It will not be a popular move, but states may need to heed the lesson learned from COVID and start enforcing stricter rules allowing fewer exceptions for religious and philosophical reasons. A dislike for a vaccine does not constitute a legitimate reason for a religious exemption.   Image Credit: "Flu Vaccination Grippe" by Daniel Paquet is licensed under CC BY 2.0   ... View more

Today's blog is something in the nature of a retweet, focusing on the Medium blog post of a novelist whose story of online harassment could make a very good topic for classroom discussion and potential writing assignments. This is Fonda Lee's "Twitter Is The Worst Reader," which can be summed up best by a choice selection of quotations from the post itself.  I’ve been in my share of Twitter blow-ups. On six different occasions in recent years, I’ve had to step away from my computer after being buried by internet vitriol. Being on Twitter at all as a semi-public figure is like playing with plastic C4 explosive on a daily basis .  .  . To be fair, I did walk straight into controversy the first time I got dogpiled online. Back in 2018, a tweet I made about Nike’s endorsement of Colin Kaepernick got picked up and amplified by mainstream media outlets and caused Trumpists to send a wave of racist abuse my way for days. Although I stand by that tweet unequivocally, the experience sucked a lot and I emerged thinking, Okay, let’s never do that again. From now on, I’ll avoid tweeting about current events or politics and stick mostly to books and movies and writing. Unfortunately, that approach didn’t pan out, as my tweet dissecting JK Rowling’s retconning of Dumbledore and Nagini received a massive outcry from Potterheads who told me I was a sh*t writer who had no right speaking on the greatest fantasy writer of all time .  .  . In most cases when I’ve taken heat on Twitter, what I actually said mattered far less than what I didn’t say but that others inferred. I wanted Tolkien removed from bookstores, I didn’t want youth to read books, I approved of whitewashing — all conclusions that, given who I am and what I believe, make me unsure whether to laugh or cry or vomit. I was accused, over and over again, of the sin of not being clear. Many detractors told me, “If people are making the wrong assumptions about what you said, then obviously it’s because you’re a sh*t writer” .  .  .  In short: Twitter removes the trust between writer and reader by flattening meaning to the single most offensive understanding and proliferating that version alone. Lee's excruciatingly funny account of an all-too-common experience—which is driven home by a reading of the comments section that follows her blog—is something of a parable of our times, with a cultural significance that our students would benefit from by discovering for themselves. So rather than diving in with an interpretive explanation of my own, I invite you to assign Lee's essay to your students (be sure to include the comments section) and ask them to consider the following questions: What does Lee's Twitter experience tell us about the current mood in the world? Why is it so hard to make your meaning clear in online communication? What connections can be found between Lee's observation that "Twitter removes the trust between writer and reader by flattening meaning to the single most offensive understanding and proliferating that version alone," and the way that online news and information are packaged today?  How do social media like Twitter contribute to the ever-widening ideological gap in America today? Such questions may well appear to you to be rather obvious in their implications, but your students, whose immersion in the world of social media tends to make them take everything that goes on there for granted, may find them to be revelatory. By all means, add any questions of your own to the list and invite your students to come up with questions of their own.   Image Credit: "Twitter Buttons at OSCON" by Garrett Heath is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

“Every research activity is an exercise in research ethics; every research question is a moral dilemma, and every research decision is an instantiation of values.”                                     –Joshua W. Clegg and Brent D. Slife I’ve been asking myself this titular question for the last year or so and especially in the last months as I’ve been working to revise the research section in the next edition of The Everyday Writer. I’ve been encouraging students to see storytelling as part of the research process and to look for sources in what might seem like unexpected places: back porch gatherings, attic archives, cookbooks and diaries, and many forms of oral knowledge. And from all kinds of people, not just experts sanctioned by print publication. People like my grandmother, for instance, who graduated from the 9th grade—the highest grade available in her county—but was a walking archive of local knowledge, including ways to make medicines from plants that she had learned from the indigenous people there. I treasure the tape recordings I made with her when she was 95—but only recently have I thought of her as a bonafide “source” for research. I’ve been reading, too, as you probably have as well, trying to stretch my thinking beyond Eurocentric research models and methods. Most recently, I’ve been studying the second edition of Bagele Chilisa’s Indigenous Research Methodologies: Social science research needs to involve spirituality in research, respecting communal forms of living that are not Western and creating space for inquiries based on relational realities and forms of knowing that are predominant among the non-Western Other/s still being colonized. . . . I belong to the Bantu people of Africa, who live a communal life based on a connectedness that stretches from birth to death, continues beyond death, and extends to the living and nonliving. (2) Chilisa goes on to argue persuasively that research communities must expand what counts as knowledge and knowledge production and practice, as well as who counts as a valid and valuable source. She asks that Indigenous peoples of all worlds be given equal rights “to know, to name, to talk, and be heard” (4).   Recognizing the need to decolonize research methods and procedures is a first step, and it is one that Chilisa and other Indigenous researchers are helping us take. But it is only a small first step. Going beyond recognition to action, to actual change in practices, requires much more knowledge and understanding and involves, as does all research, important ethical questions. When Chilisa calls for more and better cross-cultural partnerships and collaborations, for instance, she warns that social justice research that uses these practices must change them, to make certain that they are completely inclusive. That would include using Indigenous forms of gathering information as well as Indigenous analytical frameworks—no easy task for researchers schooled only in Western traditions. I am left, after reading this book, with more questions than answers, especially about how first-year student researchers may learn and practice research based on Indigenous as well as Western principles and procedures. My approach thus far is to move very slowly on this project while I continue to read and to learn from colleagues like Bagele Chilisia, to whom I am mightily indebted. I’ll write more as I learn more, and I would love to learn from YOU. Image Credit: "Weathered Porch" by Thomas James Caldwell, used under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license ... View more

Black Panther: The Ancestral Plane NOTE: The photo is from Unsplash and is free to use under the Unsplash license. On the last day of face-to-face teaching and learning in March 2020, my first-year writing classes watched the first hour of the film Black Panther. This time, we had taken great care to investigate such historical contexts as the Black Panther Party and the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles, examining an early scene in the film for visual references. Students added their expertise in the work of Marvel Studios, as we laid the groundwork for self-selected topics for the second writing project.  It was Tuesday. “See you Thursday for Black Panther Part 2,” I said at the end of class. The train at rush hour was unusually empty. More commuters were wearing masks. I wrote in my journal throughout the long ride. On Twitter several hours later I saw the announcement that our university was closing down.  In the ten weeks of lockdown and confusion that followed, there was no Black Panther Part 2. Some students had already seen the film or had access to streaming services and chose to write about Black Panther anyway. But not everyone had access to the film, much less access to wifi. In April, as my city became the epicenter of the pandemic, I watched the film by myself. Although I love Black Panther, I could not bear watching the film again after that, and especially not after Chadwick Boseman died. There were too many reminders of a world that now felt lost and beyond repair. But a few weeks before the 2021 Thanksgiving holiday, we began work on writing project 3, the research paper. Students had worked on Civil Rights Movement writing for most of the semester. For the third writing project, they would need to interrogate their own learning and investigate a research question of their own choosing related to Civil Rights writing. I showed an excerpt from Stanley Nelson’s Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.  Then, something long-sleeping stirred in my thoughts. I asked: Would you like to watch Black Panther the week of Thanksgiving? The Marvel film? The film would be an optional source for the research paper. Later that week I sent out a follow-up survey. Based on the response, there would be two watch parties, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We would watch my copy of Black Panther together on Zoom. I envisioned the watch party as self care for students and for me as a community of writers, and as a mental health day that would allow us to keep the routine of the Zoom class. In the past, I used to set aside the week of Thanksgiving as a mental health day for all of us, students and teacher alike. My own mental health days pre-pandemic generally consisted of sleeping late, staying off the internet, and reading a book with the cat curled in my lap. This year, I would instead spend the day on Zoom watching a film that evoked painful memories of the involuntary transition from face-to-face to remote teaching and learning. What was I thinking?   I was thinking about self care as framed by Black lesbian warrior poet Audre Lorde in her book A Burst of Light. In a quote often repeated, and very often misunderstood, Lorde writes: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Lorde’s conception of self care is NOT the individualized self-care of bubble baths and essential oils, but self care as enacted by BiPOC women, a care of self that involves activism, community, and joy. Drawing on Lorde’s work, queer feminist critical race theorist Sara Ahmed  suggests, “We reassemble ourselves through the ordinary, everyday and often painstaking work of looking after ourselves; looking after each other.” I reflected once more on what self care might mean in an extended time of uncertainty and grief. Black Panther ‘s plot turns on contested ideas of self care as care for the community. Wakanda’s relationship to the rest of the world is embroiled in constant conflict, and the conflict intersects with questions from a first-year writing course focused on Civil Rights writing. In times of sorrow, exhaustion and loss, what does it mean to bear witness? To break silence? To reckon with history? Black Panther offers multiple challenges to these questions, and ends in Black joy, the joy that rests in self care and the affirmations of community.        ... View more

Emily GresbrinkEmily Gresbrink(recommended by John Logie) is pursuing her PhD in Rhetoric, Scientific and Technical Communication at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She expects to complete her degree in 2024. Emily currently teaches University Writing, housed in the First-Year Writing program. Her research interests encompass technical communication, the rhetoric of health and medicine, pandemics, rhetorical analysis, archives, bioethics, and mentoring. She also serves on the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts Assembly as a Graduate Student Representative, co-chairs the graduate student mentoring subcommittee for the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), and works with the mentoring committee for the Online Writing Centers Association (OWCA). How does the next generation of students inspire you? I am always inspired by the creative approach students take to assignment prompts. Giving them something open-ended like a discussion post and getting a range of answers is reflective of different career paths and scholarly goals, but also of the way students think and process their work. I love seeing how students think, and how those thought processes come out on paper and multimodal assignments. Sometimes I get caught up in my own process of writing that I have been comfortable with for so long, and it’s refreshing to see how a younger scholar might approach a similar task.  I am also inspired and invigorated by the commitment to real-world change, intervention, and action my students bring to and from the classroom. Academia exists within a bubble, and it can be hard to take what we learn out of the classroom and interject it into the world. But I see and hear the ways that students want to make a difference — say, “I can use my voice to be more confident when I write about issues I care about” — that keeps me coming back to the classroom, easily. This next generation of students is going to be a paradigmatic shift in the way things are done in the world. It’s so exciting. What is the most important skill you aim to provide your students? So, hear me out: Ratatouille (2007) was really onto something when Chef Gusteau said, “Your only limit is your soul. What I say is true — anyone can cook.” I tell every one of my students that on the first day of class, and sometimes people are like … “Why is this instructor talking about a Pixar movie?”  But genuinely, I feel that way about writing — anyone can write. The skill I aim to provide my students, then, is individual practices: that is, how to tease out writing in a way that works for their position, their minds, and their bodies. Not everyone will like the pen-to-paper approach and some will like podcasting or audio forms of writing. That’s okay; let’s run with more audio-based feedback and writing remixes. Someone else might be a very technical, document-based author. Great; let’s lean into editing techniques, document design, and get them where they want to be. Letting students make safe mistakes, find what works for them, and get into the cuisine and chef skills they like (to keep the cooking metaphor alive) will help them create a writing piece (culinary masterpiece?) that fits their style.  What would your blue-sky courseware look like for a composition course?  That is a good question. I am a major fan of all-in-one tools, especially ones that include textbooks, assignments, peer review tools, calendar apps … the less clicks and stops my class has to make in their busy lives, the better it is.  I liked being able to play around with Achieve’s peer review tools this summer during the Bedford New Scholars summit. That had a slick interface. There was not a confusing exchange of emails, cross-platform integrations (email suites to LMS), and it was all in one place. And you could edit and share feedback right in Achieve, which was nice. I also really like having a good textbook to ground the coursework and discussions throughout the semester. I have previously utilized 50 Essays in a section of first-year writing and my students liked the variety of essays they got to read over the course; having everything in one place for them made it easy instead of carrying around a lot of books or having to sift through a bunch of files. Oh, and having e-book availability is great too!  What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Oh, it is super fun. We met for a week in June and clicked right away. Every one of the other scholars in the group brings so much to the table that is unique and fulfilling to composition and pedagogy. I remember leaving our virtual event in June feeling so refreshed and ready to teach again. I am still thinking back to that week even now and calling into the ideas and topics we talked about during that time.  It is valuable as well to see and engage with how publications, textbook development, and production works as well. Sometimes as emerging scholars in graduate studies, we do not get to see that; we just work with the texts. But being able to collaborate with the folks who make the books we use is interesting — we can ask questions about publication, pedagogy, development, and the backside of what makes a book. It’s genuinely really fascinating to understand, and it has given me a greater appreciation for textbook development.    Emily’s Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Emily's assignment. For the full activity, see Literacy Narrative. My assignment that works is a literacy narrative. I utilize this assignment when teaching first year writing. This is the first assignment my students and I work together on, and it is often the favorite of the whole semester. Briefly stated: A literacy narrative in this context is both a reflection and narrative — it’s a free-flowing piece of writing that allows students to dive into their identity as writers, but also lets them settle into a practice of writing and revision that they will use throughout their semester and beyond. They get to choose their own story under the direction of one prompt: writing about a time where writing impacted them.  This assignment works because it is a space for students to make productive mistakes and find their footing. Students have liked to ease into the writing process with a space to talk about themselves — they are experts in their own lives and experiences! — rather than a hard research topic. And there is some sort of catharsis about writing about writing. I cannot tell you how many students write about the trauma of ACT or SAT exams and how this class could serve as a reset for that unpleasant experience.  ... View more

This post was originally published on November 25, 2021. I will be thinking of writing teachers and writing students everywhere this Thanksgiving, and giving thanks for all the magnificent colleagues and even more magnificent students I have had the honor and privilege of knowing over my very long career.  When I count my blessings, which I try to do every single day, teachers and students—along with my beloved grandnieces Audrey and Lila—are at the top of my list. I hope this day, even in the midst of a seemingly never-ending pandemic, will bring time shared with your loved ones, time to give thanks for and with them, and time for some relaxation and reflection. With thanks, and every good wish, Andrea Image Credit: "Happy Thanksgiving everyone!" by InaFrenzy, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more