In today's "What We've Learned" video, April Lidinsky (@april_lidinsky), one of the authors of From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader, emphasizes the importance of community-building in composition classrooms, and offers strategies for creating a sense of community in synchronous remote classes using Zoom. ... View more

This post is difficult to write, and I approach writing this week with humility and a sense of empathy for the challenges that all of us are facing. I have ADHD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and I have written, reflected, and created multimedia as a way of processing how these disabilities interact with my brain and the rest of my body. I cannot say how Zoom fatigue feels for anyone else, but for me it was a shock to the system.  ADHD helps me hyper focus when I teach on Zoom, but I cannot shut off the hyper focus when I shut down Zoom, and then, also off camera, GAD kicks in. After two months of fully synchronous Zoom teaching, GAD erupted in shrieks and loops of non-stop thinking. Overthinking, over-emotional, idealistic, taking life too seriously—all the words applied to me by others in childhood, graduate school, and afterward, came ripping out of my brain again. This was quarantine, but also not quarantine, the election, but also not the election. This was my brain on too much Zoom. In “Higher Ed Needs to Go on a Zoom Diet,” Joshua Kim suggests: “Whatever the reason that Zoom tires us out, we should all start listening to our bodies and begin making some adjustments.”  The first body part I knew I needed to adjust was my brain, and I decided to ask for accommodations for next semester: I would need to spend less time teaching on Zoom, and more time working with students asynchronously on email and google.docs; work I already knew how to do because of online training I received years before this pandemic, and my current employer’s online training. Changes in policy and scheduling are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and as an adjunct, I understand that asking for such changes presents risks. Yet, as Eddie Glaude, Jr. reminds us, James Baldwin urged that we use our pain “to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.” In other words, it seemed an even greater risk to ignore what felt like a tornado in my brain, and there was no option to keep the tornado invisible.  Sharing our suffering shares our humanity as well. With white privilege, and with the privilege of excellent mental health care, which is rare in this country, comes the responsibility to resist invisibility. I asked for accommodations and received them. Thanks to the ADA, with proof of documented disabilities I am legally eligible to receive reasonable accommodations to do the same job as everyone else. In The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Audre Lorde, “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who also lived with disabilities, writes, “I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.” Indeed, we cannot wish away the problems and consequences of this pandemic. But, for me, for my students, and for my colleagues, my hope is that those of us with disabilities feel less invisible, less ashamed, and less alone. ... View more

As a concept, “representation” shimmers with meaning, a complex topography of politics, textuality, and power. What does it mean to represent oneself, or to be represented — politically, culturally, textually, academically? What are the ripple effects?  Senator Kamala Harris’s glass ceiling-smashing election to the role of Vice President has focused our national attention on the shimmer of representation. As the first Vice President-elect who is a woman, woman of color, and graduate of a HBCU, Harris strategically deployed these many meanings of representation on her November 14 speech in Delaware. Dressed head to toe in suffrage white on the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, she declared, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last — because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” The viral image by artist Bria Goeller of a striding Kamala Harris casting the shadow of desegregation icon Ruby Bridges reminds us of the histories represented in this moment. We can launch timely classroom conversations about representational significance (including the fact that we’ll have a first second-gentleman who is also Jewish) by asking our students, “Do you agree with the claim that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see?’ Discuss!” My experience with college students has been similar to Kalyn Prince’s in her description of students who are moved to apply rhetorical insights to the wider world as advocates.  With that in mind, you might also invite students to consider the power of citational representation, as we writers decide whose voices to include in our written conversations. I have been inspired by the Cite Black Women Collective in my own work and have introduced students to the principle of mindfully including a diversity of voices in every scholarly conversation. Citations are a core power move in scholarship, whether or not writers are conscious of this fact. We can help students understand that the decisions they make as writers, even at the level of citation, can have ripple effects. Quotation is about inclusion. Citation is about representation. As instructors, we can commit, now, to decolonizing our spring syllabi, breaking open our schedule to include more voices, and discussing with our students the rationale behind the decisions we make about classroom texts. I’m inspired by Susan Bernstein’s post on “Centering Black Lives,” and I would love to hear what is working in your classrooms and your plans for the coming semester. Regardless of our students’ partisan leanings, we all likely share an ideal of a “country of possibilities.” What our students can learn from you is that their decisions about which quotations to include in their writing are the work of making that ideal a reality. Photo by April Lidinsky ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Mike Palmquist, author of Bedford Researcher, discusses the benefits of labor-based grading, and how the process of integrating knowledge can lead to a short-term decrease in performance, but a long-term gain for students. ... 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 One of the most exciting things about multimodal writing in digital contexts is that we can compose non-linear texts that encourage readers to connect deeply and individually through engaging links, images, and exploratory paths. Writing and reading become participatory experiences in which we create dynamic spaces that encourage exploration and critical reading. When we read and write in non-linear spaces, we have opportunities to combine content in ways to create multidimensional experiences for our audiences.  Educational researchers, Howell, Reinking and Kaminsky define this process as writing in which readers and writers go beyond two-dimensional writing and, “add a third dimension of depth by simulating layers of visual elements.”  These features are also referred to as multimedia stories which, as media theorist, Jane Stevens, explains are “ a combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant (Multimedia Storytelling, 2019). It is these additional layers though which writers can create interactive texts where readers choose their own paths and directions as they navigate documents.  In order to create non-linear writing that is complementary and not redundant, writers must choose content that does more than tell the same story.  Instead parts of the story are told through different media, secondary research and different paths for readers to explore. Through following these paths, readers are able to engage, and understand multiple perspectives through a more comprehensive lens.   I find that it is often difficult to communicate this idea of non-linear, multidimensional writing to students although they interact with these texts all of the time on the Web.  I find that they rarely consider how much content we consume is inherently interactive.  Students are so used to presenting material in linear formats that this type of assignment challenges them to compose through the lens of interactivity to create depth and audience participation in online settings.  Interactive components can take the form of text, links, video, audio, images, animation, graphics, etc. The most challenging part of this assignment is getting students to understand interactivity and the ways composing takes on new shapes in digital contexts. I find that it is useful to concentrate and distinguish between three important concepts: Purposeful linking, Multimodal Components, and what I call Exploratory Paths. Purposeful Linking involves students in embedding links within their texts in order to guide their readers in a direction that will both engage them and extend their subjects through secondary sources.  I help students to consider linking in meaningful ways. Many students will link merely for duplication rather than extension or link to commercial sites that do not really add value or depth to their conversations.  Like other research practices, we look for students to evaluate their sources for integrity, validity, and interest.  It is also important to teach students about the logistics of purposeful linking and how to contextualize and place their links.  Students will often link to “here” or some other generic nomenclature.  They need to learn to carefully name and find the places in their sentences that connect most directly to where they are linking.  Multimodal Components add a visual and potentially interactive dimension to texts as we engage readers through images, videos and other graphic content.  The difference between multimodal components and embedded links is that these components appear on the original pages and do not require readers to follow them to other content.  Instead, they add to the reading experience through reinforcing and extending ideas through visual components. Exploratory Paths take readers deeper into productive, related tangents that allows readers to experience different layers that extends their content.    Unlike embedded links or multimodal components, exploratory paths are authored by the student on embedded pages.  They takes the form of mini features (or chunks of Composing Exploratory Paths (courtesy of author) information) in which students compose, interpret, synthesize and extend on ideas related to their subjects from their own perspectives. These paths include links or graphic connectors where readers engage and interact for related feature information. Essentially students create a master feature, along with associational content to give a larger picture that includes multiple perspectives and positions on their subjects. Background Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch.11d: Conducting Internet Research; Ch. 18b: Planning Web-based texts The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 10f: Use Web and Library Resources;  Ch. 20c: Plan Features of texts EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) - Ch.13d: Finding Useful Internet Sources; 13a: Conducting Research Steps to the Assignment: Have students generate an essay, story, feature article, or research paper. Ask students to search for copyright free images to include in their writing that extend or reinforce their ideas.  Have them include a caption for each image and pay attention to location to anchor their images close to their ideas. Discuss and show examples of purposeful and non-purposeful linking. Ask students to research and embed links that extend their subjects in purposeful ways through secondary sources. Emphasize that these links should extend, not just duplicate information in their texts. Discuss placement, purposeful naming and location of their links within the document. Introduce the concept of exploratory paths in which students find several related subjects and ideas to shape into mini-features that expand their ideas or offer synthesized perspectives. Have them include links or graphic connectors that take readers to this supplemental content. Have students pull together their drafts and elicit response and feedback from Content Design Teams (peer response).    Reflections on the Activity I find that although these concepts can be difficult for them to grasp, students benefit greatly from understanding these basic practices.  Most of us were taught to write linear documents that are read from top to bottom.  We have to retrain the ways that we think and compose. These principles provide a foundation for purposeful multimodal and interactive writing. References Kaminski, Rebecca, et al. “Writing as Creative Design: Constructing Multimodal Arguments in a Multiliteracies Framework.” Academia.edu, 2015, www.academia.edu/14079689/Writing_as_Creative_Design_Constructing_Multimodal_Arguments_in_a_Multiliteracies_Framework. Stevens, Jane. Multimedia Storytelling: Learn the Secrets from Experts. 22 Feb. 2019, multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/. ... View more

As I (along with the rest of the country and much of the world) await the final outcome of an election that has so strained the bonds that hold this country together—so much so that one wonders whether it can ever be united again—I cannot help but be minded of Abraham Lincoln's famous adaptation of Mark 3:25: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." For whatever the electoral outcome (and I do have my own predictions, but they are not the stuff of cultural semiotics), one thing is certain: roughly one half of the country is going to be enraged by it. And this is something that does belong to the practice of cultural semiotics—something, in fact, that Sonia Maasik and I anticipated as we worked on the 10th edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A., restructuring the text to make its foundational chapter "American Paradox: Culture, Conflict, and Contradiction in the U.S.A.," as well as focusing its inaugural exemplary semiotic analysis (found in the book's general Introduction) on the two-part Avengers saga, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. If you wish to explore the cultural significance of Election 2020 in your classes, these sections of the new edition provide you with ample resources for doing so, resources that engage critical thinking upon the current state of our nation without inviting partisan conflict among your students. I think it quite unlikely that anyone will disagree on the basic point that the country is very badly divided, so what the text does is provide ways for understanding how we got this way and what to expect in the foreseeable future. And, as always, the book leaves it up to you and your students to determine how you may want to respond to it all. With that, I will return to my own obsessive internet surveying of the latest election news (this is being written on the evening of November 4), and hope that the new edition of Signs of Life (which has just appeared in print) will be useful to you. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 3801639 by GDJ, used under Pixabay License ... View more

A little over a week after the 2020 election, it seems that the entire country is in a state of exhaustion. No matter who we voted for, we are worn down and exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. What an ordeal. Of course, now the real work—of actually governing—needs to go on. Or begin. But as the so-called transition goes forward, perhaps it would be good to take a time out and to reflect on what we’ve experienced, to write about those experiences and feelings, to share with others, and to begin or to carry on conversations intended to help us understand each other a little better. I also like the idea of backing away from the intense drama and emotion-laden angst of these last few weeks and going in for a little analysis. And because so much of our knowledge comes to us today via the sound of the human voice, I think it would be appropriate to analyze several speeches. Three that I think would provide rich material for analysis and reflection are the “non-concession” concession speech Stacey Abrams gave when she lost the race for Georgia’s governor (Nov. 16, 2018), the concession speech Hillary Clinton gave when she lost the presidential election (Nov. 9, 2016), and either Donald Trump’s concession speech following his defeat in this election (if he ever gives one) or John McCain’s concession speech when he lost to Barack Obama (Nov. 5, 2008). The questions: What are the characteristics of an effective concession speech? Does there seem to be an average length for a concession speech? If so, what is it, and why does that length seem effective—or not? How would you describe the tone of each concession speech? In what ways are they similar or different in tone? What role do personal pronouns (I, me, you, we, they) play in concession speeches? How do they affect the tone? How does the speaker in a concession speech characterize or refer to the person who won? How does the speaker try to relate to the audience? To build credibility? Of course, we could ask students to compare and examine other kinds of speeches: the ones candidates give when they have won an election, or the acceptance speeches they give at conventions. In any event, the goal is to get some emotional distance from recent political upheavals and to focus on how language works or fails to work in sending messages to others. So—a little rhetorical analysis as a post-election elixir. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3926344 by lograstudio, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Mike Palmquist, author of Bedford Researcher, reflects on teaching in-person during the pandemic: how he's had to rethink class discussion, group work, and seating, as well as the challenges of parsing student expressions under masks.   ... View more

  The following interview with Peter Adams, author of The Hub, was conducted via email in July and August of 2020. This is the third of four parts. * David Starkey: I’d like to shift the conversation, if I may, towards another reason we have for sharing this virtual space: both your book, The Hub, and my own forthcoming book, Hello, Writer, are specifically designed for accelerated courses. You and I have both written textbooks before. Hello, Writer is my fifth, and The Hub is your fourth. How did you approach the task differently when writing for an audience composed primarily of accelerated composition students?   Peter Adams: In some ways, The Hub is just a continuation of the work I did on my first three books. You might even say those first three were rough drafts for this book. On the other hand, my understanding of what we need to do to improve the success rate of developmental students has undergone radical revision in recent years. As a result, my earlier books were untouched by a number of pedagogical issues that I now think of as essential to effective teaching.             For example, the big chunk of The Hub addressing students’ non-cognitive issues was totally missing from my first three books   DS: That area was a central focus for me, too. In fact, it was really the starting point of Hello, Writer. Since I began teaching as a graduate student, more than thirty years ago, I’ve always felt that non-cognitive, affective areas were unjustly ignored in conversations about teaching. Consequently, I was excited about how well my accelerated students responded to my new emphasis on motivation, personal interactions with the professor and other students, and taking a meta-cognitive approach to feelings about the course and their education overall. At SBCC, we also focused on essential skills like time management, learning to correctly read and interpret a syllabus, meeting with your counselor on a regular basis, and so on. Granted, some students might pick up these competencies in a personal development class. Then again, they might not.   PA: At CCBC, we, too, require a one-credit “student success” course. Most students in ALP are also taking that course. Over the years, the ALP faculty have worked with the faculty teaching “student success” to minimize the duplication. In many cases, we’ve developed activities in ALP that reinforce what students have been working on in their “student success” course. For instance, in that course, students are required to keep an activity log in which they record what they do every minute of the day for a complete week. In ALP, we ask them to write a short paper analyzing their logs.   I’ve also, more slowly than I like to admit, come to realize that the artificial separation of reading and writing in community colleges both reduces the effectiveness of instruction in each area and, in addition, adds an extra developmental course students have to take before starting credit English.   DS: That movement to integrate reading and writing is clearly a very important one in acceleration. I think integration is right for students, but I worry it means we are losing some excellent faculty members because they don’t have training in composition. At SBCC, for instance, the number of reading courses we taught shrank so drastically, and so many reading faculty retired or moved on, that our “English Skills” department was absorbed into the English Department and essentially disappeared. What workarounds would you suggest for this issue?   PA: I agree, David, that integrating these two disciplines that we separated many years ago is a source of considerable anguish at many schools. It will, as you point out, result any many fewer traditional standalone developmental reading courses, but that doesn’t have to mean fewer teaching opportunities for our reading colleagues. It does mean they will need to learn how to teach writing . . . and that writing teachers will need to learn to teach reading. At first, I feared there was no way reading faculty could become successful writing teachers. How could they make up for all the training we had in grad school to become writing teachers? Then I remembered that many of us had little training in the teaching of writing (myself, included); many of us were focused on learning how to be teachers and scholars of literature. Nevertheless, with the help of colleagues, with attendance at conferences, with reading our journals, and with a lot of trial and error, we have become professional writing teachers. If we could do that, so can reading faculty.   I am more worried about the converse of that issue: can we writing faculty become effective teachers of reading?   I think the answer to both questions is yes, but not without resources to help us make the transitions, in other words, support for faculty development. I can’t claim I am yet a professional teacher of reading, but with the help of my reading colleagues at CCBC, I have become at least minimally effective, and I have observed many of my reading colleagues develop into excellent teachers of writing.   Part 4 of this conversation will appear next month. ... View more

Kalyn Prince (recommended by Roxanne Mountford) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She serves as the Senior Assistant Director of First-Year Composition and teaches first-year writing. She has also co-taught a composition theory survey course for graduate students in the OU English Department. Her research interests include public argumentation, nostalgia as ethos, and rhetorical analysis.   How does the next generation of students inspire you? I’m constantly impressed by my students’ inclination towards advocacy—both personal advocacy and advocacy for others. My students are not content to learn about rhetoric and writing in the abstract. They want to engage in the world and find solutions to the problems we discuss in the classroom. From Black Lives Matter to TikTok, this group of students actively takes a stand on injustice and is uniquely capable of doing so with their various social literacies. My job as their teacher is to help them think critically about the issues they care about, teaching them to thoughtfully analyze the arguments and stakeholders in the issue and consider their own unique abilities to intervene. How do you hope higher education will change in the next ten years? My hope is that higher education will follow the lead of this generation and find better ways to leave the classroom. In the time of COVID-19 and worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, it can come as no shock that composition studies cannot only reside in the university. So many of us enter into higher education—both as students and instructors—hoping to make meaningful change for the communities we care about, but instead our work gets trapped in the halls of the university, never to breathe the air outside. It is my hope that those of us in higher education will continue to intervene in public discourse from our place in the university and that we will increasingly find ways of becoming scholar activists, joining our students in understanding and crafting arguments that will have a real-world impact. What is it like to be a part of the Bedford New Scholars program? Being part of the Bedford New Scholars program has been such a rewarding experience. It’s been so encouraging to work with other graduate students with whom I share research and teaching interests, discovering that they have the same goals and frustrations that I do! The Scholars have shared insight from their home institutions’ writing programs, which provides a unique opportunity to get a sense of what is going on in composition classrooms across the nation. It’s uplifting to discover our mutual hopes and concerns for teaching composition in 2020 and exciting to think that these passionate, brilliant Scholars will be directing writing programs in the future. I’ve also loved getting to work with the editorial team at Bedford/St. Martin’s as they guide us through textbook, program, and catalog reviews. They consistently impress me with their thoughtfulness and intentionality, time and time again thinking of incredible solutions to challenges we face in the writing classroom and designing course materials that our students can find accessible and instructive. The entire experience has been a delight, and I’m so grateful to have this opportunity. How will the Bedford New Scholars program affect your professional development or your classroom practice? This program has inspired me to be more intentional in how I craft my classroom activities. During our Summit Week, Kendra N. Bryant ran a session on teaching philosophies and Shelley Reid ran a session on assignment design. What both of these sessions had in common was emphasizing the imperativeness of having classroom practices that match teaching philosophies and student learning goals. While this should seem obvious, it can be easy to lose sight of our ultimate goals when building small classroom activities or homework assignments. But just because our project or essay assignments are sound doesn’t mean the rest of the course is. The Bedford New Scholars program has reignited my concern for backwards design in lesson planning and inspired me to be even more intentional in crafting smaller activities to ensure that I’m giving students every opportunity to thoroughly develop critical thinking skills that will allow them to make change in the world.   Kalyn’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 Kalyn's assignment. For the full activity, see Synthesizing Primary Research. I’ve found that when I ask students to engage with real-world social/political groups or organizations, they often have trouble synthesizing all of their primary research, secondary research, and analysis. Such synthesis is crucial for students to be able to develop in critical thinking, understand the nuances of a group’s political engagement, and consider their own stake in these issues. To help them practice synthesis, I run students through this scaffolding activity where they begin to consider how synthesis works in documentary-style television shows. Students watch a clip of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (any documentary-style clip could work) and then respond to a series of questions regarding the different research components being synthesized in the segment. For this activity, you can customize the questions and materials to better fit with your classroom language and the skills you’ve been developing with your students. ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Erica Duran, one of the authors of Science and Technology, discusses the challenges of motivating students remotely, identifying why students might be struggling, and supporting students through personal challenges by offering understanding, care, and the resources they need. ... View more

I just finished reading Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing: How Americans Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020). Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard, is probably best known for his best-selling 1995 book Bowling Alone. This new book argues that the United States has oscillated between individualism and mutual concern—referred to as the “I-We-I cycle.” More specifically, Putnam and Garrett begin by returning to Alexis de Tocqueville’s assessment of the United States as a country where individualism (a word Tocqueville coined, incidentally, to describe this country) was balanced by a concomitant commitment to others, a balance that the Gilded Age ended, with its personal and political and corporate corruption, its selfishness and disregard for workers, and its destruction of the environment (sound familiar?). According to Putnam and Garrett, this period slowly gave way to another swing of the pendulum, culminating in Johnson’s “Great Society,” which was much more committed to recognizing and helping others. Since the late 60s, however, that society has disappeared and in its place has come “declining economic equality, the deterioration of compromise in the public square, a fraying social fabric and a descent into cultural narcissism,” a shift epitomized, not to put too fine a point on it, by Donald Trump and Trumpism. I’ve just sketched, in very broad terms, the thesis of The Upswing. I think that the book is worth reading, especially for its chapters on race and gender. But as to the overall thesis, I have heard all this before, most notably in Robert Bellah and his co-authors’ 1985 book Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Like Putnam and Garrett, Bellah and his colleagues turn to Tocqueville, who predicted that American individualism could easily lead to what he called “democratic despotism,” in which the public would be duped into following without thinking: "They will rise from their torpor every four years to elect their masters and then sink back into slavery." Thus American individualism disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look out after itself. In short, it will leave Americans unable to protect their own freedom. This is the danger, one that Bellah and his colleagues hope can be avoided through commitment to others, and the second part of their book provides case studies of people who embody that ethos. I read Putnam’s book—and returned to reread Bellah’s—because I’ve been reflecting on the work that Lisa Ede and I did, beginning in the 80s, on collaboration as a method and a way of life. In two books and a series of articles, we advocated for collaboration in general and collaborative writing in particular as one way to resist the embrace of radical individualism. In countless conference presentations and arguments on our home campuses, we challenged the individualistic basis of higher education and its artifacts (especially the single-authored monograph and the dissertation). We wrote about (and founded) writing centers devoted to collaboration and cooperation, and we incorporated collaborative principles into all our classes. The field of composition and rhetoric as a whole moved from the individualistic focus of the writing process movement to the much more socially-oriented approaches that followed. So writing teachers, too, especially those who have been around for a few decades, have no doubt lived the “I-We-I cycle.” As Kenneth Burke says frequently (and maddeningly!) in many of his essays, “So where are we now?” As writing teachers, we are at the very least between a rock and a hard place, one that leaves us on our own to find a balance between “I” and “we” and to help students negotiate that balance in their writing and in their own lives. Burke notes two basic human forces at work in all of us: the drive, the desire, the need for identification and consubstantiation with others; and the drive, the desire, the need for separation and division from others. That is, the desire for individualism and the desire for togetherness, for commitment. The “I” and “We.” Certainly the values of an “I” society seem perfectly embodied in Donald Trump: is this the despot Tocqueville foresaw, one the American people would not only be vulnerable to but would follow blindly, waking from their torpor every four years only to sink back into slavery again, their freedom gone? For someone who has spent a long career advocating for and trying to embody the goals and values of “we,” these are terrifying questions. Perhaps it’s time to ask students to join us in confronting this dichotomy, to explore it in personal narratives, in quantitative and qualitative research, and in understanding what in our society allows us—and prevents us—from finding and embodying a healthy, life-sustaining balance. Two days after the 2020 election, this goal seems more imperative than ever. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 5012919 by RoonZ-nl, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Holly Bauer, author of Food Matters, reflects on using shared documents for group annotation, as a way to improve students' understanding and to encourage participation.  ... View more

Students generally have little trouble distinguishing between and among claims of fact, value, and policy. Unlike the other claims, claims of policy advocate an action, or at least a change in thinking, and they most often explicitly state what should or should not be done. At election time, we act on claims of policy that we accept: You should vote for Candidate A. You should help vote Candidate B out of office. You should vote a straight Republican ticket. This year, we had to decide which other related claims to accept: You should vote in person. You should not vote in person due to the presence of COVID-19. You should return your absentee ballot as soon as possible. And the most basic: You should vote.  More than ever this year, the election has become entangled with the choice of a new justice of the Supreme Court. The nine justices constantly deal with policy issues, and they answer some of our most critical “should” and “should not” questions. Should Roe V. Wade be overturned? Should the Affordable Care Act be struck down? Which ballots should be counted, and which should not? Each ruling is grounded in a specific case, but each has effects that reverberate throughout the nation and through history. Decisions made by the Supreme Court are, of course, based on the Constitution and on laws passed by the legislative branch. What a law states is a fact. The need to interpret laws is what makes the whole judicial system necessary. As with any argument, an argument that reaches the Supreme Court is built on claims of fact and value that must be agreed on before a claim of policy can be. The first cracks in the foundation of our democracy appeared when the two major political parties could no longer even agree on what a fact is. Claims of fact are usually based on logic, and two people or groups who can think rationally can usually reach an agreement on them. We should have known we were in trouble when Republicans and Democrats could not even agree on something as relatively simple as which inaugural was attended by more people – that of Trump or those of Obama. We could find that mildly amusing, but we were less amused when Trump’s staffers resorted to the concept of the alternative fact. Added was the fact that we had a president to whom expressing “alternate facts” came as naturally as breathing, and there could be no faith any longer in “facts.” Once the president convinced his supporters that any news that presented him in a negative light was “fake news” (non-fact), he could present any untruth he wanted to as fact, up to and including listing the ending to the pandemic as one of his accomplishments at the exact time that the number of new cases was breaking old records. If two parties cannot even agree on factual claims, there is little chance they can agree on more controversial claims of value. They, too, often read what is posted on social media and accuse their opponents of the most extreme stance on every issue. Democrats cannot be counted on to protect new life and want to take away all of your guns. Republicans are racists who want to put women in prison for having abortions. Reasoned debate is not possible when each party is guilty of the straw man fallacy in attempts to get their opponents to argue against a position more extreme than that which they actually hold. The last four years have revealed differences in values between Democrats and Republicans that run even deeper than many of us realized – our country has not been this divided since the Civil War. Some people are grateful COVID-19 will keep them from having their annual family gathering for Thanksgiving, because what do you say over dinner to Uncle Ray, an avid Trump supporter, as a liberal through-and-through? Decades-long friendships have ended, and a popular meme sums it up well: “I was asked, ‘You’re going to lose friends over politics?!’ I said, ‘I’m going to lose friends over morals. HUGE difference.’” We are well past checking for cracks in the foundation of our democracy. Those foundation are crumbling, and no single presidential election will solve all of our problems. Our founders did not foresee anything like a Trump presidency. They didn’t foresee that the Electoral College would become outmoded and work against the will of the majority of Americans. They didn’t foresee a president who would take advantage of the power of the pardon to pardon himself. They did not foresee the willingness of so many to put party over country. Only a relatively few years ago, a superb candidate for justice of the Supreme Court would be approved by well over ninety percent of all members of Congress, in spite of party, not passed because of party. There is no easy solution to our country’s problems. The balance of power among our branches of government is so akilter that righting it may prove impossible. It’s scary how much that depends on those nine justices referenced earlier. For the rest of their working lives, they must write and rewrite policy for our country. They must do so on the basis of carefully selected cases brought before them to test our laws and the Court’s precedents. They must forget who nominated them. They must forget the animosity of those who disagreed with the way they came to their positions. They must forget party. They must put aside their own values to decide cases based on the law of the land. They aren’t expected to do that. Our current president has made it clear that the justices he nominated are there to do his bidding. It’s a lot to ask when those in the other branches of government who put them there have proved their own lack of integrity. The amount of rebuilding our country must do depends on whether nine people can live up to the role that the writers of our Constitution envisioned for them. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 39982 by Clker-Free-Vector-Images, used under Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Samuel Cohen, author of 50 Essays, reflects on ways to make connections with students when teaching online, and how to bring their daily lives into the classroom.  ... View more