I wish all teachers of writing could have been with me at the Hazhó’ó Hólne’ Writing Conference, held in late March in Window Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation and centered around the theme of Revitalization. A project of the Bread Loaf School of English Teacher’s Network and funded in part by Ford, the conference brought together students and teachers in Next Generation Leadership Network (I wrote about the NGLN in a previous post) groups from Massachusetts, Kentucky, Vermont, Georgia, South Carolina, and the Navajo Nation to share the work they have been doing during the last year in their home communities and to write and perform together. This is the third iteration of this conference and it has been a true honor to participate.   The Conference was convened by distinguished Navajo poet and community activist Rex Lee Jim and welcomed by Navajo President Jonathan Nez as well as by Bread Loaf School of English Director Emily Bartels. Each day featured three “breakout” sessions that offered interactive workshops on How to Sing Stories, Telling Our Stories through Theater, Youth Voices via Multimodalism, Teachers as Writers, Imagery and the Sensory, Spoken Word, Writing for Healing, Story Circles to Build Community, Art Therapy through Writing, and much more. I learned so much more in two days than I can possibly express—experiencing the embodied Navajo songs and prayers and dances that stirred my spirit as the descriptions of community project and research-based efforts to improve conditions in local schools and communities kept me on my mental toes hour after hour after hour.   Hearing young people (most of them young people of color) talk about food literacy programs that are helping communities work toward sustainability, about free after school writing and sports-based programs for elementary schools, about oral history projects that are capturing the long-ignored history of African-American Atlanta—well, you can see why I came away with hope for our future, even in these dismal times.   Of all the projects I learned about, none was more important than that of Navajo youth reporting on the kidnapping of indigenous women. The student researchers shared horrific statistics—over 500 women missing or murdered in 71 locations just for a start—and showed how little has been done to address this epidemic. Most impressive was their grasp of the complexity of the problem, their understanding that there can be no quick fix. Rather, they are engaged in the slow, tedious, meticulous work of documentation and of raising awareness among those in power at the same time that they look for concrete ways to protect indigenous women in their communities.   Each day of the conference concluded with an open mic session as writers lined up to take the mic and share their work. Many read/performed pieces they had written or begun during the weekend, like a piece called “Pam Can Dunk.” This poem about a small town local hero who lost her life in a car accident a couple of years ago told the story of Pam, who loved basketball more than anything but whose father and coaches continued to tell her that “girls can’t dunk.” Beautifully rendered and delivered, this poem builds in intensity to the conclusion when Pam shows them all with an unexpected but totally powerful slam dunk all her own. The writer of this piece is still revising and polishing, but he plans to publish it locally as a way to honor the memory of this young woman whose story will now live on.   There were many moments like this one—not only poems but also short prose pieces, original songs, an amazing a cappella rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and even line dancing and singing that everyone could join in on. So a lot of pure joy mixed in with loss, heartache, grief, and, always, learning about and celebrating language and words, both written and spoken.   During one of our breaks, I spoke with a student who said she didn’t much like school (“it’s just all about tests”) but who loved being part of NGLN: “That’s where we get to write all the time!” she said. And this writing all the time had kept her engaged in school as well, even when she didn’t much want to go. I know how hard most high school teachers work to engage their students, to get them writing “all the time” in spite of administrative obsession with numbers and tests. It’s an ongoing struggle. That’s just one reason I’m so glad that groups like NGLN (and lots of others) exist to help out, to allow student writers/researchers/speakers/performers to do real, concrete work to improve their lives and the lives of their communities.   As this description suggests, NGLN’s central activity is the “organization and networking of youth-centered think tanks, where youth and their mentors gather, both digitally and in person, to design and develop strategic plans for individual and collective social action.” You can learn more about this vibrant, vital program on their website and check out the videos that are posted there as well.   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 2607131 by StockSnap, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

My students are beginning research posters this week, so the course is returning to information on effective design and in particular the design principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. In today’s post, I’ll share the active learning tasks I’m using to ask students to recall prior knowledge and give them hands-on work with the design principles. Active learning tasks ask students to engage directly in their learning process by “involving [them] in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing” (Bonwell & Eison 1991). A simplified explanation of this teaching strategy compares students' minds to sponges and to mechanical gears. Passive learning strategies, such as lectures, treat the student’s mind like a sponge, ready to absorb ideas as it creates a repository of information. It aligns well with Paulo Freire’s banking model of education. Active learning strategies, alternately, engage the student’s brain as if it were a machine made of interlocking gears, turning and churning as it tests hypotheses and creates knowledge. The series of tasks I describe below asks students to recall what they know about the design principles, to apply the principles through several analysis activities, and to forecast how they will use the principles in their research posters. Background Readings and Resources Chapter 11, “Designing Print and Online Documents,” from Markel & Selber’s Technical Communication [the course textbook] “Visual design principles,” from O’Reilly “Principles of Design Quick Reference Poster,” from Paper Leaf Design Basic Activity Logistics The course includes weekly writing and revision activities that students complete individually and in groups. Discussion prompts and related activities are posted as weekly activities. Since I teach a fully-online course, this work is submitted as a discussion post to me in the course management software. These tasks are much like the in-class activities that would be part of a face-to-face course. The tasks below give you the short version of the prompt. I add more specific details on how to post, share, and reply to one another in the assignments shared with students. Active Learning Tasks Design Principles Scavenger Hunt Go on a hunt on campus or online for a good or bad visual. It can be any kind of visual—a digital sign, a full-page ad in a magazine, a billboard, and so forth. It doesn’t have to be a research poster. Here’s one way to find a visual for this discussion: Find a bulletin board on campus. Stand across the hall from it, and identify the one piece on the bulletin board that grabs your attention. Take a photo of the visual you find or save the visual if you found it online. Add a paragraph that tells us why it is a good visual or a bad one. Use the ideas from the textbook to support your ideas. Design Principles Prescription You are the Design Doctor. Choose a visual from the Design Principles Scavenger Hunt or one that you have found elsewhere, and consider how well the visual uses the design principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. Respond in three parts: Describe how the visual uses the design principles. Diagnose the design shortcomings of the visual. Prescribe solutions that will improve the visual. Positive Application Task Choose a visual from a previous project in the course or one that you are planning to use in your research poster. Annotate the visual with details on how you have used the design principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. Label features of the visual with arrows that pair with related descriptions and explanations of the design principles. Use Figure 11.1 on pages 251–52 of Technical Communication as the model for your response. Research Poster Design Plan Based on what you know about the design principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity, create a design plan for your research poster. Brainstorm a list of ideas you want to emphasize in your poster. Apply design principles to the ideas, indicating strategies you can use to highlight the content on your poster. Create a style sheet for your poster, outlining the design decisions you have made. For instance, your style sheet should cover information such as the following: What font and font size will you use for regular text? What font and font size will you use for Level 1 headings? Level 2 headings? What colors will you use on the poster, and where will you use them? Final Thoughts These four active learning activities seem relatively simple on the surface; however, they build on one another to lead students to recall how the design principles work and then apply those principles to their own work. What strategies do you use to encourage students to apply composing and design strategies to their own work? Please tell me by leaving a comment below. References Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: creating excitement in the classroom (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1). Washington, DC: School of Education and Human Development, George Washington University. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED336049.pdf Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition (30th Anniversary edition; M. B. Ramos, trans.). New York: Continuum.   Photo credit: The Open University Brand Design Guidelines by DAMS Library, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license. ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Tanya Rodrigue‌, an associate professor in English and coordinator of the Writing Intensive Curriculum Program at Salem State University in Massachusetts. I am currently in the midst of holding individual conferences with students in one of my writing classes. These individual conferences, which last anywhere from 15-45 minutes, are extremely valuable for many reasons. I get an opportunity to not only give individual, customized feedback but also to have productive conversations with students about their ideas, their writing process, their drafts, and their revision plans. Also, these conferences help me get to know my students better, which often times leads to more investment in the course and in their writing projects. While individual conferences have clear benefits, so do group conferences. Group conferencing can help students become stronger writers and better at giving helpful revision feedback to other writers; they also have the potential to save instructors’ time.   Before I explain the values of group conferencing in detail, let me describe this kind of conferencing and provide one possible structure for organizing conferences.   Group conferencing simply entails an instructor meeting with two or more students to provide feedback and have a discussion about a draft of a writing project. When I hold group conferences, I often ask students to exchange papers prior to the conference and be prepared to give specific feedback to their peer related to the assignment guidelines and assessment criteria. I ask students to informally jot down notes that they can reference during the session. In preparation for group conferences, I follow the exact same steps as my students. I often meet with two students at a time for 20-30 minutes, but the conference length will depend on the nature of the writing assignment and the amount of pre-writing or drafting work students have done beforehand.     Below are some reasons why group conferences are valuable:   Group conferences provide instructors an opportunity to model what productive feedback is and sounds like. It is valuable to hold group conferences prior to facilitating peer review so that students can learn the kind of feedback that is helpful to give for revision and the kind of language that is productive in talking about another writer’s work. Orchestrating a productive peer review session is incredibly difficult, most of the time because students don’t know what it is or how to do it. As a result, often times, even with a specific prompt, students resort to giving feedback on grammar or mechanics. In a group conference, students have the opportunity to witness the instructor’s thought process and how they support each student writer. Further, the instructor can help redirect student comments that focus on lower level concerns as well as praise or help students further develop or elaborate on their comments. Instructors may consider asking students to compose a brief reflection noting what they learned about giving meaningful feedback in the group conference.   Student writers have the opportunity to witness how an audience takes up and understands their writing. In a group conference, the instructor and students are a real-life audience. The student writer is able to visually see and hear how a real audience engages with their writing. Further, instructors and students inevitably offer different feedback. The instructor and student might focus their attention on completely different aspects of the paper, which may be helpful in understanding variances in audience engagement as well as differences in how people perceive what constitutes strong writing.     Feedback offered on one student’s draft often prompts another student(s) to reflect on their own draft. In a group conference, students get to hear two sets of feedback on two different papers. Regardless of whether or not the students are writing about the same topic, students will often hear feedback on someone else’s writing and use it to think about their own writing. A student might say, “I really like the way Suzy organized her paper. I think it works better than how I did it” or “I did that too! I’m happy to see we both are meeting the expectations of the assignment.” In my experience, moments like these illustrate the value of group conferences.   Oral feedback often times is more productive than written feedback. I have written about the value of using talk in learning environments in a previous blog post and some of what I say there about audio process notes applies to group conferences. For both the instructor and the students, oral feedback, as opposed to written feedback, offers the opportunity to be informal and conversational. Talk invites dialogue, divergence, and unexpected or surprising moments that often lead to good ideas and thus strong feedback for writers. Unlike written feedback, the instructor and students don’t have to worry about complete thoughts or sentences: the opportunity to ask questions or ask for clarification, for example, is a strong affordance of face-to-face interactions.   Group conferences often take instructors less time than individual conferences or providing written feedback. When instructors are faced with teaching anywhere from 50 to 90 student writers, the amount of time spent on giving feedback on student writing is an important consideration. In my experience, group conferences save time without shortchanging good revision feedback. This is especially true when both the students and instructor come to the conference prepared and ready to engage in meaningful conversation.   There are three major challenges that I’ve faced when conducting group conferences: students not submitting their work to the instructor and peer prior to the session, students being ill-prepared to give feedback, and student lack of engagement during a session. In efforts to foster “buy-in,” instructors should talk to students about the value of group conferencing, what they can learn from engaging in them, and what they need to do—both before and during the conference—to make the session as productive as possible. Instructors may also want to consider attaching a grade weight to the group conferences. ... View more

Brody Smithwick is the founder of Lion Life Community, a non-profit organization that offers educational services inside of jails in North Georgia. He is also a graduate student at Kennesaw State University working toward a Master’s Degree in Professional Writing with concentrations in both Creative Writing and Composition and Rhetoric while teaching First-Year Composition courses at KSU.   Let’s be honest, teaching how to compose and use an annotated bibliography is not something that often induces uncontrollable excitement in our students. However, it is a necessary and useful instrument to put in their academic toolbox. While the formatting and summarizing components are important, getting students to analyze and synthesize their sources is where the magic happens—or doesn’t. In this assignment, we’ll take a look at how you can use podcasting to supplement your annotated bibliography assignments to get your students to engage in quality analysis and synthesis.   Background Reading for Students and Instructors The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 6, “Working with Others” The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises😞 Ch. 14, “Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes” EasyWriter (also available with Exercises😞 Ch. 12d, “Synthesizing sources”   Assignment: Analyze and Synthesize Sources via Podcasting Assignment Learning Outcomes Integrate appropriate source material for a variety of rhetorical contexts Read and analyze a rhetorically diverse range of texts Compose a variety of texts using key rhetorical concepts Synthesize source material   In this assignment, students will learn how to engage in quality analysis and synthesis by creating a podcast about their annotated bibliography sources. Put students into groups of twos or threes. With completed annotated bibliographies in hand, your students will pick two or three sources to discuss in the podcast. They will create a podcast script as a deliverable that also aids in ensuring the podcast runs smoothly. If you want, you can give them some stock questions to ask one another during the podcast that you know will guide the conversation towards strong analysis and synthesis. While not a necessity, I think this assignment works best if there is an overall theme to the class or if you group students together who are writing on similar topics.    Assignment Steps Introduce the Assignment and Explain the Technology Link your expectation of the production quality of the podcast to how much time you are willing to spend on explaining software/hardware and editing tools. Sure, some students will be tech gurus and produce something ready for BBC on the first go. On the other hand, many students will struggle greatly with the technology component. That being said, you can either spend ample time in-class or make yourself available beyond the classroom to teach the technology side. Or simply lower your production quality requirement.   Here is a list of the free technology and other resources I provide to my students. I let them use what they are comfortable with even if I’m not familiar with it. Instead of requiring them to submit their podcast via our university’s learning management system, I ask that they turn in their work via email with very specific instructions on what to put in the email subject and how to name their files. This method has worked wonderfully for me so far.   You will also want to set a time limit on the podcasts. You would be surprised at how long these podcasts can run if you do not put a cap on them. I require a minimum of 20 minutes and a maximum of 30 minutes.     Have Students Complete an Outline of a Podcast Script  By giving students an example outline, or Podcast Script, you will get a much higher quality podcast, especially because not all students regularly listen to podcasts. While podcasts can often sound like two or three pals simply shooting the breeze on the latest trends in quantum mechanics, they are not completely effortless and take time to produce. In fact, my students are often surprised that a podcast script is a real thing. The podcast script also gives you a chance to provide feedback mid-composition if you have students turn the script in before they create the podcast.    Emphasize the Importance of Making Connections and Asking Questions During the podcast should talk about how each source specifically pertains to their topic. Although they have already completed their annotated bibliography, their co-hosts will need a brief summary of the source. From there, you’ll want to coach them to explain how this source is functioning as a piece of evidence that supports their claim and how they specifically plan to use it in their essay. They’ll need to be familiar enough with the source to be able to field questions from their co-hosts. This where your stock questions can really come in handy for students that may struggle with coming up with questions off the cuff.     An example of how a discussion may unfold could look like the following: If Jim’s essay “Weimaraners: The Intelligentsia of the Canine World” is arguing that Weimaraners are the most intelligent breed of dog on the planet, one of his sources for the podcast might be a book about William Wegman’s amazingly talented Weimaraners. Jim briefly tells his co-hosts that Wegman is a popular American artist whose photography and art of Weimaraners dressed in human attire gained him a considerable reputation in the Seventies and Eighties. His art has been displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney, and The Smithsonian American Art Museum just to name a few. Jim has made the connection that this breed’s high intelligence allowed Wegman to create the portraits he is now so famous for. Jim plans to use Wegman’s work as a primary example of how Weimaraners have accomplished feats that shaped modern culture and that no other breed could possibly be capable of. At this point in the podcast, questions from the co-hosts will typically ensue.   Encourage your students to go where the conversation takes them and to become curious in one another’s work. Let them know that they should feel free to ask questions or challenge their co-hosts arguments--respectfully of course. This assignment puts students in a position of authority, as they are the expert on their topic and sources during the podcast. Many students seem to thrive when given that position. I think they truly feel as if they have a voice and something to add to the larger conversation.    Reflection   In so many ways, talking is composing. Aiding students in discussing their sources with their peers, without the presence of the professor, yields rich conversations full of more in-depth analysis of their sources. Students move naturally into synthesizing their sources when their peers inquire about certain components of their research project or source. The podcasts my students create are often full of wit, humor, heated debates, and brilliant insights. After completing an annotated bibliography and doing this assignment, the general consensus of my class is that they feel well equipped to tackle their research projects. I like this assignment because it can be dressed up or down depending on your desired outcome. I plan to always incorporate podcasts into my course designs going forward. ... View more

One of the key principles upon which the semiotic method is based is that of the cultural mythology. Grounded in Roland Barthes’ pioneering study Mythologies, a cultural mythology is an ideologically inflected worldview (or set of worldviews) that shapes social consciousness. Unlike more strictly held views on social constructionism, however, which hold that reality itself is a social construct, the mythological viewpoint—at least as I present it in Signs of Life in the U.S.A.—is essentially subjective, and can be tested against the objective realities that surround it. So passionately are cultural mythologies held, however, that when reality does break through, the result can be quite emotional, even violent. Take climate change denial, for instance. Effectively a sub-cultural mythology in its own right, a steady stream of objective evidence that climate change is real only produces ever more insistent denials by its adherents. Or then again, take America's fundamental mythology of the American dream, which holds that opportunities for social and economic advancement are open to all who make the effort to achieve them, and what happens when uncomfortable realities challenge it—as just happened with the still unfolding college admissions scandal. The extraordinary level of emotion—and media attention—that has greeted this scandal is especially indicative of what happens when a cultural mythology smashes into reality. For here is evidence, especially painful for the middle class, that even college admissions can be bought through schemes that are open only to the upper class that Americans are so slow to recognize exists at all. In a certain sense, I must confess, I'm a little surprised by the profundity of the reaction. I mean, didn't everyone already know about the advantages—from legacy admissions to exclusive prep schools to expensive SAT tutoring—that America's upper classes enjoy when it comes to elite college admissions? Somehow I can't help but be reminded of that iconic scene in Casablanca where Captain Louis Renault is "shocked" that "gambling is going on” in Rick's Café Américain, just as he is about to receive his own winnings. So there is something about this current glimpse into what upper-class privilege is all about that has really struck a nerve. I see at least three facets to the scandal that help explain how and why. First is the high-profile celebrity involvement. As an entertainment culture, America adores and identifies with its favorite entertainers, so when two popular actresses, and their children, are alleged to have taken advantage of their wealth in order to slip past the guardians of a supposedly meritocratic college admissions system, the feeling of betrayal runs especially deep. The second component to the scandal is that—even before the Great Recession hit—career opportunities for America's college graduates (especially if they are not STEM majors) are closing down, increasing the pressure to get into one of those schools whose graduates have the best chance at getting the few good jobs that are left. Suddenly, where you go to college seems to matter a lot more in determining where you are going to get in life. Which takes us to the third angle to the phenomenon: the stunned realization that not only is the American dream a cultural mythology but that the whole game appears to have been rigged all along. This apprehension cannot be overestimated in its affect on American society today. It is, in good part, behind the rise of political "populism" (it may be significant in this regard that conservative commentary on the scandal gloats over the "liberal" Hollywood elites involved), as well as the accompanying divisions in a society where more and more people are competing for fewer and fewer slots in the good life—which appear to have been purchased in advance as part of the social scenario of a new Gilded Age. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1701201 by davidsenior, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

This week's featured guest blogger is Joseph Couch, Professor at Montgomery College. “But why do that?” students often ask when we discuss plays. Sometimes due to the opaqueness of subtext or even with the seeming (at least to experienced readers) transparency of dialogue and action, characters’ motives can puzzle readers. Without a narrator to provide the thoughts and feelings of at least one if not all characters, drama requires recognizing some different textual clues from fiction. Characterization in both genres, though, in works from the modern period to the contemporary, as well as quite a few before it, relies on a psychological approach based on motivations. Getting students to recognize what drives characters, who in the early stages of reading a play may seem like random blocks of dialogue on the page with little to differentiate them, can be quite challenging. Another challenge for instructors is to prevent a literature class from becoming Psychology or Method Acting 101 in the process of teaching characterization in drama.  To help students better understand characterization in drama, I developed a small-group classroom activity that instructors can use at any point in the discussion of a play or as part of a review for a paper or exam. The starting point is for the class to identify an important moment or moments in the text that have serious rewards or drawbacks for a character or characters. This added warm-up can help students from only looking for dialogue and directions related to the one character in question. After assigning a moment and character(s) to the groups, the activity proceeds as follows: 1. Students list the reasons/motivations why a character makes the decision and/or takes the action with support from dialogue and direction in the play, usually two or three reasons will suffice. 2. Students also consider and list the character’s goals for the decision and/or event. The instructor may need to remind students that these goals may be quite different from the actual outcomes for the characters. 3. A simple flow chart presented on the board can help students follow the logic of the character’s motivations and goals. Distributing hard copies of the chart to the groups to use can also help keep them on task.  On one side are the motivations that lead to the action and/or decision in the middle of the chart.  On the right side are the character’s desired outcomes.  A sample chart is below: 4. Once groups have completed the charts/provided answers, each group does a mini-presentation for the class of motivations and goals. To frame the discussion of characterization within the larger context of the play and other dramatic elements, some questions to ask of the class as a whole can be: How practical are the motivations and/or goals of the character, and what clues does the text provide? Does the character achieve the goal—why or why not? How does the setting contribute to and conflict with the character? Which characters have competing motivations and goals, and how do they complicate the plot? Each small group can work with the same character and event or with different ones, depending on the number of characters and complexity of the plot as well as how challenging the students find characterization in this text. It can also be helpful to review with students that what other characters say and do towards or in response to a character are also part of characterization. This discussion during the warm-up can help the small groups and whole class to avoid just looking for and discussing the assigned character as if he or she were along on the page and stage. Classes can also revisit this activity during work on an individual play for clarification and/or use these steps for multiple plays in a unit or course. The ultimate goal is for students to start asking “But why do that?” as they read, discuss, and write about plays as part of their regular engagement with them.  With practice, students can answer that question for themselves, both within the plays they read and within their own reading processes.          ... View more

When I think of the resources that are available to support writers—and especially graduate student writers who aim to be teachers in colleges and universities—I think of our professional organizations (like NCTE, CCCC, and RSA), and I think of writing centers everywhere and the IWCA. But to that list I now add DBLAC—Digital Black Lit (Literatures and Literacies) and Composition—an organization started by and for grad students of color just three short years ago, and one that has expanded exponentially just in the last year alone.   Be sure to check out their website at dblac.org to read about the founders (Lou Maraj and Khirsten Scott), members, and especially programs. The website announces their mission: Digital Black Lit (Literatures & Literacies) and Composition or DBLAC is a digital network of Black graduate students in the United States, formed in May 2016 at the Digital Media and Composition Institute (DMAC) at The Ohio State University. We are comprised of graduate students who self-identify as Black in the fields of Literacy Studies, Literature, Writing Studies, Rhetoric, English Studies, Creative Writing, Digital Humanities, and other related fields. This network provides safe spaces for members to testify to, discuss with, and share support for each other in response to the continued marginalization of Black bodies in academia. DBLAC also acts as a learning community for professional development, networking, and resource-pooling aimed at the academic retention and success of its members.   From what I’ve seen, DBLAC is carrying out this mission with great energy and commitment—not to mention a high degree of organization. They have sponsored sessions at MLA and CCCC (and I expect they will also sponsor sessions at RSA); their membership has expanded by 300% in the last year; and their flagship programs—a writing retreat (the first one was held in October 2018), a series of virtual writing groups, and a reading series—are all in full swing.   The Retreat is reserved for students of color, but the virtual writing groups and the reading groups are, I believe, open to all. Last year’s Retreat, held at the University of Pittsburgh, where Lou and Khirsten are both assistant professors, brought fourteen participants together for four days and over 15 hours of writing sessions, working with a special faculty mentor, Professor Beverly Moss from Ohio State. I spoke with one woman who had attended last year’s retreat and she said it had been a “life-changing experience” for her, one that left her more confident than ever that the dissertation she is writing is significant and that her voice will be heard. The second Retreat is scheduled for October 3-6, 2019, so spread the word to all grad students of color you know.   The virtual writing groups made up of 8 to 10 participants meet online to work on their writing together: the sessions have grown from ten, to fifteen, to twenty, and now to twenty-eight, and they are open to everyone interested in sharing their work and collaborating. Reading groups take up important texts—such as Tamika Carey’s Rhetorical Healing, Ersula Ore’s Lynching, and Eric Pritchard’s Fashioning Lives—examining the rhetorical moves these writers make and learning from their substance and style. Just hearing about these reading series meetings made me want to be able to join in.   It probably goes without saying that I am a big fan of DBLAC and see it as a major step in providing support for young scholars of color (and others as well). It’s all about building community and supporting one another rather than competing against each other, which has been the model in graduate education for far too long.   So Bravo/Brava to DBLAC. Watch out for them: they are making the very best kind of waves!   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3230661 by rawpixel, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

African American woman scientist, with lab equipment in the background I tried an experiment in my online classes this week. Spring Break begins this weekend. Students are working on recommendation reports, the major research document of the term. Their work on these reports is spread over four weeks. The week of Spring Break falls in the middle, as shown in this schedule: Week of Activities February 25 Begin research for recommendation report March 4 Finish research and sketch plans for report March 11 Spring Break March 18 Create rough draft of report March 25 Finish and submit final version of report I ask students to complete a Progress Report before they leave for Spring Break. The assignment requires them to take stock of the work they’ve completed and the work they still need to do. When they return to their projects after break, their progress reports help them know where to resume their work on the project. The progress report assignment is due the Friday before Spring Break starts, so March 8th this year. The three-day grace period for the assignment creates a challenge, however. I don’t count the days of Spring Break, so the grace period ends the first day students are back on campus, March 18 this year. While I intend for students to complete the progress reports before they leave, the grace period ensures that their grades are not harmed if they wait until they return. Over the years, I have tried various ways to entice, encourage, and, let’s face it, beg students to complete their progress reports before they leave. I argue that the strategy will make their work easier and more efficient when they return to classes, but the lure of leaving early for that week off from classes wins out. Typically only five or six students turn the report in ahead of time, and a few more will turn it in during Spring Break. Most students submit it when they return. This week, I tried a different strategy by appealing to their interest in higher grades. In short, I tried a bribe. If they turned in their progress reports by 11:59 PM on Friday the 8th, they can earn up to 125 points. If they turn in their report any later, they can earn no more than 100 points. The course is graded on accumulated points. The extra points matter, but no one is punished for using the grace period. The result is that 26 students turned in their progress reports before leaving town, significantly more than the typical five or six. There is still room for improvement, as those 26 students represent only 31% of the enrollment. I’m making progress though, so bribery seems like it was a good choice. What do you do to convince students to make the best choices? Have you tried bribing them? Do you have other strategies that work? I would love to hear from you. After all, I need to convince that 69% of the classes who didn’t turn in their progress reports. To share your ideas, just leave me a comment below. Photo credit: “African American woman, half-length portrait, facing left, reading book,” Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.       Happy spring to everyone in the northern hemisphere! Just like the seasons, pronoun usage is always changing, and always being discussed—in articles, in conversations, in podcasts.   LaunchPad and Achieve products include collections of assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. You can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.  If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts." If you are using Achieve, you can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Podcasts about Less Common Pronoun Usage Gender-Neutral Pronouns: Singular They [11:12] Yo As a Pronoun [5:01] Pronouns for People and Animals [5:34] Who versus Whom, Advanced [3:52]   Students can do a lot more with podcasts than simply listen to them. Use one of the following assignments to encourage students to engage further with the Grammar Girl podcasts.   Assignment A: Have students listen to the podcasts “Gender-Neutral Pronouns: Singular They” and “Yo As a Pronoun” and also read the transcripts. Then, have them write a response considering the following: What does the host do to connect with the listener? What new information did the student learn about pronoun usage? Can they pinpoint any element of the podcast that helped them remember this new information? How do the podcasts compare? Does the content overlap, and if so, where? What content or information is conveyed through audio that does not appear in the transcripts, if any? Is any additional information found in the transcripts that is not apparent from just listening to the podcast?   Assignment B: Ask students to choose one of the above podcasts and listen to it, then choose a facet of pronoun usage to explore further. Ask them to consider the history of their topic, any debate around it, and any other interesting items they discover in their research. Some ideas for students to consider: What is the history of they as a gender-neutral singular pronoun? Based on current trends, what might its future be? What other words in the English language have been used throughout history as gender-neutral singular pronouns? Compare who and whom—which term come first? Have these two words always been used the same way?  What is a new trend in pronoun usage? Describe it and detail its history (however brief a history it may be!). Research gender-neutral pronoun trends in another language.   How else have you discussed changing pronoun usage in your class? Let us know in the comments!   Credit: Pixabay Image 690810 by Free-Photos, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

BRAVO and KUDOS to Program Chair Vershawn Young and to Local Arrangements Chair Brenda Whitley—and to all their teams—for a truly memorable CCCC. I can never remember so many “must see and hear” sessions at every time slot. And thanks to all who attended this one, which is for the history books.   As far as I know, Erika Lindemann holds the record for attendance, with 46 consecutive CCCC meetings. But I can come close to that: since 1973, I’ve missed only one CCCC and that was in 2012 when I was in Vietnam teaching on an around-the-world Semester at Sea. So I’ve been to a lot of 4Cs gigs. In the early days, the meeting was pretty small: I recall Richard Lloyd-Jones in the 70s writing to say he needed “more proposals” in order to put a program together. Compare that to this year when each time slot offered between 40 and 50 concurrent sessions. This is just one small mark of how much our field has grown in size and stature.   I arrived at the Pittsburgh Convention Center on Wednesday, just in time for the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition’s celebration of the group's thirtieth anniversary (!) and the inimitable Cheryl Glenn’s exemplar award—and in time to hear four outstanding speakers. From there, the race was on to see how many sessions I could learn from.   When I close my eyes and try to conjure up the conference and its attendees, my mind’s eye focuses on the many young scholars of color I saw there. I don’t know yet what the total attendance numbers were—and I know that some people didn’t make it because of the huge blizzard and “bomb cyclone” that hit Denver and closed the airport—but I felt the presence of colleagues of color keenly and with great gratitude. I attended several sessions that put a spotlight on the outstanding work being done by graduate students and new assistant professors of color, such as “Black Disruptive Rhetorics: The Novel, the Pubic Sphere, and the Classroom,” featuring standout talks by Mudiwa Pettus, D’Angelo Bridges, Brandon Erby, and Gabriel Green, all from Penn State. “’Walk It Like I Talk It’: Performance Composition in Black Education and Beyond” was another session that held me spellbound, as Khadija Amal Bey (NCA&T) traced the changing labels used to designate people of color and introduced us to archives she is working with at the Moorish Science Temple of Philadelphia, and Landy Watley (Howard) examined the embodied performance of #blackwomenatwerk. I also took copious notes at “Our Liberation Wasn’t Never Gon’ Be Televised. . . Black News Ain’t Fake,” featuring Khirsten Echols (U Pittsburgh) on “Tougaloo Student Got Something to Say,” Brandon Erby (again!) on Mamie Till Mobley’s tactical work that kept her son Emmett’s name and image circulating through the Black Press in ways that eventually set the record of his murder straight, and Rhea Estella Lathan (Florida State) on redemptive literacy activism. And these were just three sessions that highlighted brilliant young scholars of color, who taught me so much in three days that I’m still trying to absorb all of their wisdom.   If this is a trend, it’s one that gives me a great deal of hope for the future of our organization and field of study. I’m grateful to have been a witness at this event and expect that many other conference-attendees feel the same way. I came away with renewed inspiration and renewed commitment to the work outstanding teachers of writing and rhetoric are doing every single day.   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3964054 by rawpixel, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

Last week, I shared an activity encouraging students to move beyond using a Google search to find research. This week’s activity asks students to check the resources they have found for variety. As was the case last week, Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg’s 2010 article “How Handouts for Research Assignments Guide Today’s College Students” inspired the activity. Head and Eisenberg found that students typically searched only for the kinds of sources required by the assignment. For instance, if the assignment asks students to find two books and an online source, students find only those items. Instead of prescribing sources for students’ work, this week’s activity asks students to look for variety in their sources and provide brief annotations that explain how they will use the sources. In the activity as shown below, I removed some information that is relevant only to the students in my classes. The five kinds of research sources came from the course textbook, Markel and Selber’s Technical Communication (12th edition). You can easily customize the activity for your class by using the list of resources from your course textbook. Any textbook that covers writing research projects will include a similar list. Checking for Variety in Research Sources Review the information in the section on “Types of Secondary Research Sources” (pp. 123) in Markel and Selber’s Technical Communication. The section discusses the following five kinds of sources: Books (including ebooks) Periodicals: Journals and Magazines Newspapers and online news sources Government documents Websites and social media Checking for Variety For each type of research sources above, list the sources you have found so far that fall in the category, using the example to guide your answers. Include the following information for each source: Bibliographic citation, using whatever format is appropriate for your field (e.g., Electrical engineers use IEEE). A one-sentence (or fragment) summary of the information included in the source. Details on how you plan to use the source in your project. Once you list all of the sources that you have found, evaluate whether your sources show variety, using the following questions: How many different kinds of sources you have found? If a type of secondary research source is not appropriate for your project, explain why. How varied are the sources in each category? Consider the author(s), publisher, publication date, and other relevant factors. Review your audience analysis for the project, and state the kinds of research sources your readers will expect in your document. Explain how your sources meet the audience’s expectations. Explain whether the research sources you found show variety, using specific details. If your sources do not demonstrate variety, set additional research goals to find more secondary sources. Specifically state the additional kinds of sources you will look for in a paragraph or list. Review your answer to make sure it uses business-appropriate spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Students are still working on this activity, so I don’t have results to share. I hope students will develop a habit of examining their research for variety. By having them include annotations that indicate how they will use the sources, students should move beyond variety simply for the sake of variety. Their choices have to be useful to their projects. I’m looking forward to reading their responses. I would love to hear your responses to the activity too. Please leave me a comment below telling me your thoughts or sharing strategies that you use when teaching research projects. Photo credit: A place to study. by San José Public Library on Flickr, used under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license. ... View more

“Now: What questions do you have?” I heard a colleague ask this of her students, midway through a class I was visiting, and I was struck by the helpfulness of the phrase. Rather than asking, “Any questions?” (which can imply that the professor wants to move the lesson along unless someone still doesn’t get it) this question instead suggested there certainly should be questions. And she made space, expectantly, for the conversation. I took mental notes.   Whether you are newer to teaching or have decades under your belt, it’s good to have more tools for effective classroom discussions. There will always be days when students seem lifeless and you feel like the hapless teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Anyone? Anyone?”   In this spirit, I have been following with interest a discussion my colleague Jay Vander Veen alerted me to on the surprising virtues of “cold calling” in the classroom. “Done right,” Gerard Dawson argues, cold calling can improve student confidence and ensure more voices are heard. Of course, when “done wrong” this practice can be used to shame or embarrass students, so Dawson suggests some in-class scaffolding (quick conferring with a neighbor, moving to corners of the room to express a perspective, or quick reflective writing) so that students have an “intellectual rehearsal” before being called on. He notices a dynamic you likely recognize from your own classrooms: Once students’ ideas have been affirmed in a discussion, they are more likely to speak up again.   I hadn’t thought about cold calling as the friend of less-confident students, but Doug Lemov, author of Teach like a Champion, makes the case that with warmth and encouragement, cold calls can be a tool for classroom inclusivity, encouraging students who otherwise may feel their ideas aren’t worth sharing. Significantly, those less-confident students might be disproportionately first-generation or marginalized.   Certainly, I keep these real classroom dynamics in mind as I craft open-ended and wide-ranging questions about readings in the prompts for students and instructors in From Inquiry to Academic Writing. My co-author, Stuart Greene, and I offer many ways for students to practice the question-asking habit of mind that is foundational to scholarly discovery — both aloud and in writing — inviting connections within texts, between texts, and between texts and experience.   In the rest of this piece, I’ll offer a reflection exercise that helps students see classroom conversation as a place to practice and name the academic moves they make in their writing, the topic of my last post. This reflection tool, designed by my colleague Ken Smith, helps over-talkers, under-talkers, and occasional talkers name the different purposes of their interactions, and helps them connect oral and written academic conversation. This checklist brings class participation into focus, and is quick to administer at the end of a class. Adapt as you like, and let me know how it works for you:   —————————————————————————————————————               Your name_______________________________________             Date____________________________________________               Thank you for your thoughtful evaluation of the work today. I hope you will             be encouraged to continue good habits of class preparation and to build             other practical participation skills for use in college and beyond. Keep me             informed if you have questions about this part of the course.               How many times did you contribute to the large group discussion today:              _____ 0-2 _____ 3-5 _____ 6-9 _____ 10 or more             In discussion today, did you do any of these valuable things:             _____ Ask a question that advanced the class’s conversation             _____ Help answer a question that advanced the conversation             _____ Point out an example that helped advance the conversation             _____ Explain the meaning or significance of an example             _____ Build on a comment by a classmate             _____ Build on an idea from a previous class             _____ Other:               If we had small group work today, were you:             _____ A more active contributor than most of your group             _____ A less active contributor than most of the group             _____ Silent or rarely spoke               _____ No small group work today             Any questions you wish we’d turn to next time? Other suggestions?             Thank you. —————————————————————————————————————   Any of the strategies in this post can help you foster richer classroom discussions that will help students practice the habits of mind of academic writers. Of course, this can only happen in an atmosphere in which student responses — and questions and ideas — are truly valued. That part is up to you. Image: Ferris Bueller "Anyone?" meme, via memegenerator.net ... View more

I recently led a workshop on working with multilingual writers in IRW and corequisite composition courses, and I was asked how best to handle peer review when there are multilingual writers in the classroom. Several participants expressed concern about the efficacy and practicality of writing workshops, especially in very diverse classrooms where background knowledge, linguistic traditions, and experiences with academic writing vary widely. Could such workshops serve to marginalize multilingual writers? I would suggest, in fact, that diversity offers the potential for a richer workshop experience for all students, although you may need to spend more time preparing students for participation and guiding them throughout the workshop, especially at the beginning of the course.     I usually introduce workshops with a discussion of the purpose of the peer review process. Most of my students will have had some experience with peer review, and I ask them to hypothesize about the purpose, based on their experiences. Most affirm that peer review is supposed to “make the paper better” or “find the problems.” When pressed, most students equate peer review with a process very similar to “grading”:  point out flaws, tell people what to fix, make evaluative comments. To highlight the similarities, we may create a chart connecting what they’ve experienced in peer review and what they’ve experienced in teacher feedback or grading. Comments in these early discussions reveal the reasons so many students (and faculty, in some cases) are wary of peer-review: they believe they are expected to take on the role of expert in the process—an expectation they cannot meet. In response to this perceived expectation, multilingual students (depending on background) may adopt an overly critical or directive stance, engage in enthusiastic but unhelpful cheerleading, or simply withdraw from the process. Having discussed the purpose of workshops, I like to show students examples of peer feedback that I’ve been given, from colleagues and from editors at Bedford/St. Martin’s.  While most agree that the feedback is still targeted to “make the writing better,” they see quickly that the comments I’ve received lead to improvement not by telling me what to do, but by giving me information that I can use to make decisions about my writing. The feedback generally occurs in the form of reader responses, questions, I-statements, and clarification requests. In early drafts, I may also have questions about why information appears where it does. In short, I am getting descriptive and analytic feedback that allows me to make decisions about how to revise, much like a chef would gather feedback from taste testers to improve a dish or the way a producer might gather focus group feedback before creating the final version of a film. The underlying aim of feedback, then, is to provide information authors can use to make writing decisions – and ultimately, information that will help authors evaluate their writing decisions. And unlike the role of expert, providing a reader’s perspective is an expectation that all students can achieve in a workshop setting.  Once we’ve established the purpose of the workshop, we begin the process of practicing.  The following principles guide our practice.  I provide specific guidance on acceptable formats for response. In most of my classes, that means that students don’t generally comment on grammar, at least not in the early stages. I also demonstrate how to make “I-statements,” how to request clarification, how to describe a gut reaction, and how to ask content questions. I may ask students to annotate drafts for specific elements that we have been discussing in class, such as stance strategies, transitions, showing evidence, or efforts to engage the audience. We spend some class time discussing how to use the feedback. One option is to have writers organize feedback as a set of issues to review, and then they can identify options open for addressing those issues. I ask students to determine what feedback is most helpful and to use that information to be proactive in their workshops. As the term progresses, students create a “what I want from feedback” statement to share along with their drafts in the workshops. We try feedback in different modes: small group discussion, shared annotations of Google Docs, writing directly on printed copies, using sticky notes, etc. As the semester progresses, classes can request specific types of workshops, based on what has worked well for them. I offer students an opportunity to reflect on every workshop experience (usually through quick surveys or anonymous comments), and we make adjustments in the format and composition of workshop groups throughout the term.   Students in IRW/corequisite courses, especially those from multilingual and diverse backgrounds, may have had negative experiences with peer workshops. But eliminating workshops from our IRW/multilingual/corequisite courses altogether may reinforce mistaken beliefs that writing is a solitary process, that the only source of feedback is a teacher, and that the only gauge of a text’s effectiveness is the grade it receives. Integrating writing workshops in multilingual classrooms, on the other hand, builds a sense of community that values the contributions of each member. ... 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 As educators, we recognize the value of experiential learning – learning that becomes deeper as students move up the ladder of abstraction towards synthesis, application and other high-level processes of thinking. The term, experiential learning, was originally defined by educational psychologist, David Kolb, as "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combinations of grasping and transforming the experience." So, it is not enough to simply have an experience. Instead, Kolb suggests that students must “transform” the experience through understanding, connecting and reflecting. He goes on to identify the “concrete experience” that involves hands-on, sensory participation and “reflective observation” in which we work to complicate and make meaning of our experiences.  Similarly, in digital writing and online spaces, we hear the term “immersive experiences” that involve writers and readers into a “mixed reality” in virtual spaces. These can take the form of video games that simulate worlds, high tech VR technology, and interactive content, but we can broadly understand them as any virtual relationship in which the audience is actively involved through participation or engagement. Essentially, immersive experiences create environments that make readers feel like they are part of them through sensory or exploratory content. Since digital writing is also non-linear, writers can create paths of inquiry and exploration in ways that traditional writing does not. Even following a link, playing a video, or enlarging an image offers audiences some level of participation, exploration, and interaction. When we view content online, we often look for some replication of reality and opportunities to immerse ourselves in environments even though we do not occupy that physical space. As teachers, we can offer students opportunities (fieldwork, community engagement, cultural observation, etc.) to get out of the traditional classroom and explore “concrete experiences” and have them transform them for others through “reflective observation.” The Experiential Review assignment asks students to immerse themselves in real-life experiences and recreate them (in multilayered ways) for their audiences.    Background Readings and Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch. 11e: Field Research; Ch. 18: Communicating in Other Media The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 13e: Conduct field research; Ch. 24: Communicating in Other Media EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 11f: Doing Field Research   Assignment: The Experiential Review Have students choose a place that they want to visit to immerse themselves. They must choose a place where they can physically go rather than reflect on a place they have visited in the past. Sometimes I encourage them to go to a place they have never been before and other times a place with which they are familiar. Students choose restaurants, museums, parks, and community events. I usually have them brainstorm ideas with classmates to come up with interesting and creative sites for observation. Discuss ideas surrounding the “kaleidoscopic” nature of experience -- where things happen simultaneously and through many layers and perspectives (Britton). Bring in ideas about place and space and talk about the ways “experience overlays landscape” (Harmon). I introduce them to the participant/spectator relationship and the difference between concrete and reflective experiences. We identify different lenses for viewing experiences such as geographical, sociological, and psychological. Basically, we complicate the term, experience, and come with examples and strategies for observing their place. Have students visit their site and immerse themselves in the layers of experiences. I want them to be aware of the environment, atmosphere, context and specific details -- to look at small details and the big picture (micro to macro). I encourage them to talk to people, take pictures, shoot video, and take written field notes along the way.  Finally, students write up the experience as interactive content (blog, website, linked document, etc.) with the goal of trying to recreate the experience and immerse their audience. Instruct them to describe their experience, along with their perspective (review), and to include background along with their experience. Encourage them to describe the atmosphere and provide evidence and examples for their ideas and perspectives.   Assignment requirements: Length: 800-1000 words (interactive blog post)  Images: At least 3 captioned, original images Links: At least 3 purposeful embedded links Multimodal components:  At least one beyond original images (maps, article, video, etc.)   Composing considerations: Background Atmosphere Specific Details Evidence and Examples Exploratory pathways (embedded links) Supplemental Content Sections Engaging Voice Perspective/Critique Captioned Images Multimodal Components Reflection/Connection Layers of Experience   Reflection I use many variations of the Experiential Review assignment. Sometimes I send students out individually to discover their own places and other times I arrange field experiences for the whole class. Sometimes I send them all to one particular kind of place (restaurant reviews) and other times I engage them in “sense of place assignments” where they have to explore the multiple layers within a geographic boundary. I have found that students almost always enjoy these assignments because they push them to interact and try on new lenses for critical observation that gives them practice in interactive digital writing. They also enjoy the genre of the review that pushes them beyond a neutral reportage towards observations that include their own perspectives. I also have students share their assignments publicly with the class in which they share their places and encourage others to try them out for themselves.   References Britton, James N. Language and Learning: The Importance of Speech in Children’s Development. Heinemann, 1993. Harmon, Katharine. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Kolb, David A. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Pearson FT Press, 2015. ... View more

When I first started writing about popular cultural semiotics in the 1980s, the Cabbage Patch Kids were the biggest thing going in children’s consumer culture. Not too many years later there was the POGS pandemic, followed by the Pokemon outbreak, which has since crossed its original generational boundaries to continue on as what may be the most lucrative gaming phenomenon of all time. The common thread running through all these mega-fads is the way that they all were disseminated—at least in their beginnings—via a mysterious children’s grapevine unknown to adults, a vast international playground of sorts in which word about the Next Big Thing got passed without the assistance of social media. And now that the grapevine has gone digital, as it were, the propagation of new kiddie fads is accelerating at Warp speed, with unsettling results. A couple of recent articles from The Atlantic and the New York Times provide a case in point. Describing the apparition of an online poltergeist called "Momo" who pops up unexpectedly on social media and dares kids to, among other things, commit suicide, they tell of a burgeoning panic among parents, police departments, and major news outlets around the globe. The new fad is called "the Momo challenge," and it would be pretty scary—except that it's a hoax. Taylor Lorenz sums up all the confusion rather nicely: On Tuesday afternoon, a Twitter user going by the name of Wanda Maximoff whipped out her iPhone and posted a terrifying message to parents. “Warning! Please read, this is real,” she tweeted. “There is a thing called ‘Momo’ that’s instructing kids to kill themselves,” the attached screenshot of a Facebook post reads. “INFORM EVERYONE YOU CAN.” Maximoff’s plea has been retweeted more than 22,000 times, and the screenshot, featuring the creepy face of “Momo,” has spread like wildfire across the internet. Local news hopped on the story Wednesday, amplifying it to millions of terrified parents. Kim Kardashian even posted a warning about the so-called Momo challenge to her 129 million Instagram followers. To any concerned parents reading this: Do not worry. The “Momo challenge” is a recurring viral hoax that has been perpetuated by local news stations and scared parents around the world. This entire cycle of shock, terror, and outrage about Momo even took place before, less than a year ago: Last summer, local news outlets across the country reported that the Momo challenge was spreading among teens via WhatsApp. Previously, rumors about the challenge spread throughout Latin America and Spanish-speaking countries. The Momo challenge wasn’t real then, and it isn’t real now. YouTube confirmed that, contrary to press reports, it hasn’t seen any evidence of videos showing or promoting the “Momo challenge” on its platform. If Momo is a hoax, why, then, has she produced such a panicky reaction? John Herrman's take on the matter is instructive. "Screens and screen time are a source of endless guilt and frustration" for modern parents, he writes, "so it makes sense to need to displace these feelings on a face, a character, and something, or someone, with fantastically evil motives, rather than on the services that actually are surveilling what the kids are up to, to ends of their own." In other words, if "Momo" isn't real, the way that the corporate Net is invading our privacy, "mining" our data, and leading our children down a Pied Piperish path (one which makes the exploitations of traditional television look like a nineteenth-century Fourth of July parade) is, and grownups are accordingly getting very jumpy. "Momo" may be a hoax, but Slender Man wasn't, and therein lies the real "Momo challenge": the Internet is growing faster than our ability, or even desire, to shape it to human needs, rather than corporate ones. And the kids, who usually know what's going on before their parents do, could actually be the canaries in a creepy digital coal mine. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 2564425 by StockSnap, used under the Pixabay License ... View more