Reading: English Varieties and Intelligence

Slate has an article this week titled "Which English You Speak Has Nothing to Do with How Smart You Are." This article takes an intelligent and straightforward look at the problem of stereotype and language:

So why do people think of speakers of standardized English as being smarter, of a higher status, and as having more positive personality traits than speakers of nonstandardized English varieties? These values have more to do with who is in power: If people are devalued for some reason or another—race, gender, socioeconomic class, and so on—their language gets the same association.

What Playing Candy Land Taught Me About Teaching Composition

This post originally appeared at Balancing Jane.

My daughter is three, and right now she loves to play board games. This is awesome because we're a family of board game players, and I'm glad that she's getting started on picking up this important cultural heritage so that she can soon join in on the family holiday tradition of laughing at the crazy drawings in Telestrations or coming up with Loretta Lynn's "Lincoln" for triple points in Scattergories. Unfortunately (for me anyway), she's not quite up to those standards right now, so we're stuck with Candy Land and this needlessly complicated but completely skill-void atrocity called The Lady Bug Game.

Developmental Writing in the Historical Trajectory of Rhetoric

This post originally appeared at Balancing Jane. 

"So when you get your PhD, will they let you teach real classes?"

This question came from a student in my first year of teaching developmental writing. I was saddened by her apparent belief that she wasn't a "real" student and told her so, but the question kept coming up in different forms.

One particularly strong writer who had spent the semester producing complex pieces of analysis written with poetic flair seemed almost angry as he visited me in office hours (voluntarily) to talk about his future plans as a writer: "What is this? Are you just trying to be a big fish in a small pond? Why are you teaching this class?"

Most heartbreaking of all was a student who said in front of the entire class, "You seem really smart, so why are you teaching us?"

It's a question I've gotten from other sources, too. Colleagues and classmates have asked me what I want to end up teaching, as if a career in developmental education could only be a stepping stone and never a goal. They mean well, and I actually think it's often meant as a compliment, but it stings because I know that their perception is contributing to the cultural climate that makes my students think of themselves as unworthy of "real" teaching, as unfit for a "real" college class.

It, quite frankly, breaks my heart.

And as a scholar of rhetorical history, it also perplexes me.

Conversations: On Which I Do Not Bash Textbooks

This is not a post bashing textbooks.

It could have been. I, like every teacher I've spoken to, have my textbook frustrations. I worry about the places where they deviate from my own philosophies, the times when they seem to talk down to my students, the times when they seem to talk over my students' heads, and--perhaps most of all--making sure that I use them enough to justify the (often astronomical) cost my students incur by purchasing them.

But I'm not going to bash textbooks.

Conversation: Remembering What It's Like to Be "Developmental"

This post has been cross-posted from Balancing Jane. 

I love to write, and I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. When I was in elementary school, I used to scribble stories on napkins. When I was in middle school, I kept hundreds of pages of angst-filled journals. In high school, I hid in the back of math class and wrote poems in the margins of my notebook (I still studied for math; don't yell at me, math teachers). Writing has always been something that I just do. Sometimes I get the urge to write and literally cannot sleep until I get up and do it. I've learned not to fight it.

But my students don't always feel that way. Some of them do. In fact, I am always blown away by at least one or two students every class who just clearly love writing and have a very clear talent for seeing the world through a creative and unique perspective. They are a joy to teach.

But so are the ones who hate writing, and there are a lot of them. See, I teach developmental writing, so my students have often been told (or have told themselves) that they "can't" write. They sometimes hide behind that "can't" to protect themselves from the sting of failure. If they don't believe they can do it, an F on a paper isn't a big deal. More often, though, that "can't" isn't just a shield; it's a block. It stands in the way of everything else they will do in my class.

I give them analogies, of course. I tell them that too many people treat writing as a one-shot thing. It's like they decided to try being basketball players without practicing, walked onto a court for the first time, picked up a ball, shot it from half court, missed, and said "Oh, I guess I can't play basketball."

Writing and Time: Summer Teaching and Scheduling

There are idyllic images of writing. Picture Hemingway leisurely strolling the streets of Pamplona or Thoreau overlooking Walden Pond.

 

Time is an inherent factor to the creative process. Things need to soak, to marinate, to become something. The ideal picture of creativity is often one with loose deadlines or perhaps none at all. 

That's not, however, the reality for our students, and it is even less so in the summer. 

Conversation: Flipping Out: Flipped Teaching Models

I mentioned in my review of Blackboard that it could be an excellent tool for developing a flipped classroom model, but I wanted to explore that idea a little further. Here's an infographic from Knewton that explains the concept and why it's getting so much attention in discussions about education.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Basically, in a flipped model, we record our lectures for students to watch at home at their own pace (and technology advancements in PowerPoint and Prezi make that pretty easy to do). This frees up the classroom time for more actively engaged learning and group work. 

What do you think of a flipped classroom model? What concerns do you have? Are there any concerns particular to developmental students, or could a flipped model be even more helpful for these students?

Conversation: Accelerated Classes

There are many different approaches to redesigning developmental classes. This article from Academic Impressions explores a few of them, focusing especially on the assisted learning approach (where non-credit bearing classes are eliminated and students are placed into credit-bearing courses with extra support) and accelerated courses (where developmental classes meet for longer class periods over a shorter part of the semester, allowing students to move through them faster).