Teaching Journal #15

During the final week of class, I held half hour meetings with each of my students in order to discuss their drafts of their Reflective/Analytical essays and their Major Revisions for their Final Selected Portfolios. I also reminded them of what grade they were guaranteed to get according to the grading contract, so there would be no surprises when final grades are posted.

 

The meetings were really helpful for my students, I think. I spent ample time explaining the Reflective/Analytical essay in class to them, but for some reason it seemed to not really sink in for some of them until we talked one-on-one about their preliminary drafts of their essays. I had conferenced with some of my students about their project ones, but I think the immediacy of the looming revisions for Project 4 has given them a bit more of an impetus to pay attention during the conference and start working immediately after. Since these meetings I have received a subsequent revision a student requested I look over, and it was leaps and bounds ahead of where he was. Because he is one of the weaker writers in the class, this makes me think that conferences are worth the time and effort. I plan to incorporate more of them into my classes next semester.

 

Because of the required meetings, I cancelled class on Monday and Wednesday of week 15.

However, on Friday we did meet to recap some Project 4 necessities, as well as reflect on the class as a whole. I made them a Final Selected Portfolio Checklist, as well as a document that addressed general concerns about the portfolio that I saw come up during conferences. We went over both of those documents, both of which I posted on Blackboard. We then discussed general questions and concerns about project 4. I also made them an MLA cheat sheet that showed the formulas and examples of essentially all the types of sources they would need to include in their Works Cited Pages. We reviewed the Purdue OWL and how to navigate it. I asked them an MLA formatting question and we worked our way together through the Purdue OWL to find the answer. Finally, I showed them one of my term papers as an example of correct MLA formatting. I think showing them how to find answers to questions themselves is one of the most valuable skills I can teach them, so I hope they took something away from our activity with the Purdue OWL.

We then discussed the class as a whole, what they thought they learned, which activities worked well, which didn’t, which readings they thought they learned the most from, and which just confused them. This activity gave me some things to think about as I prepare to teach this course next semester. For example, some of the students said they were unwilling to talk because others were unwilling to talk, and that on the day when I warned them ahead of time they would be called on at random in class, they were more inclined to better prepare themselves for discussion and participate when the time came. I think I will start to call on people a little more next semester. Sometimes being put on the spot is the push students need to start engaging in the conversation.

 

I think this time next semester I might spend some more time throughout the semester doing brief workshops on grammar, style, and organization. I value these things in a student paper and it seems unfair for me to expect it in their final drafts when I have not emphasized it throughout the class. I at least need to create a series of handouts that makes clear for them my expectations in terms of grammar and style.

Teaching Journal #13/14

I knew the class before Thanksgiving break would pose a challenge, and I was right. On Monday, the 19^th of November, my class and I discussed Jonathan Alexander’s “Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body.” Things started off promising; I had the students take Kate Bornstein’s Gender Aptitude Test, and the results showed that the students were fairly open to questioning the traditional gender construct. However, while the test results showed that students were willing to an alternative gendered reality, they certainly were not as willing to discuss it in class. I tried asking them some of Pat Califia’s writing prompt questions that Alexander cites in his article, but they were at a loss there as well. They kept asking if they would still have their own brains, if they would still be “them.” I asked them to what degree they think their genders define them, but they were not willing to engage for whatever reason. I was finally able to get them to talk about gender stereotypes by having them analyze the student narratives in groups. I think I need to utilize more group work as a way to foster conversation, especially this late in the term, when they seem to become less motivated daily.

After break, we discussed Cixous’ “Viewpoint: The Laugh of the Medusa.” During this particular class meeting, my students seemed inclined to undermine me at every turn. First a girl tried to argue with me on the correct pronunciation (she insisted the Americanized “knee-chee” was correct.) I did not engage with her at the time, explaining to her that I was not going to waste class time looking it up. However, I did take the liberty of playing a video of the correct pronunciation as I took attendance during the next class meeting. A couple of boys in the back also seemed particularly chatty, but it didn’t distract me, so I talked over them until the chatter subsided. The synthesis activity I made worked out pretty well. I displayed quotes on the board and asked the students to explain the quote and synthesize it with some of the other readings we have discussed. However, I had to resort to calling on people to answer in an effort to make sure everyone was paying attention. I might have been better off turning this into a group activity.

Wednesday’s class was dedicated to all things related to project 4. I spent the first third of the class giving the students an overview of the remaining elements of project 4, and then explaining them in detail. In an effort to get the students thinking about their reflective/analytical essay, I had them write individually about what they think has changes about their writing as a result of this class, and what scholars they think have had a hand in shaping or changing the way they think about writing. I then broke them up into groups of four, where they discussed what they wrote and looked for common themes. I asked them to discuss the conversation around their chosen theme. I then went around the room, wrote whatever common theme they chose to discuss on the board, and listed relevant scholars underneath. I think this activity was fairly helpful, though I had to circle the room quite often in an effort to make sure the students stayed on task.

           
Friday’s class covered Anzaldua and Lunsford. We started off the class with a discussion of mosaics and metaphors. My students were totally lost as to what the “tiny fish in the Pacific ocean” metaphor was trying to hint at, but I found out later this was probably because only a handful read the interview from which the metaphor came. In any case, I read the passage aloud and some of my students were able to identify meaning behind the metaphor. In an effort to get their creative juices flowing and shake up the class a bit, I had them individually write metaphors for their own composing processes or draw mosaics of their identities as writers. I do not think my students enjoyed this foray into creativity, though one student did share a mildly humorous comparison of writing to the act of changing a dirty diaper.