Dickie Self - "Techno-Pedagogical Explorations" from "Teaching Writing with Computers" ed. Takayoshi & Huot

"All technology-rich pedagogy is experimental"

Selfe argues that teaching with technology is the continual process of creating, adapting, assessing the tools and activities we use to teach with. It is always experimental.

I agree, but I also think, then, that all pedagogy is experimental. Traditional teachers, I hope, complete these same sort of adaptations, adjustments, and assessment.

Selfe speaks to the use of discussion boards and reminds me that the discussion board should have a connection to the classroom context as well. It should be meaningful, connected, and used to build discussions and materials that can be used for subsequent assignments.

This makes me think about my own use of the discussion board. In many ways, I imagine the discussion baord simply as a way of making students accountable to someone other than just teacher, since the material they post is available to the rest of the class.

I also use the discussion board, and ask students to read their peers' work and learn from it. In the workshop we are currently working on, I asked them to post their drafts, and then we read them all and I told them to borrow from their peers -- ideas they had not considered, means of organizing the writing that is effective, etc., but what I find is that students are really unable to judge which work is good and which is bogus.

Often, I ask them to read their peers' posts, and then we discuss the ideas present, but this doesn't usually work too well either because they seem unable to cull the good ideas from the poor, or even an "idea" at all. Damn, I guess I'm feeling pessimistic at the moment; I shouldn't. I've been having some good luck in my 102 classes lately. I have students working together on mock interviews, and I've been spending my time going from group to group and engaging each for a few minutes, asking or answering questions. I feel like I've been getting some relevant questions that help me to understand what's going on with the class. I also feel like the social dynamic in the class has changed a bit. I did, however, notice on my way to my 102 class that the students in the room right next to mine are loud and boisterous before class -- talking, laughing -- but my classroom is dead silent. When I walk in, even early, like today, there is not a single individual speaking to another. It's sort of uncanny.

Anyway, back to the Selfe essay, I really don't find much of grand use in this piece. Most of the stuff I already know, and, some, I simply don't buy. For example, that all technological pedagogy is always experimental. We've been using technology in the comp classes since the 80's, and I think there are some principles of computer-mediated communication that are no longer experimental.

Culture Essay

Culture Essay

I’m a fringe-er. I’ve always been a sort of outsider. In my family, in school, in my approach to the world, I always choose the position that is slightly off-base, out of vogue, not popular. As a child, I liked to read in family of non-readers. In school, I preferred Converse to Nike, a Dead Kennedy’s t-shirt to Polo. As a student, I was drawn to ideas on the fringe. When I was studying composition pedagogy, in a school that was strongly current-traditionalist, I was drawn to expressionism, and then when that became more popular, social-epistemic. As a teacher, I tend to go against the mainstream. I choose books no one else is using. I’m not proud of this fact; if I was, maybe I’d be more of a rebel, but as it stands, I cannot accept the status quo because it just ain’t me.

I was raised Lutheran. I was confirmed Methodist because this was the church that most of my friends attended for Wednesday morning church school. Can you believe it, when I was a kid, every Wednesday morning; we were let out of class, allowed to walk to our churches, and spent 50 minutes learning religion? My friend’s and I even had time to walk uptown on our way to the Methodist church and grab a few donuts at Dahl’s bakery, piping hot, fresh from the deep fryer. To this day, I still dream of this, the excitement of being free to walk uptown, and the pleasure of donuts eaten on the run, with friends, with freedom. Wow.

Then, for a long period, I did not believe in God, and, in fact, felt quite a bit of disdain for organized religion. It started out as a fringe thing. Agnosticism, or outright atheism, were not popular beliefs to hold in my high school, which is why I was drawn to them. I haven’t recovered.

There was a short time when I tried on religion again. I had a friend from work, Angie -- very nice, very cute, and very religious -- and she talked me into going to church with her. I did, a few times, and I really respected her belief and the comfort it gave her, but try as I might, I could not find faith. I wanted to belong to this church thing, but I just couldn’t make it happen; I couldn’t make it authentic.

I think I’ve always been drawn to the fringe. When I was in high school, I was arrested at the Grand Forks Air Force base protesting the nuclear missiles housed there. I can say, with certainty, that I really didn’t feel threatened by nuclear war, but I wanted to be a part of that new hippie movement, or the remnants of the old hippie movement. The group I protested with was called Bemidji Partners for Peace, and it was headed by a charismatic guy with a badly-scarred face, Greg. He seemed to have the answer for everything. He was an outsider. He was cool.

We sat ourselves outside the front gates one morning, blocking the entrance to the base. The MP’s arrived in minutes and carried us away. We were sent to the Grand Forks police station and booked there. We were released shortly after being booked. I was a minor, nothing happened to me. I received one day of In-School Suspension for skipping school, but even this was a sort of honorable badge, sitting with the really bad kids in a austere room, eight hours, no talking.

The fringe has always captured my imagination. As a scholar, I’m drawn to unpopular ideas, the underdogs. I wrote my M.A. thesis on John Updike’s Rabbit, Run. Clearly, Updike is recognized by critics as an excellent wordsmith, but he is often condemned for writing about nothing. Most people who read Rabbit, Run hate the title character, Harry Angstrom. He’s lazy, misogynistic, immature, and completely self-absorbed. I defended him. I argued that Updike’s book is about one man’s quest to find meaning in his life, and even though each avenue he tries proves nihilistic, he never gives up. I argued that Updike’s book is about the indomitable quality of the human spirit, embodied by one Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.

But, as a researcher, I feel like I work from a blank slate. As a person, I’m naïve, open, and unassuming. As a teacher, I have a very difficult time adopting the role of “professor.” I have a hard time believing, deep down, that I know anything with enough certainty to profess it to the masses. I like the process of coming to know something; the product of that process is often unimportant to me, and I soon forget it. Let me give you an example.

When I teach literature, each time I address a short story, it is new to me. Sure, I assign many of the same stories over and over each semester, but each time I read Dubus’s “Killings,” I find a new focus in it. I reread it each semester, and I follow my brain along as it comes to terms with the story. One semester, I might focus my discussion on the morality in the story, the difference in the killings, and whether one is more justified than the other. The next semester, I might see in my rereading a story about fathers and sons and that unbreakable, yet pitiable bond between the two, and so on.

In either case, I feel like I am always open to alternatives; I like multitudinous possibility. I feel like I’m always curious about people, issues, the world, and I think this is what serves me best as a scholar. My office mate told me last week that he imagines me this way as a teacher, even though he’s never seen me teach: “I imagine you walk into the room, greet each student, lecture for a few minutes, and then work with each student one-on-one. You seem, no offense, better with individuals than with groups.” He’s right. I’m a good listener because I’m open to learning new things, any things, to fill this blank slate of my soul.

Sometimes I’m annoyed that I don’t know more conclusively after all these years of education. Sometimes I wonder what I have, sort of metaphysically, to show for it. I can’t recite Shakespeare. I can only speak generally of Plato’s theory of the forms. I have to look up the definition of abscond. But, when I think about this in terms of being a researcher, I think it’s a grand advantage. I’m innocent, naïve, unknowing, but I’m also open, willing and wanting to learn.

Now, normally, I would stop the essay right there, but I am also an obedient student, and in looking back at the prompt, I realize I have not addressed all the questions. So, let me continue beyond what feels like the ending to my essay to make it an essay for EdRem 6714: Action Research.

I do not imagine having difficulty engaging any informants. I think I have an easy style and manner that puts people at ease. I like to talk to people about people, and most people willing comply. When I conference with students about their writing, I always begin the conference by asking about each individual, not because it creates rapport, but because I’m interested in who they are. I have legitimate curiosity.

However, if I meet an informant who disrespects education, doesn’t care about his own learning, or the classroom context within which it is completed, then I find it difficult to find the energy or will to bother with them, even though I might learn something valuable from them. In many cases, in studying writing, the hatred or spite people feel towards writing is a result of negative prior experiences, something that very well could tell me something about that writer.

I don’t really believe this. I should have stopped before. I have “bothered” with plenty of failing students. Last semester, I had a student in my research writing course that did NOTHING in class. He came everyday, but never completed a single assignment, he sat in the back of the room for fifty minutes and drew comics in a notebook. When we did group work, he went to his group, and checked right out. His name was Jared. He liked video games; Half-Life 2 in particular, had built his own gaming computer, read graphic novels religiously, and had a collection of anime. So, you see, I bothered, not because he was a good student, but because I have a genuine curiosity for people, and this quality has always served me well as a person, professional, student and scholar.

Culture Log

Gender?

I am male. I’m not sure how far back I should go in considering how I learned my gender. To tell you the truth, I’m still fairly confused about what it means to be a man. It feels like I have some biological imperatives at work in my psyche, as well as some social forces at work. I think I learned most of what it means to be a man after my son was born.

Bree was born in 1992, and, at that time, I think gender roles and requirements were in flux. I remember learning a lot about feminism in college, and for quite a while, I was somewhat ashamed of my gender and felt like I was a part of some oppressive regime, and after Bree was born, there was constant strife between my wife and I about who should do what. I was raised without a child in my childhood. I mean, as a kid, I don’t think I held a baby once, nor did I pay much attention to them when they were around, so when my own son was born, he seemed like a little alien to me. Let me be honest, I was scared to death.

My wife expected me to pick up the reigns immediately. Shortly after he was born, she started back at aerobics three times a week and I was responsible for my child al by myself. I was tense for the whole 2 hours she was away. I fed him, changed diapers, and these were the things I knew to do, but what else? I hadn’t a clue. How do you play with a baby? What do you do with a baby? How do you stop them from crying?

I learned a lot about gender at this point. I learned what I never learned about children because I was male; I also learned what it meant to be a woman, by extension. I realized, and was sometimes told, what my expectations were for a woman, and this was truly news to me, but invariably true. I expected her to take care of the baby, and I would “help” when it was convenient for me. I also learned that this wasn’t fair, at least to this particular woman. It was a time of growth, and strife.

Race?

I am white.

What do I know about being white? This is a tough question to answer. I feel at a loss to really come up with what I think. I know what the party line is, but I wonder if I really believe that about white people. White means power. I know that I haven’t had some of the difficulties other races have in simple, daily life.

My old roommate was black, and he told me stories of the overt racism he endured. I also sensed after living with him for a short while that we were different in some fundamental ways, and part of those differences were because of race.

I know that I feel like I belong most places that I go. I know that people do not have negative stereotypes about me. I know that white people expect certain things from the world, like safety and security. I have this sense that white people are not, generally, all that reflective about race in general. I lived for a year in south Texas, right on the border with Mexico, and this region is 98% Hispanic. I remember vividly my first glimpse of “the valley” (the Rio Grande river valley; this is what the locals call the region), and it was frightening to me. I stopped at a gas station in Edinburgh to fill the big U-haul diesel I was driving, and walked into pay, and there was not a single white face in the bunch. Furthermore, when I asked the clerk how far to McAllen, I did not understand her reply, said “Pardon” once, twice, and then dropped it. It’s not that she wasn’t speaking English, just that the accent was thick and threw me.

I learned to respect the Hispanic culture, probably a great deal more than my own. My white culture is materialistic, and, what’s worse, a throw-away culture; it is a culture of short memory and newness.

When I was a kid, I lived near three Indian reservations. I went to school with a few Indians, and I remember absorbing the local stereotypes about Indians – they are lazy, drunks, and dangerous – but I’m not convinced I ever really believed these stereotypes. I used to hang out with Chuck Vizenor quite a bit and I can say that I didn’t see him differently than anybody else.

All in all, I’m really naïve when it comes to things like race and class. This probably isn’t a good thing, but it’s who I am. Certainly, I sense class and race issues. I sense when I am being judged, when people are calling me cracker or gringo behind my back, but it’s just an intuitive knowledge, not quite in the foreground.

Generation?

I am 35 years old. I entered my teens and graduated from high school in the 80’s.

I think I’ve always been drawn to the fringe. When I was in high school, I was arrested at the Grand Forks Air Force base protesting the nuclear missiles housed there. I can say, with certainty, that I really didn’t feel threatened by nuclear war, but I wanted to be a part of that new hippie movement, or the remnants of the old hippie movement. The group I protested with was called Bemidji Partners for Peace, and it was headed by a charismatic guy with a badly-scarred face, Greg. He seemed to have the answer for everything. He seemed to know how to behave in most social situations. He was cool.

We sat ourselves outside the front gates one morning, blocking the entrance to the base. The MP’s arrived in minutes and carried us away. Then we were sent to the Grand Forks police station and booked there. We were released shortly after being booked. I was a minor, nothing happened to me. I did, however, have to serve one day In-School Suspension for missing school. The principal found out about the protest, and that I had lied and said I was not in school because I was sick. Ah, yes, I remember now, it was Martin Luther King day, January 15, and we were in school.

What else about my generation? I think we grew up in a period of affluence of sorts, and I don’t necessarily mean material affluence. What’s better, quantity or quality? Well, I think the members of my generation would agree it’s quantity.

Region?

I lived in the Midwest. I grew up in northern Minnesota. This reply must necessarily speak to ethnicity as well because where I grew up is dominated by Scandinavians. There is a large population of native Americans as well, but it’s the white folk who have always had the power to shape and mold the region.

Minnesota is tidy. The streets are organized, business efficient, the people friendly, but cold. There is this stereotype of Minnesotans, Minnesota Nice, but it aint true. Certainly, we are superficially friendly and polite. That is, the clerk at the grocery store will always say thank-you, and if someone greets you on the street, you will greet them back. But, beyond those niceties, and behind closed doors, it seems to me that people are harsh on others, and judgmental, not at all nice.

I remember one time, I was driving my motorcycle home from work, fifty miles one way. It was late, two in the morning, and I ran out of gas. I was about five miles out of town and I started pushing. I was surprised at the number of cars out this late at night, and after a while, I started counting the number that passed me in either direction. I counted 78 cars. Not one of them stopped. I pushed my bike five miles into town. I got there just as the sky was brightening, and not one of those people stopped to help. That aint nice.

Religion?

I was raised Lutheran. I was confirmed Methodist because this was the church that most of my friends attended for Wednesday morning church school. Can you believe it, when I was a kid, every Wednesday morning, we were let out of class, allowed to walk to our churches, and spent 50 minutes learning religion? My friend’s and I even had time to walk uptown on our way to the Methodist church and grab a few donuts at Dahl’s bakery, piping hot, fresh from the deep fryer. To this day, I still dream of this, the excitement of being free to walk uptown, and the pleasure of donuts eaten on the run, with friends, with freedom. Wow.

Then, for a long period, I did not believe in God, and, in fact, felt quite a bit of disdain for organized religion. I suppose it started out as that fringe thing I spoke of earlier. Agnosticism, or outright atheism, were not popular beliefs to hold in my high school, which might be why I was drawn to them. I haven’t recovered.

There was a short time when I tried on religion again. I had a friend from work who was very nice, very cute, and very religious, and she talked me into going to church with her. I did, a few times, and I really respected her belief and the comfort it gave her, but try as I might, I could not find faith.

At this point, I find religion interesting, but in an entirely academic way. For example, on my way home from family’s Easter celebration, I was thinking about the whole idea of Easter, the rebirth, the symbols of fertility, the sacrifice, and I was thinking there must have been precursors to these ideas that the Christians absorbed to create the holiday we now celebrate as Easter. Christianity is just a bit too convenient for me. There seems a historical basis for much of the thought and philosophy behind it.

I hate, with a passion, the religious right as well, or any fundamentalist for that matter. I just can’t see my world in black and white, and I just can’t ever believe that I’ve got the final solution to any problem, even what color to paint my dining room walls, let alone a sticky moral issue. Sure, I have opinions, but I sense their fluidity each time I consider them.

Ethnic Heritage?

I’ve already spoken of this a bit. I’m 3/4 Swede, and 1/4 German. I feel somewhat fortunate to have such heritage. Two sets of my great grandparents immigrated to this country, and my mother tells me that Swedish was spoken by her grandparents in their home.

However, ethnicity was not important when I was growing up. I’m not exactly sure when I discovered my heritage, but it wasn’t because it was emphasized in the home. Maybe at that time, for my parents, entering adulthood during the civil rights era, America was truly a melting pot, and any one race or ethnicity was as good as any other. I’m not sure.

I, however, have always been interested in my heritage. As an undergraduate, one summer, I took “Scandinavians in America,” a history class, taught by Professor Art Lee. Prof. Lee has published two books on Scandinavian heritage, one of which, Leftover Lutefisk, we read for that class. We also read Ole Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, and watched a Danish film, Pele the Conqueror, in addition to the history texts. This was a great class, all about ethnicity, and primarily, my ethnicity.

I’ve never been harassed because of my ethnicity, unless you consider Ole and Lena jokes a means of harassment. I don’t, I find them quite amusing. I do remember, as a kid, local Lutheran churches having lutefisk dinners around the holidays and to raise money for the church. Have you ever had lutefisk? It’s disgusting. In the old country, lutefisk was a term given to the fish the people caught and preserved for the winter. The fish is preserved by soaking it in lye. Yuck. When it’s reconstituted, it’s mushy and smelly.

Again, I like that Scandinavians crave order. It’s comforting, and you can see this influence all over the state of MN. The city streets are laid out in an orderly fashion, grid-like, and there is thought and care put into the directional signs you see. If you get lost driving through a Scandinavian city, you’re a dunce.

Education?

I attended Park Rapids Area High School, in Northern MN. I never much cared for school, but I’ve respected intelligence, and teachers. I just never quite found an personal connection to what I was learning in school – my fault, not theirs. I did, however, always like English classes. It’s funny, I always did well in English, even the grammar and mechanics stuff, which I do not really know to this day. For me, this stuff is intuitive knowledge, not explicit.

I was part of the fringe group in school. I was sort of a punk-rocker, but our group was characterized by more than just alternative music and dress. We were a smart group, but disdainful of education. We did well in school, but not because we cared or chose to.

I remember sitting on the benches near the entrance to school, posing, looking cool – god, when I think of it, it was such work to be constantly aware of every move and gesture. I wouldn’t have the energy nowadays to be so diligent – and Kim Schubert came and sat right next to me. We were talking about something, and she says to me, “Cory, you’re so profound.” I said, “yeah, sure thing,” minimizing the joy I felt inside at the compliment, even though I had little idea what profound meant; I guessed it was a good thing. I looked it up that evening at home. I wasn’t profound. I was just posing and posturing in the same way everyone else was in high school, trying to identify themselves with a certain group, and/or against another. What a complex social situation, high school.

I was often afraid in high school. My locker was down the row where the hicks hung. They stand down at the end chewing tobacco and making fun of everyone unfortunate enough to venture into their territory. When I was a freshman, there was a fight between two boys. It started as I was pulling books out of my locker, and this was the first time I realized that high school could be dangerous. I suppose I learned something about being male too – you gotta be tough.

These guys made fun of me constantly. They made fun of my clothes, my hair, my shoes – whatever. Kids are cruel, and always know where the jugular is, and they go for it, every time. By the time I was a late junior, and senior, I had made friends with a few of the hicks. One guy, nicknamed “Doofey,” promised to go to the mat for me if anyone ever gave me a hard time. After he said this, I wasn’t bothered again. Doofey had power, a masculine power, and if he said someone was okay, then they were off-limits; I was off-limits; Doofey thought I was cool.

I really don’t think high school is about learning reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, it’s about learning the way of the high school world. When we get out, we learn the world doesn’t work at all like it does in high school, and it’s a relief to realize this.
Social Class?

I was born into a middle-class family. We had a house, two cars, both my parents worked, and for a while, in the 70’s, I thought we were really well-off. My dad sold real estate, and in the 70’s, interest rates skyrocketed. Sometimes, people were paying 19% or more interest on their mortgages. The real estate market dried up. These were hard times. My dad sold the boat. We didn’t go out to eat much. I could sense the stress in the household, but remained largely oblivious to it. Both my parents switched jobs. My dad began selling advertising and commuting 50 miles to work, and my mom became a waitress.

I have always felt, however, that there is this sort of safety net below me. I know that I will never be homeless, and no matter how hard things get, if I absolutely had to have money, I could get it from someone in my family.

"The Ethics of Cultural Invisibility" -- Zeni et. al.

"And a teacher's race, class, gender, age, and temperment are from from invisible to students" (113).

This is something I hadn't really considered before, but I remember how my impressions of these things in teachers that I had affected how I viewed them. Wil Weaver always seemed like a guy like me, a guy from a working class background who had found his way into academics, whereas, Steve Gurney seemed like he was born in the Ivory Towers. I wonder how my students perceive me?

I sometimes feel like I might be the sort of "cultural translator" that Janice Hale-Benson speaks of. I am a first generation college student. My parents did not urge me to go to college, and I may not have gone at all if I had not had the friends that I had, whose parents had all gone to college and urged them to do the same. I sometimes feel like I do not belong in academia. I sometimes feel like I am not gentile enough. I worked for 17 years as a cook. It was a hard job. I put myself through high school, undergrad and two grad programs as a cook. So, I feel an certain affinity for students of mine who are working full-time and trying to go to school at the same time. I understand what it's like. I empathize.

Moreover, Cason's anecdote makes me wonder how I treat those students who are different than I, different race or otherwise. I have a few black students in my classes, not many though, and often black student drop out of class before midterm rolls around, and I sometimes wonder if it is because I have not treated them well, if I am inadvertantly racist in some remarks or behavior. Truly, I am very naive when it comes to issues such as this. I am sort of egalitarian in the sense that I really don't pay much attention to issues such as race or gender in my classrooms. I am aware of sexism, and I do not want to come off as sexist, but beyond that, I feel sort of oblivious. I think I see everyone equally.

Yes, I have favorites, and I know this, but my favorites are based on personality rather than class or race or gender. Let's take my 102-10 class. I spend a lot of time talking, sort of off-task, with Bill, who is an adventurer-type. I like to talk to him because he has climbed mountains, likes to be outdoors, and he reads a lot, so I find him very interesting. I spend time with Randi. She is a softball player, and she's quick, and I always learn something when I read her essays or discussion board comments. I focus some time with Brittany because she is so reserved, and that makes me curious. I like Hala because she is Muslim, from Syria, and she is painfully shy, and, I think, raised with very powerful traditional gender roles, and this is interesting to me. Sara is curious to me because she is a car freak, and has customized her Honda Civic.

There's only one guy in this mix. Is that problematic? I have only one black guy in my class, and he never turns in any work, so I know very little about him. I used to chat with him because he wants to be a comedian, but I have slackened because he doesn't do any work, and that annoys me.

Now, Minnie writes about her experiences as a black teacher ferretting out nonstandard English, and this makes me think about my attitudes towards different dialects. I had a black student a few semesters ago, William, who I truly could not understand when he spoke. He spoke black English, or a sort of gangster dialect -- I don't know how to describe it -- but I learned quickly to not call on him in class because I could never understand his responses. I did, however, respond to his writing, and he wrote in much the same way he spoke, and, truly, the prose was highly creative, and at the comfort of my desk, I saw the beauty of his language. His organization was slack and haphazard, but he had great language, and he was thoughtful. I gave him an "A" in the course all the while wondering if I'd have some teacher in 102 come back to me asking how and why I had passed this kid, much less given him an "A". So, I know that I am not prejudiced against alternate style or English.

I am, however, I think, in agreement when Zeni says that many of her students believe: "When I teach, I treat all students equally." But, then, this is obviously not true based upon what I've written above -- I do not treat students equally, but my variance SEEMS to be based more on personality than race or class, but I could be entirely wrong and naive about this.

102 - Friday - March 11

I just finished with my 102 class. My students are writing a site description and artifact analysis. The first tenet of the assignment is to give a solid description of the site, including the people, the atmosphere, and the surroundings. I have a student, Archie, who is writing about the kids in an afterschool program and she's trying to describe the school where the program is housed.

She asked me first whether she should focus on one aspect of the site, like the cafeteria, or describe all the areas of the site. I told her she needs to give a solid and complete description of the site, and that probably means looking at all the major areas where the kids hang out. She said okay and headed back to her desk.

About 15 minutes later, she came back to my desk and said, "I'm having a readlly hard time with this. I'm just not sure what you want me to do. I mean, should I describe . . . where I put the toys, or . . . " I told her to take a step back, to write this from a bird's eye view and try to get some distance from the site. She works there, so she is having a hard time moving outside of herself and writing a simple description without herself involved. She went back to her desk.

About 10 minutes later, I was walking around the room and stopped at her desk. She had three or four lines written, and they began, "As I walk into the cafeteria . . . " She said, "um, is this what you mean." I told her to take herself out of the equation, to describe the place as a stranger sees it. Begin, "When you approach Whitehead school, the front doors present a formidable barrier . . . "

Archie is annoying me. I feel like saying, what's the problem, write a description of the fieldsite, one that develops a concrete impression of the place. We've already written a shorter sample description, and read everyone else's description, and talked about which ones did a good job of developing a clear picture and dominant impression. We've done the prepatory work, and, what's worse, what's so difficult about writing a description of a place? It's easy.

I sit here at my desk. The scantron machine outside my door is click, click, clicking as a colleague runs exam sheets through. I spent this morning cleaning the clutter from my desk -- old memos, announcements, student work, journal articles -- in preparation for Spring break.

The office has a buzz about it. Not only is it Friday, but it is the Friday before a week's vacation. There are no teacher's outside complaining about students, but, rather, they speak lighter fare.

And so on.

Students are so keen on doing things right that they forget to take a look at the big picture -- why are they doing these things. I mean, I don't care how they write the site description, as long as it effectively describes the site. I don't care if it's 1st or 3rd person. I don't care if it's linear or jumps around, as long as it creates a technicolor picture of the place.

Coding Fieldnotes

Here are my ideas for coding my fieldnotes. I only have a few "log" entries for my 102 class, the one I hate, so I was thinking of analyzing one of my classes responses. I was thinking of looking at the reflective writing my students did for the collage assignment, and, I don't know exactly, but coding some groups or categories for their responses in terms of how much is metacognitive writing, how much is simply summary, how much is off-task filler / THEMEWRITING, or something along those lines.

It might be interesting as well to take a look at the work of this 102 class I hate. Maybe I could look at the essays they handed in last week, Positioning Yourself as a Researcher, and maybe I could just look to see how they understood the assignment and who, if anyone, addressed all the issues they were asked to address. I might find that this class is simply NOT PAYING ATTENTION. Would this make me feel better about the class, or understand what's going on in the class more? It might make me change my delivery method. Right now, I lecture at them, previewing the assignment, but many times, their eyes just glaze over. Maybe I could have them read the assignment on their own, or in groups, and then have them rewrite it in their own words and post that to WebCT. The problem with that is they might just parrot back at me what I've said without really considering the issues involved.

Or, I might analyze something with my hybrid or online classes. I'd like to look at their writing to see if there is evidence of growth in terms of voice and audience. I know with the last discussion prompt, Jason and Bradley's responses were excellent, and atypical of the standard discussion response in that they had made what appeared to be conscious rhetorical decisions about establishing voice. I pointed this out tot he rest of the class and we talked about these two responses.

We'll see. I'll have to get to work on it tomorrow, assuming I feel better! I can't sleep; I keep couching, hacking really, and my throat is completely raw.

Unplayed Tapes -- Chapter 3

I just finished chapter 3 where Fishman and McCarthy talk about the Stenhouse / Berthoff debate. Berthoff says to keep researchers out of the classroom because they usurp the power and control and legitimacy of teacher research. The chapter goes on to demonstrate why and how.

After Maccarthy visits Fishman's class, Fishman suggests they reciprocate, and he visit McCarthy's comp class. McCarthy is teaching the 5PT, and Fishman diplomatically questions her use of this pedagogy. McCarthy says that she never warms to idea of having an outside researcher in her classroom. She finds the arrangement uncomfortable, and she is unable to relax. She feels, no pun intended, like a rat in a cage.

Moreover, the authors take up the issue of narrative in research writing. Originally, McCarthhy argued they would not get published if they did not stick to the "author-evacuated" tone of the social scientist, but after reading the RTE editors reviews, in which one editor suggests Fishman's narrative take a more prominent role in the essay, and McCarthy reads a book by the prominent anthropologist, Clifford Gertz, in which he states that all anthropology, at its heart, is storytelling, McCarthy begins to change her stance towards narrative in researched writing, and, lo and behold, this turns out to be the trend in published findings.

Cool.

102-10 / Wed. March 2

Today's agenda: discuss a sample ethnography -- Smoked Out in Illinois -- about the potsmoking culture. What respectable college student would not find this relative / interesting?!?

I began class by discussin their next essay assignment, and then their next writing assignment, and then moved the class into a circle, which was difficult in a computer lab. I wonder if they thought my moving them into a circle was to ensure they were not surfing the net during our disucssion. This was not my intention; I find it easier, for myself, to have a discussion when all participants are sort of on the same level. I hate being the sage on the stage; this makes me uncomfortable -- it's not a strength of mine to be a "professor". I wonder if they might have interpreted the circle suggestion as a means of control?

I asked them, "Did you like the essay, find it interesting, and if so, what? If you didn't like the essay, what didn't you like, and why not?" I had a student, Ryan, answer immediately that he liked the essay because it was an accurate representation of the people in this culture.

I asked him what specifically was accurate about it, and he responded, "The section about scoring drugs was accurate because that's how it's done." I reiterated, "the part about him calling his dealer, saying a few words, and making the score . . . easily." Ryan nodded his head in agreement. I asked what else was accurate.

Bill added something, and then I moved to the issue of credibility, or ethos, and how this essay was highly believable, that it had a sort of face validity in that we believed the writer was a part of the culture in earnest. I tried to emphasize the issue of credibility and how it was established in this piece because of the seeming accuracy of the accounts.

Let me say at this point, I did a much better job of explaining this to my 10am class. They seem more open and less antagonistic, so I feel more willing to explain in greater detail and follow my own thoughts to their fruition -- complete / good or not -- and in this class, because of the "dead" quality in the class I am more likely to forge ahead ASAP rather than trying, and maybe failing, to come up with an adequate analogy or explanation.

Once I finished with the issue of credibility, I asked them again what they liked about the essay. I can't remember who answered, but I'm pretty sure it was Bill or Ryan, and probably Ryan because I seemed to be having a conversation mainly with him. I asked at one point, sort of off-handedly, if everyone had read the essay, but I didn't really keep a tally of responses, so I'm not sure if people had read it or not. If they had not, I guess this would explain the reticence, a simple function of ignorance.

At any rate, the moral of the story is this: the class was not all that cooperative in allowing me to lead them to certain conclusions about the essay. My 10am class seemed to give me what I needed in order for me to move to the elements of the essay I could discuss. Let me also say, I did not have a list of points I wanted to make about the essay. I was open-minded, and open to any sort of discussion regarding the essay. I knew we should touch on credibility, and why this essay worked on that level, and I had hoped to draw out of them the areas where the essay did not quite go far enough in defining the culture, and I wanted to talk about form, or the use of the narrative form in researched writing. Other than that, I had no set agenda. In my 10am class, we covered all those points because students brought them up in their discussion of the essay, so, for example, we were led to a consideration of form because someone said they liked the stories the writer told about the pot culture. My 12pm class never gave us these bones to lead us there.

I feel redesigning the rest of the course so that every one simply works independently -- no discussion, no lecture, no group work. They are bored when I lecture, unresponsive when we try to discuss, and off-task during group work.

I know I should look at this as a failure on my part to connect to these students, or connect the students to modes of learning and inquiry that work for them, but where is their responsibility in this whole equation? Is this not a two-way street? Maybe theory breaks down in practice in certain circumstances, like students who don't give a shit and can't be bothered to read an essay.

I don't know what I'm gonna do with this class. How will I connect with them? Maybe I'm not doing a good job of connecting the learning objectives for them. I feel like I explain each assignment and what it is intended to teach them, or what role or function it plays in the larger context of the course, so, for example, the "writing a verbal snapshot" assignment is a precursor or practice for the larger site description and artifact analysis essay assignment. Maybe it's the overall project in general, an ethnography, that they find little or no value in. It's ironic because the ethnography, for me, IS a way to try to connect their learning and inquiry to something meaningful ALREADY, rather than some innocuous topic like Hitler or euthanasia or gun control. This whole thing depresses me.