Mini-Ethnography Fieldnotes 1

Thinking about this is terms of rhetoric, what does that statement say about rhetoric?

Taking attendance.
Two fans, room is warm, and very humid.

Extra credit.

Various students speaking - I have . . . Did you . . . I'm so tired.

"Let's move away from the cpu's and around our tables."

Webct kicked me off -- I can't get to Comment at my house --
Troubleshooting issues

If working within webct, write it out using word and paste

Evolution of drafts -- How does this essay evolve, change, from draft to draft.
How did she use the input from her classmates to make changes?

Alright . . . what ya think Lynne?
I think the 1st draft, she did put, the one she thought, but there was no emotion. On the 2nd draft, sher tried to put more meotion, more detail, stuff like that.
The 3rd, she put all that. She included the spankings, school,

s4

Beg, wasnt developed at all. The last draft, the story, made the whole thing

s3

1st, she chose her point, and no other details.

s2 - Deb

I was agreeing, how she like listened to what she say, She put a lot more into it.

How about the 2nd draft?

What did it include?

S1 - she includes the family

T -- reader-based prose vs writer-based prose.
something i was looking at in the 2nd draft, started on pg 236, it's shorter, she took some things out. I thought in the 2nd draft, she took some good thigns out.

What else?

This is a slam-dunk 101.

Lou, you mentioned abnout style?

s4 - she used 1 sentence paragraphs . . . .

T -- what is the rhetorical effect of that?

s4 -- brings attention to it.

Students are attentive, listening. This is in contrast to my classes. My students are bored. They would be surfing the web, and so on.

s5 I was taught about dialogue in school that whenever someone new speaks, a new line.

T -- be free to experiment, be creative! Use dialogue. Add anecdotes.

Lydia is our analysis person - she always brings this out (teacher gives role to student, making them engaged?? Must be.

Anything else anyone wants to say about it?

She found her voice.

Dropping lots of rhetorical terms -- voice, stylistic flourishes, analysis, drafts (1st, 2nd, 3rd), dialogue, anecdotes.

T -- Brian, did I get to you the other day?
s6 -- No, I've only gotten one comment; it's because I'm the only guy! That's exactly it.
T -- Okay Brian, then I will get to yours first.

T -- Consider the comments and see what you can do? Add little stories, add stylistic flourishes, add details.

s4 -- Comment's not letting me on. Well, it's slow, but it's working.

Teacher refers to students by first name. Respectful and energetic and attentive.

A mix of ethnicity -- hispanic woman, mid-30's, maybe 40. Young man, Brian, maybe 20.

1st Pod: 3 black women, older than average, sitting in same pod, together, with the additional of one other 40-something white woman. Seems like the room is segregrated by age, gender, race -- I wonder if there are other dyanmics at play?

2nd Pod: 4 women. 1 hispanic (mentioned above), 1 younger asian, 2 white young women, maybe 20's.

3rd Pod: Brian, only male remaining in the class.

Students are working with Comment, a peer response program. Their is a final draft due on Monday, and students are asked to revise that draft, and compose submission notes for the draft. All of the students are working. This is amazing to me.

The class begins somewhat chaotically, students anxiety showing through. Did they get the assignment right. Did they correctly understand what they were supposed to do? Are they all on the same page? It seems, and I'm not sure about this, but maybe, it seems like there is extreme pressure to conform, to be like the others, to not stand out from the crowd. Not sure about this.

I wonder if there were any responses from the black women in the group. I'm not sure, but it seemed like the discussion was maintained by 3 or 4 respondents, but my head was down as I was typing, so I couldn't really see who was speaking.

Technology seems to be an issue. Problems with webct, with comment, with saving work to MS Word -- I wonder how large a barrier, or how great a benefit, technology is to these students as they elarn to write. They seem comfortable with it, for the most part, but unable to problem-solve when something does come up.

Student approaches teacher, "Mrs. Hatch, can i Have some of your tissue?"

"Of course."

"Thank you" and student exits room to blow nose.

I'm impressed with the manners, the politeness.

Fans are blowing, and we can hear the baritone drone of a teacher down the hall. The room is muddled with technology. Computer towers on desk, plus flat screen monitor, keuboards, mice, and wires make for a messy appearance.

Two tables for conferencing sit in the middle of the room with a few chairs strewn around them. When the class met for discussion, the students moved away from the computers, I suppose, to prevent students from dividing their attentions between discussion and computer.

Students are working on drafts. Silent. No talking. Teacher is responding within Comment to students' papers, alerting them when their feedback is ready.

Lydia has dark hair, well below her shoulders. She is older than average, hispanic, peering intently at her computer screen, no typing, just thinking. She scrolls through a document, reviewing, reflecting, quite engaged. What is she thinking? What is she looking at?

She's typing now, after having had a chance to think about what she wants to say. Her fingers move purposefully.

Writing Workshop

I. Cognition and Context

We've known for many years, based on research into cognition and achievement, that students have a difficult time with transference, that is, generalizing the skills that we learn in one context to another. At this point, a new piece to the puzzle is being added as researchers look more closely at the connections between thinking and the context in which the thinking occurs.

What researchers are discovering is that even seasoned writers, graduate students and professionals, have a very difficult time adapting themselves to a different context. So, for example, graduate students who generally report feeling comfort and confidence in their writing, feel frustration and confusion when confronted with writing a dissertation, and, this from students who are experts in their own field of discourse. Moreover, corporsate writers discover that the rules change within the big business context, and, in fact, writing completed in that context should contain no surprises. Essentially, the writing completed is supposed to the simple reiteration of what has already been decided orally and in conference with others.

A transference of knowledge from one context to another requires the ability to generalize, and we all know our students have a difficult time with this in general, let alone when asked to do so from one domain to another.

What this all adds up to is the realization that there is no ONE THING that is writing, but the activity, the skill and art of writing, is fundamentally changed as we move from one context to another, and that makes anyone who assigns writing, a teacher of writing for students within that discipline.

II. Critical Thinking in Writing

Every four years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is conducted by the Office for Educational Research and Improvement, a government agency. It's no surprise, in 1984, the study found that "students at all grade levels are deficient in higher-orer thinking skills." The researchers attribute this lack to a lack of emphasis in all areas of higher order, analytic thinking skills, and because writing and thinking are so deeply intertwined, they maintain that appropriate writing assignments, in all disciplines, be an effective way to address this deficiency.

The NAEP study is really part and parcel to the entire WAC movement, and the previous paragraph simply reiterates the purpose of such a movement. WAC matters because it helps students to learn, and learn more.

III. Writing as Learning

Nancy Sommers.

Sad Story

This is a sad story.

This is the story of a young teen, an asian toad, Peter Pan, and a Wonderland that will never be.

The boy, fourteen to be exact, slouches in front of a computer screen, the room silent, but his foot moving in time to a mysterious beat only he hears. His fingers rat-a-tat-tat on across the keyboard. He stops occasionally, for a few seconds, no more than three or four, before continuing his rat-a-tat-tatting.

"I'm just trying to find the right word he says. Should I say 'mad,' 'angry' or 'upset'?" he wonders.

He watches the words appear on the screen, the words making sentences, and those sentences eventually comprising three lengthy paragraphs. The story he tells is fantastical, a tale of adventurous jet-setting, from Malaysia to Wonderland to his bedroom at home, all in the space of a single page.

I ask him what he's trying to do with this piece of writing and he says noncommittedly, "finish it." I can tell this is his primary goal; he could care a less about the teacher's lofty ambitions, she, trying to get her students to see the real world equivalents of the slopes they are studying in class. The boys demeanor, slouched, attention split between what he's writing and some other, more interesting, internal melody, maybe even dialogue, demonstrates this.

The math assignment the boys toils over is comprised of two parts: one, a posterboard collage that includes pictoral representations of the various slopes they are studying -- positive, negative, undefined slopes -- and, two, a piece of writing -- narrative, expository, poetry -- that incorporates these slopes in some fashion, manner, or form. The assignment is a good one, an embodiment of John Dewey's educational philosophy. Dewey believed education should be experiential, that knowledge was communal and socially-constructed, and that our education should account for both of these principles while avoiding the rote learning of facts. The slope assignment requires students to extend their knowledge and understanding of slopes beyond their mathematics classroom and into their natural world, discovering ways to connect these principles with the world as they live in it.

But, something's wrong here because while the assignment is excellent in principle, something has happened in this process that allows the child to disengage.

The boy finishes, turns, states with finality, "I'm done. You can fix it if you want." He rises, pushes his chair in with care, and exits the room.

You may recall "Finding Neverland," the 2004 film depicting the life of J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. The films recounts Barrie's emerging relationship with a down and out family, with 4 boys of varying ages. In the film (I'm making no assumptions about the films veracity, its relationship to reality), Barrie and the boys develop a engaging relationship, play-acting, and the film-maker argues that it is the relationship Barrie develops with the boys that inspires him to write Peter Pan.

Play.

Both the boys and Barrie engage in all kinds of playacting. They develop scripts, costumes, and sets to compliment the visions each have. In doing so, they learn language, culture, character and characterization, about dialogue . . . about life. The narratives they create help them to make sense of the world they see around them. They learn, wholly and with vigor.

Writing begins at the point where speech becomes impossible

Interesting.

Roland Barthes -- Writing begins at the point where speech becomes impossible . . . when the very idea is subject to recursive shaping by language, then speech becomes inadequate.

Barthes' ideas here highlight the major difference between students' ideas about language and revision and experienced writers' idea: for students, writing is a matter of representing what's already been thought, what's in their head, while experienced writers see language use, writing, and revision as a process in which one creates and shapes meaning, in a sense, something from nothing.

For Barthes, writing becomes a necessity when we have nothing left to say, because, the ideas, the words, are no longer preformed within our brains, and through the process of writing we are able to formulate new ideas. Writing . . . powerful stuff.