Papers: Models and Exercises

Have we left the Industrial Age and the Information Age and moved into a new era, the Conceptual Age?

Think about it. Other than our classrooms, what else is all about cogs in a row now? Are those jobs still in the US? Nope. They have been outsourced. We are past that age. What about information? Isn’t that a rare and valuable commodity? Nope. It’s all on the internet and anyone can have access to an “expert” quickly. So what age are we in?

I have been listening to A Whole New Mind. While I have only heard the theoretical chapters, for some reason, those have expanded in my head and I see all kinds of relevance and practical applications in my teaching and my own work.

In the book, Daniel Pink says that we are in a new age: the Conceptual Age. And the elements that are not going to be able to be outsourced in this age are:
design
play
empathy
meaning
narrative
symphony (This means the big picture. Not just the second violinist, but all the violinists and how they work with the cello and the viola and the drummer and the percussionist and where do those bells fit, anyway?)

Having been reading The Innovator’s DNA, I would add:
innovation

These are the elements that I am going to be focusing on in my teaching because I am convinced that most of my students are going to be out reconfiguring work so they can stay employed. Having some notion of which direction to reconfigure it in will be helpful, I believe.

Hrothgar’s Playlist is an assignment one of my colleagues has come up with for Brit Lit I. I like it and will be adopting/adapting it for my class. I haven’t actually seen his assignment, just heard someone else talk about it, so I may change it up, but here is what I have so far.

Hrothgar’s Playlist
Choose a character whom we have read about this semester. Find ten appropriate songs for this particular character. Attach the MP3 files or links to the songs online. Attach the lyrics. Write an essay explaining why you picked the songs you did and/or how those songs apply to the character.

Extra credit, minor: Find ten images which express something about the character and explain in a paragraph each how the images are related to the character.
Extra credit, major: Create a digital story (audio and visual) using lines from the songs to tell about this character. (There you will have the original playlist plus the images, plus a title, introduction, discussion, reflection, etc.)

Apparently this is a very popular assignment and I think it could be a great final assignment.

Introduction
I am going to introduce Hrothgar’s playlist with this commercial: Stethoscope.

“Reflecting on Long Writing vs. Hard Writing”

Traci Gardner defines long writing and hard writing in the article. She discusses instances of each in her own work. Then Gardner adapts this idea to her students and their reflective writing.

By asking students to tell me about their long writing and their hard writing, I can see if they are applying their effort in the right places. Are they so worn out by the long writing that they never get to the hard writing? Do they stick with the hard writing long enough to take real risks? Have they allowed enough time in their writing process for the long tasks? Do they understand that it takes both kinds of writing to arrive at an effective text?

I have not done a lot of reflective writing with students because I haven’t really seen the value, but this adaptation of the reflective exercise has potential to benefit the students in both the long and short term and to help me help them write more effectively and efficiently.

I need to think on this more.

Gardner says she began thinking in this direction based on Seth Godin’s blog post on Long v. Hard Work.

You Can Teach Writing has an interesting post, Formal Assessment by Proxy, on peer coaching.

Along with a definition and description, Aragoni includes discussions of when peer coaching will work well and when it will fail.

One of the successful hints is that there should be minimal reading.

The questions are short, focused. Even students who read poorly can learn the drill by hearing the questions a few times.

I would not have thought of that one, even though I am used to reading the essays to my students to make sure that they “get” them.

One of the failing techniques I also would not have thought of.

Infrequent use. Like all writing strategies, peer coaching has to be done often enough that students memorize it so they don’t have to consult their notes.

I recommend the whole article, which was recommended by Dr. Lee Skallerup of College Reading Writing.

This was my first time ever to teach a humanities class. It’s a freshman course that is an option of a required humanities field class. It’s an intro to humanities. Many of the English teachers teach it as a literature course. One teaches it as an art appreciation course. I did it more like history, but with art, architecture, literature, and music.

One of my colleagues taught this class before. She told me about her creative presentation, which was their final. She had a graffiti artist bringing in a big panel, a drop cloth, and paints and painting while he talked about tagging and she told me about some other wild projects. Well, I told my students that’s what we were going to do for our final. And we did. (A third of the class dropped out, so we stayed late and got everyone in tonight.)

It was amazing!

Jonathan his brother and their bagpipes, which they purchased from a person who makes them by hand in Scotland (through their school St. Thomas Episcopal which apparently has an amazing Scottish arts program). These guys had played at an Astros game and were ranked second in the world for bagpiping teams. (Who knew there were such things?) So we had three bagpipe songs.

Then Ja’Lisa made crawfish etouffee and brought rice to go with it and homemade peach tea, with real peaches.

After that Jeff read from his noir novel the scene where the loan shark shows up at the Satanic minister’s house and kidnaps his girlfriend. There’s a great scene with the neighbor’s rebellious daughter up a tree smoking cigarettes when she sees the loan shark come out of the guy’s house with a lumpy carpet. She forsakes the tree and her cigarettes when he leaves.

I can’t remember who went next, but we had the dancer in class, Sharon, talk us through bachata (a dance originating in the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century and spreading from there). Then she showed us a video she had made of the basic steps and then of her and her husband dancing a more elaborate version.

One woman knitted three caps this week and showed us videos from the net explaining all the techniques.

Another woman is a member of a stand-up poetry group, of which she is Grand Champion. She acted out two poems–long, involved poems–which she had memorized and recited, with appropriate gestures. Amazing stuff.

Another woman brought jewelry that she makes with her autistic sister and a zumba video from the place she works out. She wore her zumba clothes for the presentation.

Chris is from the Ivory Coast but she grew up with samosas as the after-school snack, so she made those and brought them for all of us to try.

Another woman started baking with her mother and became the baker in the family and now bakes cakes for a living. She brought in chocolate with flan, vanilla cupcakes with strawberry and cream cheese centers, and the best homemade tres leches on the planet.

Maria brought her world coins she collects from change machines. She’s gotten some from Aruba and Russia, among others, from soda machines, etc.

Natasha brought her digital SLR and talked about how she learned about cameras for her job at Best Buy. She showed us some of her “bad” photographs, because she has only been shooting for three months. They were great. Then she told us what to ask about if we were looking to buy a camera, so that the sales people would think we knew what we were talking about.

One guy brought in a collage of his family that he made JUST FOR THE PRESENTATION, with pictures of his grandparents, his mother, superhero coloring pictures colored appropriately to represent his father, his son, and his daughter. Apparently they are all into racing, because there were a lot of fast cars in the collage as well. Good use of color, but the way he put the images together was thought out and he explained it all to us.

Absolutely this was the most fun I’ve ever had in a class. There was so much positive energy that I’m still wired and I’ve been out of class for an hour. (Or it could be a sugar high from the Tres Leches, but…)

Update:
Someone asked for the assignment parameters for this final. Here is what I wrote them:

The creative final exam assignment was set up like this:

The presentation had to be over something creative that the student was involved in. I gave examples, including
normal art things (painting, dance, graffiti tagging) and
more craft things (knitting, sewing, cooking) and
collections (since some students don’t create but almost everyone collects someone else’s creations).

Each student had a certain length of time (say 5-8 minutes). If the student went over or under, each minute set (so 10 seconds and 55 seconds counted the same) cost ten points. (Setting up time, which included divvying out the food, did not count.)

The reason for that, and I tell them, is I once had a person give a 4-minute presentation for 17 minutes. That is not appropriate.

The presentation had to have a visual component. That is, we had to be able to see something.

• The student who read his novel brought the manuscript with him.
• The student who played the pipes brought his pipes.
• The students who cooked brought food so we could all have some. (They had to bring whatever utensils and gear were needed to serve this as well.)
• The student who knitted brought knitting needles and yarn and did a couple of stitches while we watched. She also used the internet to show us the entire process of the hat-knitting she had done. She also brought three hats she had made in the last week.

If the students did not want to speak during class, they could videotape their presentation. If they did not want to appear in the video, that was permissible. However, their voice had to be on the video, since I needed to be sure it was theirs.

So I got the dancing video, with the student showing simple steps and very fancy steps, with the help of her husband. She also showed a video from the net of a full production of that kind of dance.

Grading:
I started with a 100 and took points off if:
they went over time.
I could not hear them. (Number of points depended on how much difficulty and for what percent of the presentation.)
there was no visual component. (I was thinking of 10-25% but everyone had a visual, so that wasn’t a problem.)

Otherwise, they got a 100.

If you were local, the class is a lot of fun.

Two new and useful posts have been spotted at University of Texas’ rhetoric hub of Blogging Pedagogy.

Crowdsourcing Narrative Techniques: TV Tropes in the Literature Classroom

and

Poetry in Images.

Finishing the post, I changed the title. Even now it is not as long as I wanted. I think this should be entitled “Finding Passion and Taking Advantage of It: Accessing Student Passion in the Classroom through Group Work.” But here are the thoughts that brought this blog post into being…

What are you passionate about? What do you talk about when the work is done and the relaxing has begun?

My husband will tell you I talk about school, about my students, about my assignments, about things that did and didn’t work. I also talk about papers I am writing, research I am doing, and conferences I am preparing for. And I read and talk about science fiction and fantasy. I suppose, based on those indicators, that these are what I am passionate about…

Finding Passion, by math professor Dr. Robert Talbert, is an interesting introduction to thinking about passion… in our lives and in our classroom.

He asked the question, or made the statement, that got me thinking about this post.

How can you tell what a person or small group of people are passionate about? It seems to me that there’s a two-step process:

Give those people a break and let them do whatever they want. Remove all the programming you have planned for them, just for a little bit. And then:
See what it is they talk about when there is no structure.
Whatever gets talked about, is what those people are passionate about — at least at the time. If they don’t talk about anything, they aren’t passionate about anything.

Then Talbert tied this to the classroom for instructors. Do we schedule the heck out of our students so that they don’t have time and energy to be passionate about anything?

In considering this question I made a discovery about how my own teaching has evolved that I think is a positive thing.

When I first began teaching, I avoided group work like the plague. I hated it for myself, because I always ended up doing the bulk of the work, and I hated it as an instructor, because I couldn’t tell who had done what.

However, in the interest of retention, I need to get my students involved with each other and in a community college, the only way that will happen is if I make it happen. So I began scheduling group work, in class, that requires a small bit of reading and writing.

In literature classes, I will give each group (or all the groups) a poem and ask them to read it and discuss it and write down their best analysis. You might be amazed at how good some of that can be, especially when students are bouncing ideas off each other and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which often happens.

In writing classes, when we have a reading (which we do periodically), I have the students get into groups to answer questions about the reading. I read it to them here, since I think many in the community college do not have sufficient skills to read and reading it aloud allows me the opportunity to explain the vocabulary as we go. Then I have them read the questions, significantly shorter than the essay itself, and answer them in groups. One person writes, but they all talk. If I give them sufficient time, which I don’t always do, they spend time working on it and writing excellent responses. Then it’s an in-class grade and everyone gets full credit, unless the work didn’t get done.

In humanities, I have them split into groups to discuss pre-tests on the topic we are going to be studying. It gets them pulling out what they already know on the topic, which is very useful, and helps me see what level their knowledge is at before I start teaching. They enjoy it and it gives me a break and a chance to hear how they think as well, since they negotiate their answers, usually, since none of them are experts on the topic.

Perhaps I need to be even more purposeful in adding space for the students to talk and think about their projects. Today might be a good day to talk about the frustrations and triumphs of the controversial essay, for example. Since they have gotten back a graded research paper and are revising it for a final grade on Monday.

Siobhan Curious has a post “Character = Behavior: A Lesson Plan.” I love the information she gives and the way she used a legitimate need of the students (references) to reinforce a discussion of characterization in the stories they were reading.

Just a tease:

By this time, they were riveted. Cell phones were forgotten, whispered conversations were abandoned, faces were wary but attentive.

Don’t you want to know how she got their attention–and kept it–for the class period and beyond? If so, go read the whole thing.

Mark Ray Schmidt, Liberty University
“Tools for Teaching Lit to Distracted and Disinterested Students”

This is a live blogging of the session.

Gen ed students who admitted to be at college to party, till they flunked out, then would go get work at sawmill.
Others are focused. Math students who don’t want to do literature because it doesn’t have much to do with their goals.

Don’t want to train to sing and dance. Engage students in meaningful way.

Simple things we can do to connect with disengaged students:
1. instructor’s persona
2. getting off to a good start
3. tools in the middle of the semester

lots of resources available
What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain, survey, visiting research, 66 instructors, philosophical

Successful Beginnings for College Teaching by Angela McGwen, pragmatic, suggestions at the beginning and in the middle and in the end, lots of material that must be sorted out

video series Teaching Company video 24 lectures for 30 minutes, 5 instructors that they interview, students, videotaped actual classroom settings
The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator

Persona:
way dresses
vocab uses
knowledge, attitude

Perhaps we can consider how we present ourselves.
“highly effective teachers tend to reflect a strong trust in students… talk about their own intellectual journey… encourage their students to be… candid”

We need to convince them that we are knowledgeable and that we are concerned about their problems.

Have high standards, but not frustrate them.

Beginnings:
make first class meeting inviting
challenge students with the possibilities waiting for them if they are engaged
more than reading syllabus
make the first day friendly, exciting, and serious

know the students’ names
get the students to know names as well

ice breakers- asking people questions
what is your definition of success?
who are your heroes?

Not to use:
embarrassing
Successful 2 poor choices, 3 or more siblings? sets a barrier btw normal and not
how many of you have moved 3 or more times? some people might be proud of their moving and others might be embarrassed by how much they have had to move because of economics. Where I am it’s also the folks who have never moved.

Think through the kind of questions we want to ask.

Tell students how you want to be addressed.
Ask students how they want to be addressed.
try to respect them by saying the names they want to be called
pronounce the names

Syllabus
have blanks for study partner: phone number, email
get info from people in class
so that if they fall sick or get behind, they will have a name
This encourages the students to meet each other.

Later in the semester
How do you keep it positive?

Big changes are often suggested, because we are trying to grade papers.

one thing that does help is to come to class early
chat with people, be friendly

help students ask deep questions

connect literature and writing assignments to their personal concerns

have students adopt a goal they want to reach

“If we are not seeking an answer to anything, we pay little attention to random information.” -Bain
For the readings, give the essay question topics BEFORE we start the book.

draw students to significant questions
deep human needs
challenge them to investigate these questions

Lectures:
in best profs, lecture clarifies and simplifies information- focuses
lecture is part of a larger quest

Draw the students into the key information.

with a few modifications:
good teachers frequently used rhetorical questions and looked for body language, adjusted
some teachers struggle with how best to explain the topic, brings students in
pause to let students think

Puzzle, pile of pieces, put it together: you feel lost.
If someone gives you the box, shows how it looks.
Radical difference.

Audience Response:
Use themes, because it helps the students focus. Helps them carry ideas throughout.

World lit themes:
warriors
images with defining themselves- cave analogy, series of images are powerful
romance stories
creation stories
social relationships Machiavelli and Confuscious
Problem of evil
dysfunctional families

do papers within the themes
Helps them to synthesize the ideas they are looking at.