I never went to school for this

I never went to school to be a teacher. I went to college to get an education. I didn’t even apparently care about the degree. My stats for the BA:

• 6-7 majors
• 9 years
• 7 schools
• 3 states
• 11-12 moves

There was no part of my MA or PhD experiences that were “normal” either. And though I eventually trained to be a university teacher (sort of), nothing I ever learned in school prepared me for the work you all pulled off at the end of this term in the poster presentation sessions (and on your blogs with case studies and more).

No one ever said these were the things I would feel about teaching or experience as a teacher:

1. I was miserable when we were on f2f hiatus because I knew how challenging the writing requirements were and how hard you all would have to work, pretty much without me being around all the time, and perhaps in an environment you hadn’t worked in much.
2. Hybrid classes are supposed to be hip, but I missed being in class with you all (I heard what y’all said about how it could be better next time).
3. And I missed talking with you–in person.
4. But I learned so much from your blogs, it was remarkable–every day I had some new incredibly insightful thing to read from one or more of you.
5. AND having class when we weren’t supposed to have class at Panera was actually a great class.
6. I was so nervous the night before the poster session I could hardly sleep–did you know I was a wreck with worrying? I hope not.
7. I was so elated at and after the first poster session, I couldn’t imagine being happier.
8. Until the next poster session (when y’all brought food–brilliant!).
9. I was so uptight about the way I structured the class because it was a real loopy trip to get from point A to point B (I mean recursive with a lot of curves, too). It had to be experienced, and y’all had to find your own ways to point B, though I knew where it was. If I’d just told you one thing or another to push you to point B, it would have been like giving you a great mystery novel to read and saying the butler did it as I handed over the book.
10. You got to point B in 15 different ways, and I felt like we stopped Time.

I have never required a final presentation project like we did, but it was amazing how each of you found a way to express what you had done or experienced (and even came up with a hilarious Girl Talk possible final poster project which would have been great but an F–or maybe not…). You got what you needed from everything you read and did in order to do the last part of the work for the class–just like I dreamed. You studied a program and then used what you learned to create your own thing. You read about open things and found ways to own that concept that worked for each of you. You read essays of your own choosing that sparked great conversation. You reviewed books that you got to pick–and used that to help you craft blog entries, think about the case study, and create a course or program. Righteous. Just like you were supposed to do–mashing up the readings, the ideas, the videos, the concepts–remixing for your own purposes–and just simply and utterly getting the rhetorical velocity of what we were doing. Everything you did had an impact on each other. There is no better illustration of rhetorical velocity than the writing you did this summer and its effect on everyone in this class. You rocked it.

I think teaching can’t keep getting better, but it does. When I decided to come back to this profession, I wasn’t sure it was for me, nor was I convinced that I could do it. Well, I knew I could do it, but my fear was I couldn’t do it very well. I still have uncertainty and doubt–every single term. I regularly wonder if I’ve said or done the right thing, planned the right way, whether this day or that day was the day I needed to plan to the finest detail or wing it and see where discussion might take us. I always worry that my approach is too uncomfortable for too many students, that I’m not present enough to be a good teacher (administration is a huge pull on my mental energy and actual time). I don’t think that my worries about my worthiness or ability will ever go away. And maybe that’s what makes it such a breathtaking journey. If I got too comfy, too sure I was right, maybe I’d stop having fun.

And despite that, I’m going to say something I know is right: you are why I teach. You are the reason I get up in the morning and can’t wait to come to work. You are the reason I keep learning. You are the reason why I want to keep learning. You are the reason I will never teach the same class twice. You are the reason I love writing in a whole new way. You are it.

You’re better than a quad venti white chocolate mocha with raspberry and extra whip.

Like any human, I have done things I didn’t like, consequently regretted, and found I couldn’t take back or change, but my decision in 2007 to walk back in a college classroom to teach writing and British literature–the best professional decision of my life.

Thank you for your commitment to this course, your intellectual curiosity, your openness to new ideas and ways of working, and your kindness to each other. Oscar Wilde wrote this: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” That’s a bit grim but better than Thomas Hobbes’s vision of life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (The Leviathan). Wilde knew better than many how hard life could be, even for a writer whose genius regularly showed up for work. You’ll be challenged by events in your life and by those around you, not always in good ways. You’re going to cry some and laugh some. Through all of it, keep looking at the stars. That’s the one thing you can always own: your focus, your attitude, your decision to act rather than only react. You may be in the gutter, but you get to choose what you see while you’re there.

And sometimes we just doggedly crawl right out of the gutter, shake off the muck and grime, and change the world while we’re doing it–as part of the Learning Revolution, as part of the WAC movement, as part of the Open movement, as part of a learning commons, along with our geniuses who sometimes show up to help us do our dance, and with each other.

I wish you depth in your learning, breadth in your friendships, unlimited reach for your dreams, and rhetorical velocity for your writing. Always.

Do your dance

As you are all coming to the point of panic, don’t let it make you crazy. Watch Elizabeth Gilbert again and let her words wash over you; allow the genius in your wall to come out and help you through the last week of class; or not. I mean, your genius might be on vacation. Regardless, do your dance, and you will be find that you can have transcendent moments all by your own self, even if transcendence isn’t happening right this very moment.

Don’t be afraid of “the work you were put on the earth to do.” In this case, that is learning. Ask yourself these questions as you come to the end of your Summer 2001 WAC Survivor show. Spend a bit of time celebrating what you got–not just what you got to produce. It may make the rush to production less painful.

• Did I learn about WAC (and all its permutations)?
• What?
• Does it matter to me as a writer?
• Why?
• Will I be a better writer after this is over?
• Why?
• Will I be a better teacher (whether you are in a classroom, tutoring, or sharing with others in a mentorship capacity) after this class?
• Did I write a TON?
• Did I love it?
• Did I do my best?
• How do I know?
• And if I didn’t, what happened to me and how will I deal with that?
• Did I try new things (like blogging)?
• Do I see new ways of communicating in the future that I can use that will make my life better?
• What are those?
• What resources did I learn about?
• How will I use those in the future?
• Who can I share that information with to keep the rhetorical velocity of my learning moving forward and influencing others?
• How did I collaborate with others?
• How did I learn about my peers in new and wonderful ways?
• Did I flourish as a human being?
• Did I find comfort in my own writing?
• Did my genius show up to work at all?
• Did I do my dance with or without collaboration with my genius?
• Did I do my dance?

The pressure of being a genius, or getting that A, is like asking someone to “swallow the sun.” Don’t fall into one of those “pits of despair.” Don’t. Take that pressure off the table and think about what you’re going to take away from the class and why that matters.

And then… do your dance.

Stealing from me and learning a thing or two

In comedy, stealing jokes is not an anomaly. It happens. You see, you laugh, you steal, you use, you may remix, but there it is–you emulate, you copy, you may transform and combine–or you may outright steal. I would like to be a comedian today, or if I can’t be one, then I’ll just act like one–I’m going to steal from myself.

I wrote the below for another blog on July 3 and meant to take this subject further and stretch it out here to be specific about WAC and attribution, but stuff happened: root canal, two classes, a workshop, an institute, two conference presentations. So I’m cheating. If I go by academic standards: I cannot re-use writing from another place for my credit in a course. It’s not plagiarism, but considered dishonest. As a student for each course, I need to create a unique text (see the AUM student honesty/dishonesty policy). But a few things, I think, save me: 1) I’m not taking this class for credit, I’m teaching it; 2) the blog post does actually reference this class and is entirely appropriate for discussion here; 3) I love the name of the blog I write about: Daring Fireball. Really. It’s so perfection. (And that blog is sponsored sometimes–we can all dream, right?) And I’m doing something professors do all the time when they work: they create, they present, they teach, they publish, and recombine to publish again. It happens. And it’s not a bad thing as long as it’s a new direction, a new combination of ideas. Not so much here. But sort of. You’ll see.

So here I am on July 23 thinking about the me who was productive on July 3, ripping me, remixing me, copying me, transforming me, combining me into something slightly different. I wanted to recapture whatever it was I was thinking on July 3, but I feel like I look (don’t ask).

In those 20 days, I did a lot I am happy about; I even announced on the other blog that I’m going to write about Daring Fireball’s post on this blog (how daringly positive of me), but does it happen? No. And why not? Because there was a lot of stuff going on in those 20 days ,and not all of it was good. For example, the only free couple of hours I had in Baton Rouge, I spent laying on the hotel bed in a daze watching Couples Retreat because I was too tired to do anything else for two hours (and couldn’t find the remote). And it turned out that this may be the worst movie in the history of comedy film, no, in the history of all film. It’s an insult to “comedy” everywhere to even call it a comedy; it’s a horror film–no, saying that would denigrate the horror film genre. And while I’m bashing this dismal viewing experience, I’ll say this: how nice that the “actors” got to visit Bora Bora. I want a job where I can work in Bora Bora, do a lousy job, and get paid for it. I’d rather have watched either of these films as it turns out: Brian Bosworth in Stone Cold (1991) or From Justin to Kelly (2003)–two awful films that shame the terms action and musical, respectively, but which are so bad, they are laughable… So there went two hours of my life. I didn’t want to move to change the channel and couldn’t find the remote and my computer was on the other side of the room. Triple whammy.

That is how writing does not get done, and that is why writers steal from themselves. [My comments from today are in square brackets.]

Learning to live with linkage issues [That’s the title of that post; not exactly a title that inspires, is it? Yuck.]

I don’t like what’s happening with the links in this blog. Some are gorgeous and blue like the stuff in the right column and underlined to indicate some linkage; some are just black like the text, though still underlined so readers know what’s going on and that they can travel somewhere else that might be relevant to what I’ve written. I don’t really want to investigate this appearance issue right now because: 1) I know it’s a code thing (I know I could fix it now that I’m not totally afraid of code); 2) I know it will continue to bug me, but; 3) I’m tired (and I have a tooth issue, too–getting bitter over that). [Do I always whine in my blogs? I really need to get over myself.]

My willingness to allow this appearance issue to slide is partly due to what I stated, but it’s also part of my learning process. I am fairly new to blogging, and I’m learning a lot from many folks I know and from watching people think through/on listservs. (As I wrote about before–I don’t do everything as I should in web writing, though I know folks who know how to do it right: Writing Spaces, and I value their expertise to the point of employing some strategies in my own work as I can, where I can. I used to have only one link in the Blogroll, but I added multiple places I love or visit regularly–that feels like great progress at the moment).

A perfect example of how I learn from others on a listserv is this: I’d been thinking about linkage (not just appearance but when and how and why) and a listserver happened to share a link that inspired this post. Recently, on the techrhet listserv, Charles Nelson shared this link to John Gruber’s blog: Daring Fireball, a post about attribution and credit in web writing. I was wondering about this issue because it was a topic of conversation in a class I’m teaching about writing across the curriculum (WAC) and OER and open things in general, how being open can lead to great things for writers and teachers.

But how does being open work in terms of attribution? We need to attribute, but how is this changing from traditional academic papers? “Cite, cite, cite.” That’s what we tell students. And if they don’t, some folks trot out the “P” word and condemn the lack of citation as cheating. But citing, attribution, plagiarism, cheating–so complicated. We can say: don’t do bad things or you’ll be in trouble with your professor but maybe the university, too. Might cost you a job later (I just saw this happen last year.) [I was on the other end of the phone call that made a person cry who had cheated and couldn’t get employed… It was hard to hear, and I felt rotten for that person, but not a thing I could do to fix it.] Really, it’s our questions that need to change: why aren’t students comfortable with credit where credit is due? What aren’t we saying or teaching; what about our teaching needs to change? The Citation Project has done incredible work on this issue. How we teach citation, or attribution, must change. And whatever we do, it must be adaptable to web writing; it’s not your daddy’s academic paper anymore. You know that’s right.

Of course, the business of writing and teaching writing is changing. Of course, we’re talking about this in my class because serendipity is the core of my teaching style, and part of our talking has revolved around creativity, collaboration, and openness, as information comes to us, as we do research. It’s organic and dynamic for us, not linear, though I had a plan for a trajectory of learning that got us started. Part of our talking has been about licensing available through Creative Commons because we have also just read The Power of Open together and have been talking about that document on our blogs. Really an inspiring text. I love the profile genre personally and professionally (one of the reasons I like and use this essay by Catherine Ramsdell in Writing Spaces, Vol. 2 to teach–a lot: “Storytelling, Narration, and the Who I Am Story“–this is not about the profile, but it values the same storytelling idea behind the profile–a good alignment for teaching the art of telling a story whether it’s an “I” story or a profile).

Now, after reading Daring Fireball’s take on attribution and credit, I’m wondering if I haven’t been guilty of less than respectful links and attributions. Probably. But like the linkage appearance issue, I won’t probably go back to find and fix everything at this point. (Teaching two classes this summer–a WAC class and a writing class for scientists/engineers, writing a LOT, a tooth thing this week, a conference coming up, it’s hot and humid here… blah blah blah.) [I do really like to be sure everyone knows I’m working hard, don’t I? I wonder if I secretly like it when my emails are stamped with 5:30 am or 11:42 pm–sort of an information age oneupsmanship thing. Am I really that shallow? I hope not. Or if it works, okay.]

But this attribution issue is a big one for me (much bigger than how my links look), and I’m deeply grateful for this specific information. I’ve now read Gruber’s post twice and clicked around in his links to see exactly what he’s talking about. I didn’t really have a concrete way to talk about this issue or to teach it that referenced an authentic professional situation (though I had this terrific part of the Web Writing Style Guide by Writing Spaces on hyperlinks to work with). I haven’t taught respectful linkage before, though I’ve taught smart linkage–but these are two different things. Respectful linkage is about attribution; smart linkage is about the placement of the link (both about understanding the rhetorical situation). Now, thanks to Gruber’s attention to the subject, I have a particular instance to share with students. And thanks to Nelson for sharing the link because Daring Fireball is NOT on my radar.

I’m going to write a post about Daring Fireball on my class blog because: 1) what a cool name, and 2) my WAC students need to know that a professional writer feels this way and took the time to write about this in some detail (so do the scientists, for that matter). (Number 3 would have been that Gruber’s blog includes footnotes–oh, how I dream of being able to do that one day–but that’s not a professional issue I need to share with students; it’s a personal desire.) I will also tell my students about my choice to take more time to craft attributions in my web writing in the future–how I deal with various different kinds of authors, whether I have essentially re-posted a concept (consumed it as Gruber states) or whether I have ripped, then remixed and shared; I’ll be much more aware of what I’m doing as a writer regarding attribution that is respectful to other authors and smart for readers.

[Okay, this is where I really hate my writing. I’m so perky and happy and determined and sure I’ll do this or that, and when I don’t, I loathe going back to see that I slacked. Sigh. But I was DELIGHTED to remember Daring Fireball’s footnotes. Nice.]

My post and Gruber’s thinking will dovetail so nicely with what we’ve read in the Web Writing Style Guide on hyperlinks and with other readings we’ve undertaken and must cite according to class performance criteria. (In my class for science writers, the tutor working with me, who is also a grad student in the WAC class and writing teacher, Sarah Fish, suggested we have a whole week named, “Attribution Week,” to tackle these issues with our science writers. I’m quite hopeful we’re laying the ground work for a group of young writers to re-conceive what research and citation should be and can be. Collaboration rocks. Ahem. That’s if the collaborator is the right one, as Sarah pointed out.)

[Bummer that I couldn’t have said this to anyone in the last 20 days, like y’all or my other students who might have really like to know about this… Good heavens–I really dropped ball, the daring fireball.]

Gruber’s post is not about whether sharing is right or wrong, nor about where to place links for maximum ease for readers. It’s a question of writers sharing where they got their inspiration or information from, how they arrived at their thinking, when that’s appropriate to mention, and what the appropriate attribution practices are for the rhetorical situation. As a writer who has moved from mostly print to mostly web, I’ll be more aware of making visible the shoulders I stand upon, whether those shoulders belong to giants or peers.

(And here’s where I wish I could have put a footnote citing Kirby Ferguson’s film project, Everything is a Remix, for reminding me of Isaac Newton’s quote about this standing-on-shoulders business and that Newton probably got the idea from Bernard of Chartres. And I’m 100% sure that I found Ferguson’s project through a listserv post. Nice.)

[Good heavens. How many times have I used “Nice” to end a paragraph? (or use “good heavens” in this post alone?) I wish I could take “nice” out, but I need to leave it and make a point. I think I like one word punches in text because they can be “heard” so many ways: like nice (that looks good), or nice (you really blew it), or nice (thank you for your goodness and kindness and I adore you), or nice (perfect, how did you know I needed a lemonade at this moment). I bet I do this sort of thing pretty regularly. Right. Great. Bummer. Sure. Super. That’s what I get for borrowing from myself–I have to confront my words–be accountable to myself. I’ve learned a thing or two about my writing. That sucks a little bit. Yep.]

When bloggers see shiny objects

While I have been not blogging here, I was at a conference in Baton Rouge, LA (and more). What happens in Baton Rouge, unfortunately, does not stay in Baton Rouge, and my behindedness followed me all the way home to Montgomery like a stalker.

The conference was for the Council of Writing Program Administrators (began in the late 1970s with the first conference in 1982). It’s a great organization–if you have any interest at all in writing program administration, check them out.

First I attended three days of intensive training for WPAs and met wonderful folks from around the country and had my brain imploded from all the information I processed. Then I attended a one-day institute on basic writing, “Tectonic Shifts in Basic Writing,” and again brain implosion happened. Or rather, I loved it. I learned and listened and was silent a lot–so lovely to learn from and with experts (I have so much more to share with my fall class on basic writing pedagogy now!). It was good to listen to teachers talking about what they loved, what they cared about, and what they worried about.

I presented two times. One paper was a collaborative effort on open education resources with Charles E. Lowe, writing professor at Grand Valley State University and co-editor of Writing Spaces. (What fun I had–43 slides in 12 minutes–ask me about this some time, it was breathtaking, literally. It was like a relay race as we handed a remote controller every few slides: “stick” and talked through the points of our presentation.) What a great conversation we had after two other scholars presented. It was terrific. I loved it. I wish our class were meeting again so I could do the presentation for you–you’d LOVE it.

In lieu of that, please check out Garr Reynolds to see where Charlie got his inspiration. And make no mistake about this, it was all Charlie’s idea–I would have stuck with a standard text-heavy presentation for three reasons: 1) I’m tired; 2) I’m tired; 3) I’m tired. But this made me untired. And I’m looking forward to the next PPTX I create to try out some of the ideas Reynolds has about presentation theory. (Actually, when I get to the next part, you’ll also see another shiny object that has been keeping me from writing–and I did try out the Reynold’s theory on those folks who are related to that shiny object–and it was way cool.) Our panel was titled: “Technology and the Future of Sustainable Composition.” The other two presenters were: Margaret Munson (ASU) “Administrative Tensions: Textbooks and Sustainability” and Julia Voss (OSU) “Is it Time to Rethink Composition’s Technology Ecology.” I couldn’t have asked for a better experience, esp. as I contemplate my book review about a text on comp and books and sustainability–though the review is only half completed. (It’s not like I baked half a cake and still get to eat the first half, is it? I just have a big bowl of goo at this point.)

I also presented on another panel with Michelle Sidler from Auburn University (she’s the director of programs on writing), Karen Gardiner and Jessica Kidd from University of Alabama (Karen’s the comp director there and Jessica is the associate comp director), and Robert Cummings from the University of Mississippi (he’s the director of the Center for Writing and Rhetoric). Our panel title: “Choosing to Succeed: Themed Approaches to Second-Semester Comp.” I was much impressed with my colleagues’ presentations which included substantial information about program development, teacher training, assessment measures, future plans. They all had charts, and deep, rich information. I was impressed every minute of each presentation about the work they were doing–and inspired.

Here’s my first slide:

I want to teach a section of comp 2 on spies.

And from this point I showed pictures of Edward Cullen, Cartman on South Park, tattooed body parts, Amy Winehouse, James T. Kirk, social media landscape maps, and so on. The last slide was a representation of the Justice League and a heartfelt “thank you” message to my fellow panelists for their support in the last three years. Well, it was pretty. I may have redeemed myself during the after-panel discussion. Truly, it was a blast and my presentation really did hit the high points of why we have themed comp 2 classes, the rationale, the assessment measures, and more–but it was really, really, really design–visual-rhetoric-heavy and very text-light.

I attended sessions on open education resources, writing with iPads, and a session on writing and problem solving. It was so cold in that last particular meeting room that even I was cold. Y’all know that was cold. I had to go outside to warm up. Egads.

The OTHER shiny object: The Center for Writing Excellence at the Air War College.

And here is another shiny object: The AUM Writing Extravaganza class which is funded by the National Science Foundation. You’ll see that I was inspired by our own Sarah Fish’s most recent entry on that blog (she’s the tutor of record for the course–her second year running–and doing a fine job, too–and so not always easy with me as the teacher… oooo, is that a shiny object? I must go see what it is and then make it mine, mine, mine…).

Ahem. So do you think I overextended this summer? I do. But here’s what I learned: you are remarkably resilient and amazing learners. So am I. I’m really worn out and frazzled and panicked about: the fall schedule, the budget, books, training, blackboard, teacher contracts, four unstaffed comp classes, the carton of bad cottage cheese in my fridge, and my dry cleaning–where did I take it again? And yet. I’ve learned so much–in the last 6-7 weeks. Freaky, isn’t it?

So y’all are writing warriors. Not everyone is. Students new to college are not as resilient or determined as you are. You have a lot of solid ground under you that shifts very little. You have fear when you’re standing on the fence reaching for the perfect peach and could topple into the neighbor’s yard at any moment, because they have a big, mean dog, but you breath deep and keep on reaching until you get the peach you want. You know you can do it. It’s brilliant to watch.

And I wouldn’t give up one second of our work together despite my being, always, too busy. I am as impressed and inspired by you as I am with my colleagues at the conference last week. In fact, the thing I realized while melting, and alternately freezing, in Baton Rouge–it’s all about the learning. Mine, theirs, and yours.

Thank you for teaching me, for letting me learn how you think, for showing me so much about who you are as writers. I’m not finished reading blogs by any means, in fact, my weekend is booked with 18,432 things I need to do to catch up–but the only thing I’m really looking forward to is reading what you wrote while I was not blogging.

Write acrostic this______

Willingness to get on the big scary ride at the carnival, no fear, no whining, all guts.

Righteous fists raised to convey the dazzling power we grab through learning.

It only makes sense that the commons we create, creates us back.

Teaching. It happens even when we don’t know it or understand it.

I‘m a teacher. I teach. I’m into teaching thinking and stretching and breathing.

Not making connections across academic boundaries–that sucks.

Good to know I’m not alone–I got my commons, and my commons has got my back.

 

Alone no more because I have no borders; I’m surrounded by no seas; I feel no disconnection; I am no island.

Commons-base peer production. I’m into it.

Reading across the curriculum is as important as writing across the curriculum. I mean it.

One. Singular sensation. Every little step she takes. One. Thrilling combination. Every move that she makes. One smile and suddenly nobody else will do. You know you’ll never be lonely with you know who. One moment in her presence, and you can forget the rest, for the girl is second best to none, son. Oooh. Sigh. Give her your attention. Do I really have to mention? She’s the one. Elizabeth Gilbert.

Students.

Students.

 

Taking our words and freely letting go of our hold of them so they may see their true potentials.

Helping bridge disciplinary gaps–oh yeah–that’s what we’re all about: dancing smoothly around in every discipline we can imagine–just to spread the word, and the word is an acronym: WAC.

Exhausted by working too much, too long, too hard trying to see how everything is connected; maybe, perhaps, occasionally, once in awhile, sometimes fission is better than fusion.

 

Communicating across the curriculum. That matters, too.

Uhriah Heep is the best worst villain ever. (Sorry, you know how I feel about Dickens.)

Reiterative processes happen a lot, in writing, in decision-making, in learning.

Right. I mean: write.

Inquiry across disciplines–what couldn’t be done weaving through disciplines?

Crossing borders, boundaries, disciplinary lines.

Under pressure always, but we can dream of being graceful despite that, right?

Like this. (Or is it wrong to like one’s own text?!)

Unusual growth happened to me this summer because I was part of this course on writing across the curriculum–8 weeks of insane growth–mind imploding, soul soaring, spirit stirring, attitude adjusting.

My gratitude knows no bounds–thank you, students and friends, all of you who made this one of the best eight weeks of teaching/learning I’ve ever had.

A little Mali is a fine thing

This dude taught for 9 years. Eighth grade, it seems. Now he’s a full-time poet. I’m not surprised. Students inspire teachers all the time. In fact, today, while meeting with you… I remember all these spoken word performances I adore.

Like this one:

And this one:

And this one, for Lynn, especially:

Enjoy.

Don’t forget we’re writing a WAC poem. I’m going to put up a post and get one started… we should all do an acrostic poem. I’ll start. I’m inspired.

Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me

A Top-Ten List for Today.

1. You are so not alone. The bell is tolling for me, too.
2. Look up overscheduled and overwhelmed in the dictionary, and you will find pictures of our class.
3. I broke a tooth and have had waves of continual rolling pain and also periodic shooting pain for two days. Dentists scare me. More than zombies.
4. The two public presentations at a national conference the week after next that I have to do? NO work done for either.
5. Dust has become a reminder of my mortality and how I don’t want to spend my life getting rid of it.
6. Something is alive in my refrigerator.
7. When you forget to do three really important things in three days it’s not an accident, it’s a way of life.
8. Will I ever get to read a fun book again, a trashy detective novel, a predictable and easy SciFi novel? Ever?
9. I thought plagiarism was the dirty “P” word. Nope. It’s “paperwork.”
10. I love being a writer. I love that we are all writers together this summer.

I think we need buttons that say: I Survived ENGL 4090/6090 Summer 2011.

I can make that happen. What do you think?

A slow book review, like the slow food movement

I have been loving my book, but I’m way slow. I like to think it’s because I have embraced the slow food movement even though I’ll still eat fast food sometimes! I read about the slow food movement in the Smithsonian a few years ago and thought it was a brilliant thing to do–I try to always shop locally for produce and meat, so this works. And, well, I’m overscheduled for the summer. I’m calling my slow book review a new thing. This is my stand against frenzied last-minute writing that I would normally create even if I’ve been reading and thinking for two weeks.

Part 1 of my fight against fast writing.

For the book reading and reviewing portion of our ride this summer, I chose to read Technological Ecologies & Sustainability by eds. Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Heidi A. McKee, and Richard (Dickie) Selfe. It’s a book that I found through the WAC Clearinghouse that is a collaborative publishing effort by Utah State University Press and Computers and Composition Digital Press. (Collaboration: nice.) And it’s open. The .pdf  is on my phone, my laptop, and my iPad.

This book is a collection of essays that range from classroom practices to writing program administration to community programs to scholarship–all with a sense of the sustainable. This isn’t about thinking “green” (or even blue) in the sense that we need to recycle cans or plastic, and yet, these things are connected. Here is what the editors write:

“An overarching framework is, of course, evident in the title of this collection, Technological Ecologies and Sustainability. The term technological is meant to signal our focus on computers and computer networks, although the authors in this volume cover a wide range of digital environments: from personal computers in local classroom contexts to more extended networked environments that affect, and are affected by, institutional and global concerns. The terms ecologies and
sustainability are meant to suggest the important task of maintaining the richly textured technological environments in which composition teachers and students learn, study, and communicate.”

The editors, rightly, write of their concerns over these terms and the troubling ways that words from one discipline can be co-opted and used by other disciplines, muddying the waters for everyone. Such a term is open, as we’ve seen. I use “open” a lot to mean: a thing is in the public domain; a thing licensed as some variation through Creative Commons; a thing is without cost to the user; a thing is copyleft; a thing is open access or open source. I throw around the terms a little indiscriminately and uncomfortably for purists, but I know that detailed understanding of all the permutations of “open” can only come with substantial reading and thinking and learning–what we’re doing in this class–but also what happens over time to any learner. And before deep clarity happens, I think “open” is a fine way to describe every “thing” I mean that I can get my hands on guilt-free.

For the editors of (and authors of the articles in) this collection, the mashing up of terms from several fields that have multiple meanings is something risky in some ways, but an important mash up, as they argue. What I like about their introduction is that they situate what they mean and wrap it around the subsequent essays in ways that are far-reaching and gave me a solid base from which to read about issues and ideas I was often unfamiliar with. For instance, I’ve never read anything by Bruno Latour, a French sociologist and anthropologist. So their use of his work to build a base to ascend from was useful to me, a wise rhetorical move on the part of the editors to be so WAC that I couldn’t help myself but fall in love in the introduction. I still don’t entirely understand Latour, and won’t unless I decide to read him myself, but their take on him is something like this (and please understand I am distilling their distillation of his many, many works: ripping and remixing way down the line of thinking):

He writes about social things, not social as in a friendly cocktail party, but Social as in a “moments of social… connection in the process of constant re-creation of ‘reassemblage.'”

Whoa, Nellie. Yes. I didn’t even need to read on to think: that’s us. That is all about us: creativity and collaboration, standing on the shoulders of giants, ripping, remixing, reusing, sharing, open. We are doing reassembly: making connections between and among, writers, eras, disciplines, selves, texts, blogs, web sites, ideas. And everything is uncertain. We are blowing transformers at the speed of earthquakes. I can hear the explosions from here. It’s all new and weird and wired and revealing. And it’s uncomfortable sometimes–uncertain. Because we are crossing boundaries and lines that we haven’t crossed much. We are making connections and weaving tapestries from threads in biology, music, geography, math, art, history, literature, philosophy, film, education. The tapestry is HUGE and it’s blowing our minds. That is one of the core ideas they get at through Latour, that he describes uncertainties “in connection with the study of social networks.” I’m interpreting this to include our social network and the social network of the university, of the loosely defined university made up of discreet colleges and even more discreet departments. What we risk when we go across the borders, or using terms “created” in other disciplines, is being shot. Or metaphorically so. (Notice I put quotation marks around “created”–oh, and again just now!)

WAC tries to subvert in some ways the often very rigid boundaries of thinking and writing–or I think that ideal is at the core of WAC–that not only is writing a part of every discipline, taught by those disciplinary experts, but writing is the vehicle for collaborative teaching and learning endeavors. It is “writing” across the curriculum. It is writing “across” the curriculum. It is writing across the “curriculum.” Everyone talking and learning and thinking together to change the way we create the future. (It’s a little Star Trek when I put it that way, but, hey, this is a blog and that’s what I think.)

The editors embrace that notion of uncertainty with a boldness I love:

“Uncertainties abound; as editors, however, we have chosen to add yet another mode of uncertainty by increasing the tempo of the interaction between the writers and readers of this collection. We did this by choosing to publish the collection in a new digital space: the Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP). The CCDP is an open-access press built to accommodate digital book-length works and multimodal projects. By publishing this volume as open access and online, our hope is that the social networking functions of current Web 2.0 technologies will allow the collection to take on a discursive life of its own.”

(Are they talking about rhetorical velocity? Yep, they are. And I hope this text has it.)

They go on to talk about a cyclical and interactive creation process that includes these steps (from Latour–his are one of the sets of shoulders the editors stand upon–I stand upon theirs):

• Gathering the Collective
• Conducting Civil Discussion
• Rank Order the Propositions
• Start All Over Again

Even without defining these, you can get a sense of a commons process, can’t you? It’s as if we said, yes, we’ll work like this and then got the name of what we were doing AFTER we started.

I did read their definition and it reminds me of another development process I use for nearly everything I do (at least it’s in the background directing what is often a chaotic exterior!): ADDIE. This is extremely social. No one can do it alone. This is a generic procedure, meaning, it can be used for anything, really, but it was meant for instructional systems designers to improve human performances through training programs. (“Oh, you mean, like higher education?” “Why, yes, I do mean like that. But I have rarely heard of this process applied to higher education in the Humanities.”)

• Analyze
• Design
• Develop
• Implement
• Evaluation

Both these models include formative and summative assessment measures and include the opportunity to begin again. (Formative meaning, each step is assessed and influences change to that step of the process or the next step; summative meaning the overall assessment that might include starting over again–I think of these assessment terms as formative is the grades one gets along the way, summative is the grade for the whole course.)

Both models need to be flexible and nimble enough to accommodate as yet unforeseen factors of our lives and technology. (I love the term nimble that the editors use–it evokes a certain feeling of special flexibility, a kind of ability to adapt to leaps of faith that goes beyond the ordinary flexible, a kind of Jack-be-nimble-Jack-be-quick sort of flexibility that is so Web 2.0, so rhetorically sound and wiggly at the same time.)

Both are about creating a commons in a way: with goals for “our intellectual community” that can include “a progressive composition of a common world, a world… worth sustaining.”

And that’s really just a very quick overview of the introduction. The rest of the book is broken down into four sections:

• Part I: Sustaining Instructors, Students, and Classroom Practices
• Part II: Sustaining Writing Programs
• Part III: Sustaining Writing Centers, Research Centers, and Community Programs
• Part IV: Sustaining Scholarship and the Environment

Part 2 of my fight against fast writing will be added as a separate blog and cover a couple of my favorite essays from this collection which I have enjoyed reading slowly and which I have to enjoy writing about slowly. (I just can’t finish writing this now–so I’ll slowly finish over the next few days.)

Do you want to create a slow writing movement that includes the use of pencils and paper? Wouldn’t that be a harkening back to a slower time, a way to preserve traditional methods of writing? In fact, I think we need to get the calligraphers/artists/scirbes on board who do the most amazing things with illumination and manuscripts these days. Have you seen the St. John’s Bible project? If you haven’t, you must. You won’t be sorry you checked it out. It’s gorgeous and modern and ancient and stunning and remarkable, and regardless of your belief system, this is an homage to human striving.

I’m not going that far with this book review, but I do want to respect the book and have fun wandering around and through ideas as the need arises, slowly, and not in a panicked, breathless rush. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

Typos and open

I have to do this post in the next fifteen minutes–it will be a miracle if I can do it.

1) I am so unhappy when I find typos in my writing, on or off line. These things happen now because of editing, not because I have misspelled a word–mostly the red-squiggly-line-editor feature alerts me to misspelled words. What I’m talking about is when I’ve changed the tense of a sentence but not quite remembered to add or delete -ed from a word. OR when I forget to make a verb plural after changing the subject from singular to plural. OR when I have edited a sentenced by moving around text and misplaced the words so that somehow it reads weird. AARRGGGGH. It just makes me cringe. And no matter how carefully I re-read or proof read, I don’t find all the errors because: a) I introduce new errors whenever I touch a text; b) I read what I want to be there, not what it really says; c) I hate copy editing my own work (I’m only interesting to myself the first time around). Here’s what I want: a person who will turn on my car AC before I leave the building; a person who will copy edit all my writing (and not make me feel silly about my dopey errors); a person who will agree with me that world peace could be achieved if all world leaders had regular pedicures together. Sipping wine in massage chairs while having one’s feet attended to–how could anyone contemplate war in such a situation?

2) HOLY MOLY. I’m fooling around with Creative Commons this afternoon and found this:

The Power of Open (at http://creativecommons.org)

You have to read this. I mean you really have to read this. It’s an assignment for July 6. I know I promised no more longish reading assignments, but this is filled with pictures, pull quotes, beautiful stories, and will connect a lot of the dots we’ve been throwing up on the canvas in our all-the-way-wide-open WAC fest.

Post done and with three minutes to spare. And right around 350 words. Miracle.

Going 90, I ain’t scar-ied…

Of course, Cool Hand Luke had to come into the conversation, just as did the Jackson Five and Star Wars. Always. I used to use Cool Hand Luke to teach close reading (it’s remarkably easy to do this for freshman–shoot, for anyone). And you know why I do this? Because my comp 2 teacher did the same thing for me, and it was the first time I EVER got textual analysis or close reading, of any kind, literary or rhetorical. In fact, Cool Hand Luke is the one film I can watch over and over again and think every time, “Yep, a Warner Bros. prison film helped me become an English major.”

Prior to the confluence of being a math major, history major, dance major and taking a comp 2 class, I was certain of several things: 1) I couldn’t write my way out of a wet paper sack with a bazooka; 2) I hated writing; 3) I had no idea what analysis was and wouldn’t have been caught dead doing such a thing. But then that thing happened to me: I made a bunch of connections between disciplines. I’m been traveling that path a long time now. Mashing up. I just never thought of my life as a mash-up before, but it is. I like that. I see a smashed and double fried plantain as a metaphor for my existence: essentially very nutritious but I needed some serious treatment before being palatable. Little sea salt and I’m fabulous.

Okay, so what does that have to do with now? I’ll get there eventually.

Paul Newman, the star of Cool Hand Luke, sings a song at one point with a banjo–not particularly well-played but heartfelt: “Plastic Jesus.” He sings because his mama just died. It’s a poignant moment in the film. And on some days, I weep with him, but no matter how I feel, I appreciate the grit he displays at the end of the song–a dogged determination that gives us a clue about his character’s end. He will not give into the system; he will not cave; he will not shift his pugilistic world view to align with the authority figures in his life that have failed to communicate (a key concept in the film). He will continue to go 90 and be unafraid. He’s heartbroken but he is undefeated. There’s a difference.

Lyrics:

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
‘Long as I got my Plastic Jesus
Sittin’ on the dashboard of my car.
Comes in colors, pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark ’cause it’s iridescent
Take it with you when you travel far.

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sittin’ on a
Pedestal of abalone shell.
Goin’ 90, I ain’t scar-ied [it sounds like “scary” when he sings it–but it’s written this way]
‘Cause I got the Virgin Mary
Assurin’ me that I won’t go to Hell.

There are multiple versions of the lyrics, but this is what Newman sings in the film.

[Spoiler Alert–skip the next few sentences and go directly to the video if you ever want to watch the film and not be disappointed by knowing the end.]

I love that Luke doesn’t give up or give in. Of course, he’s shot in the neck at the end and dies. A horrific metaphor for his “failure to communicate,” really for so many moments where communication fails. It’s a perfect film to use to teach writing, textual analysis, literary analysis, film analysis. I love it. But it’s a grim prison movie–not a pretty film.

And I love this song. Apparently, it was written as a goof, but it’s been recorded several times by a wide range of artists from the folksy to the punkish (in 2005 by Billy Idol–holy rock and roll–I about fell out of my chair when I learned that—BILLY IDOL). He does have great hair.

Billy Idol (in concert in 2006, photo by JohnBrennan06)

I think I’ve always liked the “Plastic Jesus” song because it’s part of the film that changed my academic life and it reminds me of an hour-long cab ride I took up the Mexican coast once. I didn’t want to get in the first cab in line… there was a bullet hole in the windshield… from the inside out. Looked like it might have come from the backseat, angled just over the shoulder of the driver. I swear. But one of my friends pointed out that a plastic Virgin Mary was perched on the dashboard, so we would probably be fine. So into the taxi I got, and it was a wild ride–think New York cabbie in a hurry on mountain roads with no guard rails and a cab with no seat belts. At some points, we were doing over 90 on straightaways. NASCAR had nothing on this dude. We slammed from side to side on the slick vinyl bench seat in the back (there were three of us) and looked out the windows onto canyons far, far below us. (Like seat belts would make a difference if we’d careened down a 1,000 foot cliff.) The driver honked every time he approached a blind curve because he would not slow down and the roads were really not wide enough for two cars, so it was a generous gesture on his part toward other drivers. Yep. That’s what it was.

How could I not always feel a fondness for plastic religious iconography? Well, I don’t mean icons, exactly, but you know what I mean–elaborate metaphors for a godly protectorate. And I mean no disrespect to any belief system based on Jesus or the Virgin Mary, but the facts remain that the song exists, Paul Newman sang it, the cab in Manzanilla had a plastic Virgin Mary on the dash. And the song reminds me of the film AND how hard it is to write, how afraid I was, how I avoided it for years, and that the most unexpected things bring us comfort.

You know this: you have to want to write. I can’t make students do it; you can’t make other people do it; if you teach, you can’t make your students do it. You can assign it, but students may or may not do it. Sure, they might do it, but they might not put their hearts into it. That’s the like the subtle difference between heartbreak and defeat. Folks have to want to do something in order to do it and do it well. Paul Newman’s character, Luke, cannot be made to do anything in the end. When he feels like working hard, he does. When he feels like placating The Man, he does. He’s beaten and abused and hurt, but he is not defeated. He fakes it for awhile, or so we want to believe that’s what a momentary breakage means, but he is a “hard case” as he describes himself–unable to be persuaded into action or inaction. And he cannot communicate with others, nor they with him.

We all have to do things we don’t want to do that are hard, but writing has gotten a whole lot easier over the years. Writing in public, too. I make mistakes all the time. When I was being officially observed by my boss I said the same wrong thing several times before a student corrected me with a gentle question about what exactly I meant. Good heavens. I could have died right then, but I just blew it off as something I couldn’t change and plowed on. Writing in a blog is less frightening than it used to be. It’s just a part of me–not all of me. I have to write so many memos. I dread it… every week. But there it is. I do cave in, and we all have to, in some degree, in order to work or collaborate–I think of it all as grand compromise for the betterment of all. The most important part of powering through a rough patch is that we become better communicators, right? When you can articulate something, anything, and someone gets it, that’s the reward for sometimes doing what we wish we could avoid. (I’m really really really tired and have another class I am starting to teach tomorrow–and I miss you all so much already.)

We get to do an end-around our own unhappy tasks because we do this writing for ourselves, for our own growth, and we side step failure to communicate in this class and through studying theories of WAC and what it means to be open to writing across/through/in the disciplines–what it means to be open and embrace open. We don’t have to fail at communication. It doesn’t really matter what good luck charm I tote around (I do have a few actually–even one in my purse–and wore a medal of St. Anthony of Padua for about 15 years–Roman Catholic patron saint of lost things), or what items any of us use as feel-good symbols, the act of writing, right now in our blogs for this class, prevents a failure to communicate.

As we go 90 (and we all are, aren’t we?), we don’t need to be “scar-ied” because our success at writing across the curriculum, in this very moment, saves us from that.

Interesting the way the writer of these lyrics chose to insert the hyphen just there between “scar” and “ied”… isn’t it?

Hmmm.