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.

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.

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.

Having a readability marathon

I’ve been working on this article/piece/essay-thing about readability. I’m going to show my students in class today because I think it’s interesting (of course, I would, duh) and relates to WAC, but it’s been killing me. I want to finish–I started in November with the thinking–but I need three solid days to work and finish. I won’t get it. I need concentration time to pull it all together into a coherent whole, worry through my argument, fuss with the details. I decided to work in PowerPoint as a way to brainstorm, so I could: 1) work in chunks and easily drag around slides to new locations; 2) avoid having to worry about transitions while the thing is a work-in-progress; and 3) I thought it might just be fun (and it is). What I’m finding is that I need to make an argument concisely because I’m restricted to comments on one slide on one topic.

This experience might be the best one I’ve given myself as a writer in a long time–the pressure of spatial restriction. If you’ve read any of these blog entries (ha!), you’ll notice I can go on for a few pages with hardly breaking a sweat. I do value the long work, the long essay, the long novel, but concision, like folks learn who Tweet with expertivity–not so much in my repertoire.

So. I decided to post about my work on this topic–well, mention it in a post is more like it. And I’m proud to announce that the readability of this blog is about the 8th grade level (see below). I think I must naturally write that way because a lot of what I write is for the 13 year old in me (and I’ve measured a lot of things I’ve written–8th grade level). Really, I’m about 13 in my heart. My sixth graders got that about me. After I’d spent lunch drawing designs on the hands of several girls in the class with milk gel pens, one said to me, “You may not really be 13, but we’ll always think of you that way.” I don’t think I’ve ever felt so loved as a teacher. Honest. THIRTEEN. ME. It was so cool. (You know how difficult teenage girls can be–ahem–a little frightening in packs.)

Those sixth graders kept me young (they should be out of college by now), but I think they are still keeping me 13ish. And perhaps I write for them still. I used to do a lot of writing for them–I wish I could make time every term to write for my students. This summer is the first time in a long time that I’ve made it part of the class, and I like this better than anything I’ve ever done as a teacher. It’s a lot of writing for me and for students, AND the topic is complex and implications of the theories are far-reaching, but still, I’m getting to write and having a great time doing it.

I think some of my posts are better than others, but writing is always an exciting ride. It’s slugging up the roller coaster, then it’s a thrilling, shocking drop and whip around a corner. And just when I think I can breathe again… nope. Can’t. Here comes another crazy turn or corkscrew or giant rise and fall. This is the reason a writer’s desk chair should have restraining bars, because sometimes a writer will go weightless and have to scream for joy and with just a touch of fear.

Check your own writing, or any writing, or URL at: The Readability Test Tool.

How this blog measures up, readability-wise...

Writing, writing, writing: Writing machine

And so it all comes back to the Jackson Five. You knew I’d get there eventually. Please just substitute “writing” for “dancing,” and for the pronoun “she,” please substitute “they”–meaning, of course, us. (There will be some trouble when we get to “sexy lady,” but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.)

And you knew I’d eventually get back to boy bands: MJ and NSync. Not sure pop gets better than this.

My favorite might be the “Soul Train“* performance, but if you watch enough of the videos of “Dancing Machine” on Youtube, you could join in with the dancing, er, uh, I mean, writing, or do I mean singing?

*I watched a retrospective on “Soul Train” recently; if you are unfamiliar with this phenomenal show, you should change that. (I think it was on VH1.) So much I learned about dancing came from watching this show and its dancers when I was very very very young. I never went to a party in high school that didn’t have a line dance, not the Country/Western kind of line dance, though (not that there’s anything wrong with that–did a few in my day)–and by the by, all this line dancing is very Victorian and pre-Victorian–it probably comes from the ancient Egyptians or the Xia Dynasty. I had a mad crush on Don Cornelius (it was a lot like my crush on Frank Sinatra–I really needed to forget his personal life to keep loving what he did for a living). And, since I’m in the confession mode, I always thought Al Green was singing just to me. Still do (just look at him–he’s singing to you, too–he’s a master).

Is dancing text? Maybe. It’s meant to convey meaning and can often do that–emotion, argument, desire, worry, hope, sheer abandon.

Singing is certainly text because, well, it’s writing, but dancing? I think it could be, if we say communication is text or text is communication… if one is illiterate, do the cave paintings become text? Do cathedral windows become text? Do coins become text? If you can’t read words, and pictures are how you learn, maybe text is visual, maybe text is musical, maybe text is about how we connect, not what we use to connect. Hmmm.

Posts by a few of our bloggers have connected dancing to WAC and fascinated me, of course, because I’m a huge fan of dance and WAC and open and learning… and making connections. This one on moving across the curriculum, and this one referencing being wrong and dancing, and this one on connections and SYTYCD, and any one you choose about Sir Ken Robinson and Gillian Lynne.

Many of you have linked science and WAC, learning and WAC, and the connections are stunning. Wordsometimescapeme has mentioned in comments about how reading each blog and our postings on Bb is an incredible way to connect to each other and to learn. We’ve been making connections between blogs like crazy–and making intellectual connections like there’s no tomorrow (loved the one on cliches.)

We are part of a movement of people exploring WAC–and that makes us part of that movement altogether. It does. You might not have thought of it that way before, but we’re in it now.

Movement, of course, is a relevant word for us: we are studying a movement–more than one actually, and we are part of more than one movement. We are WAC. We are OER. We’re moving forward.

Move on, move over, move out, move up. And perhaps, mash up.

As writing machines, we do all those things.

Argue with me, I dare you

As usual, I’m deeply inspired by what my students are doing. Please visit their blogs (see blogroll to the right). They are watching Ted videos on nurturing creativity, innovation in education, reading essays from Writing Spaces–the open educational resource we love to love, and tripping off into the realms of their prior knowledge making connections to what they knew, thought they knew, what they’ve just learned, and how that matters.

I always had a hard time arguing because I was trained to be such a sweet and quiet child–be seen, not heard, don’t whine, don’t beg, don’t annoy, hush, chew with your mouth closed, be polite, no cussing, walk–don’t run, hurry up, sit still, quit fidgeting, pay attention, don’t talk, talk up–I can’t hear you when you mumble. And so on. NEVER argue with an adult–that was essentially the message. That meant never be sassy and do what I was told, always. (I’m not saying the training worked; I’m just saying it happened.)

What I didn’t know when I was younger was that arguments could be reasonably constructed conversations that acknowledge multiple perspectives that might actually lead both parties (or more) into a new land of discovery and enlightenment. I thought they were screaming matches that happened when one couldn’t repress emotions anymore and happened once or twice a year when parents planned family vacations.

I still don’t like to argue or even consciously construct arguments. I like thinking in patterns, not always in a linear manner, to get to a point, but I don’t always think of my writing as argument. But let’s face it: everything is an argument, including the gaudy Hawaiian shirt I put on this morning.

But frankly, I want to pontificate: “Here is this knowledge–yes, this is it–ta da!–please accept this awfully fab gift from me to you.” Because pronouncement is easy (blush and grin). It is. And I can do it pretty easily because that’s what I learned how to do as a teacher by watching most of my teachers work out on me. I had a lot of classes where I wasn’t allowed to ask questions–only allowed to take notes. And it’s easy to “just say,” did I say that? Just state what is and be done with it. (See instructions for how I was supposed to behave as a child.)

Now I sort of futz around with ideas in public, throw some out there, suggest readings in a certain order, comment here and there, make some connections, hope everyone else makes connections. With this blog, I am sort of replacing the traditional lecture form–but not really.  I’d never say all this in class–or I hope not! I really love that we have this form of communication. I’m still thinking and sharing with students, but it’s at their convenience, not mine, and questions can be asked anytime, any place: here, in email, through our CMS on campus (Blackboard), in the f2f portion of our class, and if I ever answered my phone in my office, there, too. And the best part is that I can learn as I go.

Even though, I find that talking on and on about one topic for a whole class period can even bore me, I occasionally still do it, I must confess… particularly in a class where I need to introduce a lot in a hurry, but I have to have visuals or charts or something; without some markers, even I can get lost. I need more road signs than spoken words, to lay out the path to possible arguments.

That’s where I’m at now: I see possible arguments and want to just show them to visitors. Sort of like giving a tour of argumentative methods at the Argument Zoo: “Here on your right, you’ll see the Toulmin method–don’t get too close, you might get the willies. Over on your left, and just down a bit, you’ll find Rogerian argument taking full advantage of its proximity to the Fallacy House. As we pass the cafe, you’ll notice on the right, the Socratic method–it’s a little scary–DO NOT throw peanuts. Sit down, please, and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.” In a content class, I feel the same way: “Check out the WAC over here and the WID just behind it. This is a rare moment, folks, you’ll want to have your cameras ready because these aren’t always in the same place and don’t always play well together.” Or: “Welcome to the Victorian Literature Tour. Today, we’ll be looking at _________. Please don’t touch the art, thank you. Notice ________. Check out ________.”

It’s about me pointing the way, and students going down the path, but then forging their own paths. Not so easy to do in a jungle without a machete. But in my world, writing is the big, nasty sword that cuts the path to understanding. Maybe I should make that part of the prerequisites for my classes: must have own metaphorical machete.

What I get now about argument, so nicely pointed out here in, “An Argument is Not a War,” and here, “Great Argument, Thanks!” is that argument is knowledge-making. And I’m all about that.

Here is my haiku for today:

Students make me think

of the possibilities

for a questing soul.

Thanks for all the great arguments you’ve been making in your blogs and on Bb. It’s all making me happy. Arguing with me and with others is the way you are creating new knowledge that we can all share. As Captain Pike says in the latest Star Trek movie (2009), while making an argument to James T. Kirk that Kirk should join the Federation, enlist in Starfleet, and go to the Academy: “You can settle for an ordinary life… I dare you to do better.” Every class you take, every writing task you undertake is a kind of dare you give yourself: “I can settle for average, but I dare myself to do better.”

Does a dare that is accepted at the end of an argument mean that it was an effective argument? Not sure I care. I just really love that part of the movie and, I’m 100% sure I don’t mind that the whole thing is all about the pathos… a little bit of ethos, but it’s not much. Pike pushes all the right emotional buttons, and Kirk goes on to the save the universe 100 times over. Well, a fictional universe, but you know what I mean.

Argument is not only creative, it can save the universe.

(Or is that just another pathetic argument?)

The value of a college education and, of course, WAC

This morning I wandered upon an interview with Mike Rose, a professor at UCLA, on NPR. Rose’s book Lives on the Boundary was deeply influential to me as a younger teacher; he’s written a lot of books about education and blogs about higher education.

It’s a short interview–just over six minutes–but worth listening to because he confirms what some of us are doing in this class and in college. We may have gone to college to better our economic situations, but is that the only reason we stayed?

His blog post from June 2, “Remediation at a Crossroads,” was a piece a group of us read earlier this year (originally published at Inside Higher Ed on Apr. 21, 2011–preview for next fall’s class: we’ll be reading this short article by Rose and very likely portions of his blog!).

Seven of us worked for many months to redesign the basic writing course and lab at AUM, moving from what we had (not a bad model) to another model (better, we hope) to help students re-envision what college education can and should be. With the new curriculum, we urge new college writers to value the knowledge they possess, the communication skills they possess, and then help them build upon that prior knowledge to grow as writers, emerging users of English language conventions, and innovators in thinking (and writing across the curriculum–not a coincidence). We even went so far as to rename the course: PreComposition (not officially, but we’re working on it). We started a web site for PreComposition that still needs a lot of work, but we started it and that’s something.

(By the way, the work is far from finished. If you’re interested in writing for that course, and getting a writing line on your resumes, or being involved in some way–there are plenty of opportunities to be part of this project–including attending and presenting at conferences next year. Just say the word and I’ll show you what’s available to do and you can be involved as you desire.)

Our idea, if you read around a bit on that site, is that we will eventually have a whole PreComposition course built on open software, using open educational resources, that we can use for any students, and that anyone can use anywhere, any time for their students. You’ll see that each of the folks who worked on the concept contributed something (the tabs at the top–based on the habits of mind laid out in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. (This document was put together with help from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project–that I just blogged about the other day.) You’ll also notice the the essay on “Open” that I’m writing is not there yet. Got side-tracked a bit. But I’m getting there–with luck and bluster.

Our idea is to grow this site–get teachers and students to write, contribute, and make it a wonderful place for anyone to start their composition life. And most importantly, for our WAC initiative, we want our students to see that writing is thinking, it’s creativity, it’s communication in every single moment of our lives, in our world. Without textual skill, students will be lost, in fact, it’s likely they may cease being students. So we’re trying to blow up old notions of what knowledge acquisition can be in college and embrace a remix mentality that supports WAC–mashups are at the core of any across/in/through the curriculum or disciplines program.

We called our project this spring, Operation PreComp: Remixing Basic Writing.

What we’re doing in our WAC class is Operation WAC: Remixing Writing. We are rethinking what writing is across the curriculum, where this idea came from, the impact it has on universities in specific situations (case study), the impact it has on us (through our writing and responses), the change it makes in the world, how the message gets disseminated (book reviews), and all that jazz. We are rethinking ourselves are writers, but writing in this blogosphere and how writers connect to create new knowledge and how that can be share effectively and quickly through the ether of cyberspace.

What a cool thing to do with higher education… or it feels that way right now.

And right now, I can say with certainty, the value of my college education goes way beyond economic comfort (that matters–being able to eat regularly and have a nice place to live is good) but it’s also about: 1) my quest for life-long learning; 2) my participation in many communities as an advocate of writing, reading and open; 3) my network of colleagues who keep me intellectually hopping; and last in the batting order, but number one in my heart, 4) my students who keep me inspired and invested in learning collaboratively.

Open education. It’s one way to combat the rising costs of education, texts, and also a way to get educational materials into the hands of anyone who wants to learn. And if we’re working to improve writing across all disciplines through open, why, that’s very WAC, indeed.