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.

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.

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?)

Why I eschew anguish

As a writer, I refuse to engage with anguish for very long periods at a time, and if I can pull it off, rarely. Never would be great, but I’m human. I had about six weeks this spring where I just didn’t want to write anything–see me stomping a foot on the ground with my bottom lip stuck out and whining, “I will not write.” But I wasn’t anguished over it. It felt great to be peevish and selfish and bratty. Honest. Yet, earlier in the year, I did feel some anguish. I felt like I might meet a deadline, and was almost ill over it. In 2006, when I thought I’d miss a deadline for writing, I cried. It’s painful sometimes to anguish over writing. I wish I had a reliable genius, but she’s flaky.

My disembodied genius sometimes shows up, and I find fabulous things to say, and sometimes, not so much. Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept of genius does, indeed, sync with my sense of human flourishing (eudaimonia) (Ken Robinson mentions human flourishing in his second talk), so I’m at peace with this concept of there being something greater than me that infuses my performance, sometimes. Only sometimes. I like to think I have something to do with it: stubborn, dogged, vicious, sometimes ugly persistence.

So my anguish over writing, well, it just doesn’t really happen to the point of stopping me from trying. Like Sir Ken Robinson says when talking about schools killing creativity, if we’re afraid of having a go–what happens to us? Nothing. That’s what happens.

Anguish and nothing, or eschew anguish and possibility?

Oh, the latter is so much better for me. And once in a great while, my genius brings it, and sometimes, my genius is lame. But why should I let suffering hamper my creative life if I want to be creative? I do want to live a creative life, so I’m not daunted, I’m not afraid, and I just keep showing up to do my job, to do my dance.

As a teacher, this is more important to me than any methods I’ve learned for teaching, any educational psychology I might have studied, anyTHING. I have to show up and do my dance, so that my students can learn how to do the dances they need to do.

Part of my dance is ensuring my students aren’t comfortable (sorry), that the class is wildly creative and oddly structured (sorry), that everyone writes a ton (sorry), and that no assignment is strictly controlled so that everyone has a chance to do their dance (not sorry for that). I sort of believe if I push and push and throw out crazy connections and engender “aha” moments, then students can do their jobs, which might make their geniuses show up more frequently. That’s a good theory–the more we show up to work, the more our geniuses feel like coming to party.

Don’t you think geniuses want love, too?

The part I play in the learning revolution is that I want thinking from my students, not just work. I want the brilliance of every student to be revealed through the writing they do, through the creative process, through the connections they make, through the thinking they do individually and collaboratively.

So, is this class innovative learning? Is this a hard class? You’ll be able to decide, not me. I always have fun and learn a lot–I’m not a good judge. What I do know is I sure think innovation is hard–and it’s scary for me and for you. It’s not normal, and it can be a hit or a miss–mostly that depends on what happens AFTER I do my dance.

Mostly, what you get from your education is about you–and you eschewing anguish. One of the reasons I like Sir Ken talking about linearity and how that doesn’t work so well for education is that he understands fast food education is not healthy if over done, but haute cuisine, the chef’s special, the meal made from the best ingredients from the field that day–that can change how your body works, how you feel, even how long you live. Of course, the body is a metaphor for our learning, our brains, but it’s a strong metaphor, more elaborately linked than many metaphors might be: mind, body, spirit kind of linkage.

In his talk, “Bring on the Learning Revolution,” Sir Ken quotes Abraham Lincoln and W.B. Yeats, too. I’m including the whole bit from Lincoln (a short intro, and the part Sir Ken quotes is in bold) and then the poem from Yeats, follows:

Washington, D.C., December 1, 1862

One month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln sent a long message to Congress which was largely routine, but also proposed controversial measures such as voluntary colonization of slaves and compensated emancipation.

Lincoln devoted so much attention to preparing the message that his friend David Davis said, “Mr. Lincoln’s whole soul is absorbed in his plan of remunerative emancipation.” The concluding paragraphs shown below demonstrate Lincoln’s passion for this plan and contain some of the most famous statements he ever wrote.

I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I, in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of respect yourselves, in any undue earnestness I may seem to display.

Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here–Congress and Executive–can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise–with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We–even we here–hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just–a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

At the end of the talk, Sir Ken quotes W.B. Yeats–a poem he wrote for Maud Gonne:

“Cloths of Heaven“

by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

It is perhaps the juxtaposition of these two texts that so moves me (and which I’ve taught together before), that so resonates with what I think I’m doing in the classroom–what I want to believe I’m doing–securing openings through which we all may pass to find what we need beyond one single moment. Both these quotes are worth remembering when we are frightened of the demands made upon us as humans, as teachers, as students. No fear.

May we always think anew, act anew, rise with the occasion, as we need to, and may we always tread softly on each others’ dreams, eschewing anguish all along the way.

May each of us flourish as humans–whatever it takes, whatever that means, for each of us.

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.