A letter to my students

I am excited to begin the semester with you because I have big (and fun, I hope) plans in store for our class, but before we embark on this adventure together I want to ask you some very important questions. Your answers to these questions will determine your success for the semester. I want you to succeed, but, ultimately, your success and failure is up to you and your fit with online instruction, this class, and this instructor, so please consider these issues carefully.

Is an online class right for you?

If you have never taken an online class then you really need to consider your technology and ability to use it. You will need consistent and reliable internet access and a backup plan if you lose it. Lack of internet access is not a get-out-of-jail-free-card and is, in fact, a one-way ticket to failure. You need internet access to participate in class activities and submit your work. It is that simple. Similarly, you will need a reliable computer and a backup plan if yours dies or is attacked by mutant viruses from outer space. Just like internet access you will still need to participate in class and complete your assignments. Finally, and most important, is your ability to negotiate the internet and use your computer (and its programs). Do you know how to use Word (saving files in various formats, add page numbers, etc.? Do you know how to attach documents? Do you understand email and discussion board etiquette? Do you know how to search databases (not just Google)? Do you know how to use advanced search functions?

Even if you have successfully completed another online class you may need to think not only about the issues above, but your willingness and ability to use more Blackboard tools than the discussion board and, in fact, to venture outside Blackboard to use other communication tools and social media. Don’t assume that all online classes are taught the same and that past success will predict future success.

It is also important for you to consider your self-discipline and learning style. Many students still sign up for online classes because they believe they will be easier and less work. The only thing that is easier about an online class is the flexibility. You still need to do the work and complete it on time, but you have the option to complete the work at 10 p.m. after the kids are in bed or at 10 a.m. before you report for your afternoon shift at work. However, this flexibility or freedom can be a real problem for students who need regular tasks and reminders. If you are the kind of person that finds things that are out of sight are then out of mind then you could have a real problem staying on task and up-to-date with your assignments. I do employ pictures and audio, but ultimately an online class tends to be rather text heavy. If you find it difficult to plow through lots of reading and writing then you might want to reconsider taking an online class. Remember, in an asynchronous online class your participation will mean typing and reading your classmates’ contributions to the class because we aren’t physically together to discuss our work verbally.

Is this class right for you?

This is a writing class and so there will be a lot of writing. This shouldn’t be a shock, but I assign an above average amount of writing because I also believe strongly in the importance of reflection. This means that not only will you write the assignments you might expect, but you will also write weekly reflections. Plus, as this is an online class your class participation activities will also involve a lot of writing. So, that all adds up to lots and lots of writing! For many students the problem isn’t so much the amount of writing, but the fact that I also ask you to think about your writing, sometimes weeks before the due date, and then write about that. This is going to be a challenge for many of you as you haven’t done this type of activity before.

This is a project-focused class. This means we will have several smaller assignments that support one major assignment due at the end of the class. This will give you a great deal of freedom to interpret these assignments as you wish, but not everyone finds this amount of freedom comfortable. In addition, this can often make these assignments more challenging and time-consuming than more traditional assignments. They can be more fun and more fulfilling as a result, but there are always trade-offs in life and the time-energy trade might not work for you this semester (or ever).

This class will be technology-heavy. I am a technology addict. Ask anyone. I love learning new tools and experimenting with them in my classes. If you do not feel comfortable exploring and using new technology (using a variety of Blackboard tools as well as social media, presentation tools, research tools, and more) then this is definitely not the class for you.

Is this instructor right for you?

The first and most challenging thing you need to know about me (well after the reflection and technology points I’ve already made) is that I believe learning is rhizomatic (read more about rhizomatic learning) which means essentially that I see learning more like a root-tree system than something that is linear or systematic. I also believe it is highly personal and individual. This means that while I have created a series of experiences for you that what you take away from this class will be up to you and what you bring to and invest in those experiences.  Some students, after a period of adjustment, find this attitude invigorating and an exciting change from traditional classes, but others do not feel comfortable in this type of environment. I understand. It is not for everyone. Some chaos is guaranteed to result.

You should also be warned that laziness makes me snarly and snarky. I know life happens. Work, family, school sometimes collide in a perfect storm and heaven forbid if you (or anyone close to you) has health problems and then there are the wonderful weather complications we get in winter and spring in Eastern Kentucky. When things get rough let me know. If you are up front about your issues and propose a plan to deal with those and still address your course work then I am happy to work with you. I am less happy when you disappear for weeks and are too lazy to contact me then expect me to devise a make-up plan. What really  makes me crazy though are people who ask questions because they are too lazy to do some thinking and/or research on their own. I will happily confirm or check your answers if you take some initiative, but I will not be happy if the answer to your question was easily available and you did not even check. Don’t be that person!

I am not a robot. I am online and available a lot. I am also on campus a couple of days a week. I check Blackboard and my email daily (usually) but that does not mean I always have time to respond to you immediately. Sometimes I have limited time and have to make a judgment call about which email to respond to and yours is not the most urgent. Sometimes I cannot work in a face-to-face meeting as quickly as you would like. This is because you are not my only class and, in fact, teaching is only about 1/3 of my professional responsibilities. And, as I already mentioned, I am not a robot. I am also a wife, mother, homeowner, dog mother, friend, church member, youth leader, and PTO officer. I have a life and responsibilities outside of MSU and Murphy’s Law happens to me, too. So, while I will do my best to provide all the support you need in a timely fashion don’t expect instant response or speedy grading all the time. I strive to be faster than molasses in January and usually, but don’t always, succeed.

Thanks for sticking this out, it ended up much longer than I expected, sorry about that. I hope you will carefully consider the questions of whether or not this online class taught in this way by this instructor is really a good fit for you this semester. If so then I will see you in Blackboard!

Ringing in the New Year - pedagogically

I have often reflected at the end of the semester, in true Profhacker fashion, by giving a 3x3 course evaluation. This means sharing what worked, what didn’t, and what I plan to change.  This was easy to do when I was essentially teaching the same class in multiple sections. However, now that I am teaching composition and professional writing it is hard to make such comparisons so this evaluation and reflection will likely not fall into such neat categories.

Overall, I feel pretty good about how my professional writing class turned out. I taught this class for the first time in the Spring and that was OK but as I had barely a week to plan the class (for the first time) and I inherited a book it was a bit rough. This time around I had the benefit of experience and time to plan so it was much more thought out and I do not plan to make any major changes for the new Spring Semester. Students report that they learned a lot and had fun. I feel the same way so what’s not to like?

My Writing II class continues to be a work in progress and I plan to revamp it yet again for the Spring Semester. I have high hopes for the new version as it is an idea that excites me (see The Walking Dead in my writing classroom) and I had an additional brainstorm about how to marry my new idea to my old practice of focusing more on writing in the disciplines so it will be a course about walking/writing dead in the disciplines.  I have spent a lot of my gym time thinking about this class and can’t wait to see what comes of it!

What worked

I borrowed/adapted a Group Learning assignment from Cathy Davidson for my professional writing class and this turned out to be a great assignment. Students really did an amazing job with it and we all learned something from the process as well as the results. For this assignment students had to teach the class about some technology/tool that could be used to produce their final projects. Throughout the rest of the semester students referred back to these tips/tools and used them for their PW project as well as work in other classes and their professional lives.

Another success for the Fall Semester was the use of Google Chat to support virtual office hours. While overall my use of Google was a bit hit-and-miss (see Google vs. Blackboard) in terms of success, I can unequivocally say that Google Chat gave my students quick and easy access to my help and advice. Although it was not always convenient for me (having to interrupt my work or break a chain of thought), it definitely helped create a connection with my online students that is always difficult to forge in an online class.

Finally, the use of interactive journals was something that worked well and I will continue to use. Side discussions, support, and practical advice were all a part of the peer comments on student journals and I think contributed to a sense of class community. I was pleased with this activity/assignment and will definitely use it again. 

What didn’t work

My attempt at a peer leader assignment, during which students would take turns leading discussions and track participation, was a dismal failure. They were supposed to work in teams and that was always a problem as most of the teams did not work well together at all. The evaluation part of the assignment was also problematic even though it was really a matter of noting who had participated and who had not. I wonder if this type of assignment is simply more problematic in an online class as I’ve done similar things with traditional classes. I’m not going to use this assignment until I’ve thought it through again so probably not for the Spring Semester as I’m at a loss right now.

Similarly, my class reporter assignment was terrible. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of students creating a wiki, blog, or some other record of the lessons they learned in a class. However, the actual execution in both classes fell far short of my hope. I think the idea is still a good one but it may not work for a writing class as well as it does for a content-driven class and it may also be a problem for an online vs. traditional class. Either way, it is going back on the shelf for now while I mull it over.

My last failure is the scaffolding I prepared for my Writing II students as they worked on their final papers. I thought it would help them to chunk the paper but most were resistant to the idea and the final papers of those who did participate were often too chunky. I have some ideas for working the scaffolding into our discussion and reflection assignments that will make the support more subtle and allow students more room to grow. I read a blog post a few weeks ago (Intrusive Scaffolding) about how too much scaffolding is actually a disservice for students and I think this process assignment is a good example.

What will change

While I will still have students create Google accounts at the beginning of the semester, our early use of Google will be for interaction (Google chat) and social media (Google+). As I already noted (see Google vs. Blackboard), I used Google for journals, discussion, and writing workshop in the Fall Semester but this met with mixed results and I think sometimes the technology got in the way of the pedagogy which is never a good thing. I plan to use Blackboard’s blog tool for interactive journals and discussion but am reserving the option for using Google for writing workshop at the end of the semester.

As noted above (and in The Walking Dead in my writing classroom), we will discuss the big ideas found in our literary readings with those found in popular culture (specifically comic books and their related media). We will then explore (in discussion and in writing) the ways that those big ideas play out in the disciplines. Stay tuned for more on this idea!

This semester I am going to try out a journal assignment focused on self-assessment and self-regulation. One of the reasons I tried the peer leader assignment is that keeping track of all the posting/discussion activities is a logistical nightmare for me. It is a constant battle to find the right balance (not to mention the time) between teaching and evaluating. My hope is that by making a place/time for students to record (weekly) what they did to further their learning and meet the course goals will make them more aware of their own responsibility for their growth and grades. Plus, this will give me a private place to comment on their activities as a student separate from their writing and thinking. I hope that separating these enforcer activities from the writing coach/mentor activities (made in comments on class reflection and discussion) will allow me to focus my efforts as well.  Or maybe I have just devised another way to make my head spin. We’ll see!

How did your Fall Semester turn out? What are your plans for the Spring Semester? I always love to study (steal/copy/adapt/adopt) the assignments and class activities of other teachers.

The Walking Dead in my writing classroom

http://themetapicture.com/ways-to-become-a-zombie/

Or,

How to kill those zombie students before campus is overrun

Yes, I am talking about the comic book and TV series, but in some ways this is also an apt description of the level of engagement most of my students bring to Eng 200 or Writing II. We have a two course general education writing sequence at my institution – Writing I and Writing II. Writing I is the typical freshmen writing class that has been around for decades and similar to offerings on other campuses around the United States. Writing II is a different animal entirely. It is rather like the platypus in that no one really knows what it is. Is it a bird or a reptile or a mammal? I plagued my co-workers when I started at MSU to help me identify the species of Writing II but much like the blind men describing the elephant I could not get the big picture based on their individual responses. During my decade at this institution, the course has gone through two revisions and yet we still grapple with it. The other day I had a conversation with a new hire that echoed my own struggle to come to terms with the class more than 10 years ago. And much like colleagues then (and now) all I can do is share my own interpretation of the class and wish him the best of luck.

The most current version, born of frustration, is a compromise and no one is entirely happy with it. The concept itself is OK in that we explore humanity’s “big ideas” through reading and writing, but the actual execution is somewhat lacking. While some instructors are offering some interesting versions and some students are doing some interesting work within the framework, the hallway conversations frequently confess that overall the class is not accomplishing its primary goal (improving student writing). Worse, faculty and student engagement in the class is low. Many instructors dread teaching it and students dread taking it.

However, this week after engaging in an animated discussion about my current obsession with The WalkingDead (shared by many of my friends and family and millions of others), I had a bit of a brainstorm. What if I could have my students explore those “big ideas” not just as they are found in these important cultural readings (mostly by long dead people who are not going to reanimate) but also as they are explored in popular culture – specifically comic books. Now, I am not a comic book scholar but as the mother of an 11-year-old boy I have spent quite a bit of time in recent years becoming conversant in comic book heroes and viewing my share of comic book heroes brought to life (via the magic of movies not a zombie virus). After all, our comic book heroes (and villains) are grappling with the same issues that drive the philosophers we are studying in our reader – good vs. evil, the needs of the individual vs. society, and defining/defending humanity (literally and figuratively), and so on.

I think this class can be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get started. I am sure there are many of you out there who have are already doing something similar (in fact I can name some friends that I’m almost sure are doing so). Probably that is where my idea came from after percolating in my brain. I hope you’ll share your thoughts and suggestions with me.

Why doesn’t the teaching of writing matter?

Or, How I would fix education if I had any power

I spent Saturday celebrating the very essence of the National Writing Project at the Morehead Writing Project’s 2012 Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference. The NWP mission is to foster the teaching of writing and central to that mission is the belief that teachers who write are better writing teachers. Our annual conference revels in both ideas: Teacher as Writer and Teacher as Reflective Practitioner. Also, in true NWP fashion, we bring together educators from K-16 in a variety of content areas and roles. We cross boundaries and make connections in ways that celebrate and facilitate learning – our own learning as well as for our students. Words cannot express how proud I am of the teachers I work with from the Peer Writers who run our Writing Studio to the 2012 Summer Institute Fellows to the Morehead State University faculty who led sessions and participated in every sense of the word. It was an amazing day filled with wonderful words and people.

But now that my feet have recovered (mostly) from running up and down three flights of stairs many times every hour and my Saturday buzz has faded, I have to wonder. Why don’t more educators get involved in the writing project? Why don’t more educators attend writing project events? Why don’t educators want to be better teachers of writers?

Don’t give me the “too busy” excuse. We are all busy. Every one of the educators at our conference on Saturday is too busy. We make time for the things that matter. I suppose that makes the real question – why doesn’t the teaching of writing matter? We all know it does. We know that writing (and the interconnected ideas of reading and thinking) is the most important subject we teach. Without writing (and reading and thinking) our students will not be able to demonstrate what they have learned (filling in bubbles does not demonstrate learning) or effectively communicate in school, on the job, or in the world. Writing can and does change the world every day and if we do not adequately prepare our students to be effective writers then we have damaged, if not destroyed, not only their future but our own.

Sure our leaders pay lip service to the idea that writing is important. Surveys of government, corporate, and education leadership always give writing top billing and yet…  One of my colleagues recently pointed out a fact that I had heard before but hadn’t really understood. If you want to know what is important just follow the money. In K-12 we see the emphasis given to on-demand writing (short essays). Our writing project site receives a continual stream of requests for quick fix professional development sessions on this topic. We never receive requests for help transforming their students into writers. K-12 teachers with writing project training often find it an uphill battle to implement writing workshop and assign writing that does not have a direct correlation to test preparation even though research shows that the students of writing project participants show more writing gains.

And do not even get me started regarding the financial support for my beloved National Writing Project. For 20 years we were a national program with bipartisan support but that all changed in 2011 when we lost our direct federal funding. Here in Kentucky we are fortunate because we continue to receive support from the Kentucky Department of Education but in recent years even that funding has shrunk by 1/3.

In higher education, there is lip service again to the importance of writing. Most campuses require some introductory writing classes and many also emphasize writing across the curriculum or writing-intensive classes as well. Yet, the actual administrative support for the teaching of writing is minimal. The majority of introductory writing classes, or first-year writing, are taught by ill-paid adjunct faculty and graduate students with no job security and often no benefits. Similarly, these programs and their support systems, such as writing centers, are often administered by faculty living on the edge (in terms of respect, remuneration, recognition, tenure, etc.).

In the end, despite the wonderful afterglow of our amazing conference, I continue to despair regarding the future of education and especially the teaching of writing – in Eastern Kentucky and in the United States. We need to put our money and our time on the line if we really want to make our students and teachers into writers.

Wonder what our conference looked like? Check out the 2012 Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference on Storify. Wonder what topics we covered? Check out our conference schedule. Not only did our sessions cover a wide variety of topics specifically designed to support the teaching of writing, but we also featured sessions to help writers and brought in four guest writers to further promote writing including R.D. Hall, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Annie Jones, and George Eklund.

Scared and Scarred No More

Last week I made the argument in “Breaking the Cycle of Defeat” that we need to spend more time in our classrooms attending to the self-beliefs of our students as well as the specific writing lessons we want/need to impart. I contended that if we want to break the cycle of despair and defeat then we must help our students become confident writers so they take more from our classes than scar tissue and a lifelong aversion to writing. This week I want to address the ways that we can help those scared and scarred students become writers. 

We must begin by making our classrooms a safe place to try and to fail. If students are given the chance to participate in low-stakes writing that is offered an audience but not assessment then they are more likely to write – both more often and at greater length. In addition, they will be more willing to experiment and take risks with their writing once they learn that the writing will be not be assessed. Examples of the types of low-stakes writing assignments I use in my own classes include brainstorming activities, reflection journals, and discussion board posts. These writings are shared with the class and receive comments which are focused on the content and not the form of the message.

Writers also need to read. They need to read to inspire and spark new ideas as well as to find models and mentors. Student writers should definitely read professional, polished writing, but they should also read the work of peers – especially pieces not yet polished and still in process. Even better, developing writers should see the early drafts and unpolished pieces of their mentors and teachers. Too often, struggling writers believe they are the only writers who struggle – and worse, they believe that good writing arrives fully formed and polished to other writers. They do not understand the time and work that goes into writing – and telling them is not enough. They need to see it happen and they need to experience it. They need to be led through the process before they will attempt it on their own. In my classes I use writing workshop to guide students through this process. We brainstorm and plan writing together, students share writing in various stages so everyone can see their process and progress, and then we revise and edit their writing together.

However, the most crucial aspect of writing workshop is feedback. Students should receive various types and levels of feedback from a variety of sources. Most important, that feedback should be focused on providing useful, supportive information – not simply negative assessment. During workshop, the idea is to provide feedback to help develop and shape a piece of writing. In addition, student writers should provide feedback to others. Engaging in discussions of writing as writers and with other writers can not only help student writers improve the specific piece they bring to the workshop, but also teach them how writers work and collaborate. My hope is that providing this type of guided feedback will help them learn and grow as writers as well as develop their own writing process which will support that continued growth and development long after they leave my class.

While I hope these steps will help my students become less scared and more hopeful about their progress as writers, I also like to have conversations about the struggles and fears that all writers face no matter how much writing success they may have achieved. In this way, our writing workshop offers support for the improvement of the writer as well as the writing. I understand well, as a result of my own research focused on writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy, how the past can so dominate a writer emotionally that there are actual physical manifestations of that fear. How can we expect a struggling writer to work through something that causes physical and emotional stress without addressing it? That is why we need to have real conversations and share real stories – our own as well as those of our students plus a judicious sprinkling of the stories of more famous writers. I cannot promise that working through these four steps will erase the scars that our student writers bear, but I know thanks to my own research as well as that of Albert Bandura and others that we can reduce writing apprehension and increase writing confidence by attending more closely to our students self-beliefs.

Breaking the cycle of defeat: Transforming students into writers

I teach writing for a living and I direct a National Writing Project site which means I work with both pre-service teachers and practicing teachers to improve their writing pedagogy. As a result I reflect and study a great deal of research and theory concerning the teaching of writing.

But what does it mean to teach writing or, as I like to think of it, to teach writers? Pat Schneider defines a writer as someone who writes and I won’t argue with that definition. I typically begin my semester with a discussion about what it means to be a writer and this is ultimately where we end up. However, even though they accept this definition, many of my students do not really believe they are writers even though they write. How do we make our students believe they are writers or can be? I know most of my students come to me believing that they are not writers and they cannot become writers. Can we change those beliefs? Is it important to change those beliefs?

Schneider describes “not being able to write” as a “learned disability” which is the result of “scar tissue” or a lack of confidence developed in reaction to unhelpful responses to your writing in school and at home. This rings true with the stories that my students tell about their previous experiences with writing. These students have been told through verbal and written comments as well as grades that they are not writers. It seems quite natural to me that they would take that feedback one step further to believe that they cannot become writers. Why does this matter?

Research shows that students with high writing apprehension or the scar tissue that Schneider describes are much less likely to engage in writing activities, are much more likely to give up when faced with writing challenges, and simply do not work at writing and learning to write to the same degree as their more confident peers. Blythe et al argue that for many at-risk students writing failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as students do not work as hard because they already believe they are doomed to failure. It is also possible that this sense of doom and failure has much broader impact as well. Patrick Sullivan writes “Is it possible that the most lasting and significant learning outcome many students take away from English classes is a lifelong aversion to writing?” He argues that at least part of our national education challenges, namely our “college readiness crisis” and “remediation problem,” stem directly from this aversion.

Sullivan’s argument struck a chord that reverberated to the core of my teacher soul and resonates strongly with my own belief that we focus too much on forms and failures in our writing classrooms. I am not arguing that grammar, spelling, punctuation, and proper format are not important – they are – but too many teachers and hence too many students see these as the only measures of good writing. It is possible to master these skills but only through practice – which those scarred and scared students will not even attempt unless we can find a way to break the cycle of defeat.

Among the arguments that Blythe et al make about teaching writing is that more writing instruction is not always the answer for these students – at least not until we have addressed their low self-efficacy. If we do not attend to their self-beliefs and break that cycle of defeat then writing instruction will likely be for naught. White and Bruning posit that without considering beliefs, teachers may view dimensions of writing quality too simply. The authors argue that explicitly addressing beliefs improves opportunities for students who may not have been taught adequate writing skills and lack positive beliefs to support their positive engagement in the writing process. We must spend more time in our classrooms attending to the self-beliefs of our students as well as attending to specific writing lessons if we want to break the cycle of despair and defeat. We must help our students become confident writers or it may well be that the only things they take away from our writing classes are scar tissue and a lifelong aversion to writing.

Setting my class agenda

Unicycling juggler

I am teaching two very different writing classes this semester and I am excited about my plans but a bit worried about juggling the two without dropping balls (combined with the flaming swords and sharp knives I am already juggling as part of my administrative duties for the National Writing Project). I am teaching first-year writing (aka Writing I or Eng 100 at my institution) and professional writing (which is a 300-level class).

I have two primary goals for my first-year writing students. I first and foremost want them to develop as reflective and self-regulating writers but I also hope to increase their understanding community and collaboration. I think focusing on those two aspects of writing development will set a strong foundation for their continued growth and development.

Our first week of classes (which officially begin tomorrow) will include elements of both. I will continue to use Twitter to help us develop classroom community which includes individual and class Twitter feeds, introducing ourselves via Twitter, and socializing via Twitter. In addition, I’m asking students to keep a journal to record their reflections on weekly topics, discuss those topics as a class, and Tweet about those topics as well.

Our first weekly reflection and discussion topic will focus on writers. I posted a prompt on the class blog that included the National Conversation on Writing’s video “Everyone’s a writer” and some interviews with students about how they define themselves as writers.

My goals for my professional writing students are more sophisticated versions of those for Eng 100 (at least I’m consistent). I also want my professional writing students to develop as reflective and self-regulating writers, but our focus in this class will be on discourse community, audience, and genre.

I am also using Twitter for this class and they have the same initial Twitter assignments and, in fact, will engage in similarly-structured reflective assignment that includes a cycle of reflective journal posts, class discussion, and Twitter posts.

Our first weekly reflection and discussion topic for professional writing will explore what we mean when use the term professional writing and what they hope to learn from the class. I share some definitions that others have given and then bring it back to the study of rhetoric sharing with them a personal blog of mine about rhetoric as well as the "In Defense of Rhetoric" video. I then conclude with a selection of Drucker’s “The Age of Social Transformation” about knowledge workers. Hopefully I haven’t set too ambitious of an agenda. I guess I’ll find out this week.

I can’t wait to begin our discussions. Do you think my students are excited, too?

An argument for FYC WAW

We have an institutional imperative to teach for transfer and I believe a moral obligation as well. Most of our students want to become better writers because they know it will help them in future classes and in their career. However, we must pay attention to what our own experience and the research of our field tells us – teaching and requiring the “mutt genres” of academic writing do not transfer. What does transfer? Understanding of how writing works, what shapes genres, and how to understand what drives a particular discourse community. We can teach those things in our classrooms, but until our students really begin to think and reflect on how those elements affect their writing then they won’t transfer either.

That is why we must spend more time treating our students as writers and focus their attention on their own writing rather than reading and writing about topics separate from the focus of a writing class. Reading in other subject areas is a needless distraction and certainly writing about other subjects should not be the focus of a writing classroom. I do not mean that all the reading and writing that takes place in a writing classroom should be a close inspection of their own navels. There is so much worthwhile and compelling research in our field, and most of it is extremely accessible for college students, it begs the question why so many writing students are forced to look outside the field of writing studies for the subject of their reading, writing, and research. If we want them to learn how to be writers then why are they not studying writing?

In the June 2007 issue of College Composition and Communication, Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle made a compelling argument for teaching first-year composition as an introduction to writing studies. They argue that there is no such thing as a “unified academic discourse” and that writing is not a set of basic, fundamental skills which can be learned once and then applied forever after. Writing is a complex activity dependent on context and until we teach our students this fact and introduce them to ways of making sense of these complexities in their infinite variety of contexts then we are not adequately preparing our students to write outside our classrooms.

Every community, both inside and outside academia, uses writing in specialized ways. Even if you restrict your focus to academic writing Downs and Wardle point out that using such an umbrella term as “academic writing” is “dangerously misleading.” Downs and Wardle argue that while transfer may happen (by good luck more often than not) far transfer is extremely difficult and not likely to be fostered by current incarnations of FYC. They then go on to argue for a very specific and new incarnation of FYC which focuses on writing as the subject of student reading, writing, and research in order to teach student writers how writing works and how it is used.

While many within the field have viewed the proposal of writing about writing as some radical form of pedagogy created from whole cloth by Downs and Wardle, in fact their proposal is the most recent in a line of other respected theorists and writing researchers and is well supported by commonly-accepted and research-supported theories of how people learn to write. David Russell’s (1995) “Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction”; Anne Beaufort’s (2007) College Writing and Beyond; and David Smit’s (2004) The End of Composition Studies all make arguments for teaching FYC as a course for learning how to understand and think about writing. While details vary I believe the theory and spirit are the same.

I have joined the Writing-About-Writing movement instigated by Downs and Wardle because of the many benefits I see for my students. As Barbara Bird points out in her 2008 CCC Interchanges response. Reading academic articles rather than the typical FYC reader not only demands more of the FYC student but also provides ready examples of how research and theory are shared and debated among scholars. We are not only telling them that writing and research are a conversation in academia but we are showing them – and by fostering the type of writing and research suggested by Downs and Wardle we are helping them find a way to enter that conversation.

Reading Workshop Still A WIP

For the past two semesters I have struggled with the implementation of a reading workshop for my online writing classes. My institution requires the use of a reader and my writing-about-writing approach also necessitates some reading, but I was resistant to using the old model of reading discussion that I once used. I simply didn't want to devote so much of our semester to reading and, while I consider reading important, I did want to use it primarily as fodder for our writing rather than a large focus of the class.

So I came up with a two-pronged approach to incorporate reading that is my own version of a Reading Workshop. The first part of the workshop is centered around building a class annotated bibliography of our reading lists with each student making three contributions to the annotated bibliography and then reviewing the contributions of other students. We build the class annotated bibliography on our class blog and I like the option of using labels on the individual AB entries so students are able to find readings that connect with their interests. The student contributions include one selection from the book we are required to use by our department and one selection from a list of online readings that I have generated and one peer-reviewed journal article that they locate and then submit for my approval. After we have completed the class AB, I then have students develop discussion questions that connect to their reading and then we hold class discussions using those questions.

I like many things about this assignment. I have always liked including some version of an annotated bibliography assignment in my classes as I think it is an useful skill for students to have and can scaffold their use of citations and summaries. I also like the fact that by cooperating in this way the students can cover a large number of readings in a relatively short amount of time and assemble the AB entries in an usable format that can serve as a resource for future assignments. I also like giving students some choice so they can pick readings to work with that either interest them or serve their writing in some way.

What I don't like is mostly about logistics. Giving students a choice means that there is a lot of back and forth with me and it is a time-consuming nightmare for a few weeks. I need to find a better way to do this for the fall semester. One solution is to push the assignment further into the semester by a week or two at the least. One of the drawbacks of teaching a general education class online is that there is a lot of fluidity to the rosters during the first week or two of classes. Maybe pushing the assignment past the worst of this will make it logistically easier to manage. I think I also need to break the assignment up into smaller bite-sized chunks. Apparently I overwhelmed students with too much information this semester. I also plan to stretch out the time that we work on this assignment. Last semester I had it stretch all the way to midterm but this semester I thought I could get it out of the way sooner. I think the midterm method is better. I think compressing the time was one of the contributors to my logistical nightmare. Honestly the assignment is not so burdensome that students shouldn't be able to finish it in the time I've allotted but clearly their perception is different.

And so my Reading Workshop is still a work-in-progress but hopefully next semester I will have it down pat! Stay tuned...

The Evolution of My Writing Workshop

I intended to blog about my philosophy of grading re Prof Hacker but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Isn't grading painful enough without thinking about it when I don't have to do so? Then another Prof Hacker post about grading (grading contracts that is) made me think again about how I manage grading. My philosophy of teaching is focused on fostering the growth of the writer and so I really do not like to dwell on the product of writing as I see it as a means to an end (the growth and development of the writer) rather than the end in itself. However, the workshop process that has evolved in my classroom is something that I could write about – and in fact have been asked to write about – and so here it is.

I have always set up my writing classes around some version of a writing workshop. For me, a writing workshop classroom means focusing on the writer and the writing rather than the teacher and the lecture. I believe writers learn and grow when they are actively engaged in writing and participate in a feedback loop that supports revision and fosters self-regulation. I believe the timely administration of a mini-lesson is far more effective than a lecture. But this post is about grading or feedback – not teaching. And so, back to my writing workshop. What does it look like? My writing workshop incorporates drafting and revision as well as a feedback loop. It uses reflection and self-regulation as well as working toward a final portfolio or some other final project.

These elements have remained constant but not static as they have evolved over the course of a decade of teaching writing. Back when I taught modes my students wrote five rough drafts and then after receiving feedback revised four essays and then after more feedback completed three final drafts for a portfolio. Today my students collaborate on a number of small projects before drafting papers that go through workshop before submission for a final grade and more feedback then they use those pieces as part of a larger final project (a blog).

My feedback process has also evolved over time. During my first years of teaching I graded even rough drafts but as I was teaching as many as five sections of writing (with a total of 125 students) at a time that was an incredible burden. Plus, I found that it actually interfered with the revision process as some students would take the attitude that the paper was “good enough” and did not always realize that the grade assigned to a rough draft did not translate into the same grade for a final draft. Around the same time I began teaching writing online and so I moved my workshop into a discussion board. Students posted their drafts in the discussion board and received feedback from me as well as their peers. I really loved this model as it allowed me to focus on helping students improve their writing – and not on grading. I also discovered that the transparency of sharing writing and feedback in this way fostered conversations with and among students about writing that would not have occurred under my old workshop model. I also learned that making the entire workshop process visible in this way made these conversations a resource for all students. I became so enamored of the online writing workshop that I began to use it even with my face-to-face classes.

Then I initiated a collaborative grading research project with two of my colleagues that involved the use of rubrics and I soon found that my blissful workshop model could not seamlessly integrate the use of rubrics. It took a semester to work out how to use rubrics in a way that still offered substantive feedback that supported revision. After the research project was over I asked my students about continuing the use of rubrics (secretly hoping I could abandon them) but students overwhelming responded that they liked the rubrics and found them useful when drafting as well as revising. And so rubrics continue to play an important role in my writing workshop as well as of course my grading.

I have always believed that reflection plays an important part in the growth and development of a writer and that belief has been reinforced by my experience as a teacher, a writer, and a researcher. In fact, my most recent research project reinforced this to an extent that surprised me. At various points during my teaching career I have used writing journals as well as portfolio reflections. I have required that students write a “grade note” when submitted papers that explains how their work meets or exceeds the criteria for a particular grade. My current writing workshop asks students to reflect on their process for each writing assignment and then to metawrite at the end of the semester about their growth and development as a writer. In addition, my students are required to Tweet thoughts about writing which may or may not be further developed in their writing reflections and metawriting.

I hope my writing workshop helps my students grow and develop as writers but my research on that is still pending. You know that pesky dissertation has taken a lot of my time.

Don't hate me because I love my job

Today is the National Day on Writing and I believe this blog post honors that celebration.

I love my job because I spend my days writing and hanging out with other writers (in person or virtually or both). What could be cooler than that? When I was a working writer I loved that too although in a different way. Writing is fun, challenging, and tormenting -- sometimes all at the same time. Words have the power to make people think, feel, and do things -- sometimes against their will. Being able to wield words with that power is exhilarating. However, since I have become a teacher of writing I have found a different sort of exhilaration -- helping someone else recognize and learn to wield that power. I happen to think I have the most important job there is because without literacy then all the rest of education is meaningless. There are many reasons I love my job but I think a quick look at a selection of the past week's events can illustrate that point for me.

My midterm grading backlog was formidable but I managed to get through it thanks to the inspiration I found in my students' reflections on the class to this point. Despite taking a general education required class (note: I think this is an important class but we all know many students don't agree), they are aware that they have learned some important lessons about communication, literacy, and writing and that awareness gave me a buzz every time I encountered it. One student writes: "I will be using what I have learned in my daily life". I should have kept track of all the great comments but didn't think of it until later and this reflection just happened to be the last one that I read.

I took a break from midterm grading to attend the 2010 Watson Conference at the University of Louisville and had a marvelous experience. I enjoyed the fortuitous serendipity of the session where I presented with Heather Blain and Timothy Johnson and we had the opportunity to talk about writing workshop, genre, and agency with our audience after presenting our papers. I loved that opportunity to have a conversation about the convergences of our topics and enjoyed doing so in the other sessions I attended as well. I also loved listening in to the conversation about larger issues during the keynote sessions. Not only to hear the key points brought up by the speaker by the chair and presenter but also the questions, comments, and thoughts of so many notables that have only been names on books and articles but now have faces and personalities too. Taking the step back from my daily teaching routine in order to gain the perspective necessary to see the larger issues of the field is necessary but I was so pleased to be able to do so at the Watson this year as it was an entirely different experience than attending the CCCC's and I really enjoyed it.

Once I had a chance to recover I was able to dive back into my current project -- my dissertation. I am in the throes of wrapping up my analysis and working through my conclusions and that is heady stuff indeed. I am learning a great deal about how a person becomes a writer. Learning how we can foster rhetorical agency and increase writing self-efficacy is important to me personally but also very important to the field. Not only is this important work, but I find it incredibly interesting.

I don't love everything about my job but I do love the major aspects of my life as an academic. I love helping my students become writers. I love talking with peers who love teaching too. I love investigating ways to help us do both those things even better.

Fall 2010 3X3

As a reflective practitioner (clear demonstration of my NWP affiliation) Natalie Houston's suggestion on ProfHacker to reflect on the past semester as I prepare for the new one fell on fertile ground. I agree it is important to look at what worked and didn't in the past to make sure that my experience informs my future practice.

What Worked Well

Focusing on Writing About Writing with my first-year writing students. My concept for the class is not yet fully refined but students still learned important lessons. Not all of them were big fans but their arguments against were more eloquent and informed as a result of their reading (a fact none of them noted of course). I think I can work on this concept more to bring more students on board.

Switching from a multitude of summary assignments to building annotated bibliography as a class. This not only provides a saner (for me and my students) way to build the same skill set but it provides more support and scaffolding for the process. Also, when we are done we have a pretty helpful document to guide future research and writing which the summary assignments didn't really do for us.

Creating video tutorials were also a good choice. Admittedly they were initially created because I was dying to use my new Flip and as a new user they were not very polished, but students did find them helpful. I have a tendency to be too text reliant for the information I share with my online students so this was a nice break.

What Didn't

I assigned too much reading right up front. I was excited about making the switch to writing about writing and also knew students needed to front-load their reading to inform the writing they would do the rest of the semester. All true but still too much too soon for first-year students.

Starting out with a group project was a mistake. Enrollment has too many fluctuations at the beginning of a semester (especially in an online class) and it is really hard to make students work together when they haven't formed a community yet.

In part because I needed to allow more time for the group project than originally planned and in part because of my own misinterpretation of departmental guidelines I assigned too many pages of writing for my students. These factors meant I didn't allow as much time as I should have for drafting and revision.

What I'm Changing

One of the complaints about the writing about writing focus was simply that students didn't know what they were getting into. So this semester I created a video challenge to let students know what our focus would be for the semester. I sent it out weeks before classes started and also put it in my introductory materials (for those late additions as well as folks who might have missed those early emails). They still might hate the emphasis but at least now they've been warned!

I am making more video tutorials although perhaps for some at least mini-lesson might be more descriptive. Short explanations for major assignments etc. Hopefully students will find these useful and also help them understand my goals for the class and assignments.

I'm using social media to build a sense of community and audience and then took the elements I really wanted to keep from the class annotated bibliography assignment and melded it with the social media. This semester we are building a class annotated bibliography together but it is not a group project.

Am I Media Mad or Simply Mad?

That's mad as in crazy as I am committed. The syllabus is made. I notified my students. We are using Blogger and Twitter this semester in addition to BlackBoard -- and I'm making YouTube videos like crazy to support my instruction. What is up with that?

That is exactly what one of my students just asked me. She had me for Writing I in the spring and signed up for my Writing II class this fall -- assuming she knew what she was getting into. And then came my Challenge video and she is pretty confused.

I can't blame her.

Of course, change has become my habit ever since I started this whole Ph.D. thing. The more I study, contemplate, and conduct my own research about the teaching of writing (or the learning of writing, after all which came first, the chicken or the egg) then the more I want to do for my students.

So why Twitter? A couple reasons.

First, I believe it can be an easily monitored channel of communication that will allow any of us (teacher and students) to send a message to the group. If information is being generated in two different areas (Blogger and BlackBoard) then announcing changes and additions via Twitter means we can all still check just one place. This is actually an improvement on BlackBoard as there is not just one place information is posted in BB.

So simple communication is one reason, but perhaps more important, I think using Twitter with its limited character count combined with its open access will help my students get away from the traditional English essay mindset and perhaps (hopefully?) think a bit differently about audience and genre -- focusing on the message and not the medium or perhaps more accurately how the medium impacts the message. We'll find out!

So why Blogger?

This is perhaps the least radical change. For several semesters now I have required students to present some final web presentation of some sort and for many students that meant a blog. So requiring all students to blog (instead of create web pages, slide presentations, or Squidoo lenses for example) might actually be a step back. I am experimenting with the use of a class blog as a way to help two sections of the same class interact with our subject matter. That is a radical change. We'll see how that works. I'm requiring all students to make their web presentations of their project via blog in hopes that if we all use the same program we will be able to explore in greater depth the many ways this simple format can be adapted and changed. My reasons for sharing their presentations on the web as opposed to a final paper turned in via BlackBoard's gradebook are the same. I want my students to develop an understanding and appreciation for writing for a real audience -- not me -- and how the needs and knowledge of the real audience drive real communication. I've been striving for that goal for some time and still haven't reached it. I'm not sure you truly can in any writing class (after all, students know they are writing for the teacher) but every semester I hope I can do better.

And so, dear students, never fear. There is a method to my madness. Of course, that is exactly what I would say if I was indeed mad...

Technology: How much is too much?

I was suddenly sucked into a vortex of class concocting, pedagogical pondering, and technology taste-testing last night. I don't know what hit me. There I was living my life as usual (cooking, cleaning, caring for child and dog, performing administrative duties) when suddenly I was struck with the urge to build my fall course. This compulsion was so fierce that I never did go to sleep last night. Wow. I've suffered such creative compulsions before but never for writing a syllabus or assignment sheet.

I have a lot of ideas for making this class exciting, challenging, fulfilling, and fun (too tall an order for a general education class? well we'll see).

One of the primary things I want to focus is on genre awareness and all that entails (that is a whole 'nother blog post though so I won't get into it now) and part of my brainstorm is to utilize various web publication tools to emphasize that. But that does lead me to the all important question of how much technology is too much? I am not much of a subscriber to the belief that digital natives are super techno-savvy. Perhaps that is simply because I've had to explain to too many people how to use BlackBoard and even email. I think just like anything else -- they know what they use but there is a whole world of technology out there they don't use -- so they don't know it. But again that is another blog post.

I'm teaching a general education (as in required for everyone and taught in many different incarnations although with the same basic goals by many different instructors) writing class. The class is online and our university utilizes BlackBoard to support all classes. So that is one form of technology we will need to use -- albeit sparingly.

I'm also fairly definite about the use of student blogs to display finished products and allow peer comments -- perhaps more but still deciding the parameters there.

I've got a couple of short introductory assignments (very short!) which made me start to think about using a twitter feed as well. Is that too much? Still thinking about what I would do with that...but I do like the idea of using these different technological tools as well as other assignments to make my students think about the importance of communication and words in general as well as the role genre and audience etc. play in communication. But oh dear...how much technology to require and how much to simply encourage. How much is too much?

My 2010 CCCC Experience -- Remixing and Rethinking in Progress (Part One)

I returned home from "CCCC 2010: The Remix" last night. An easy trip home with the conference so close but the recovery time will last much longer. I am still exhausted: physically, emotionally, and most definitely cognitively.

I've been following the discussion of the conference on the WPA-L and thought I'd share my reasoning for session choice. I was not a good friend. I didn't go to any sessions to support my friends and colleagues. I was strictly selfish about my session choice -- I selected sessions to attend based solely on my interests as a researcher, scholar, and teacher. I didn't really pay attention to the level of the scholar (master or initiate or somewhere in between) and simply chose sessions based on my hope that I would learn something from the presenter. Sometimes I reaped more than I expected and other times I was disappointed (although never by a whole panel). I would love a more centralized way to access papers and handouts etc. It would be even more awesome if such a mechanism included a way to share our own notes and reactions to continue the conversation long after the conference. I could see a tremendous benefit to such an experience. I definitely plan to follow up with many of these folks as the hectic (frantic?) pace of the conference just didn't leave me time for such contact.

I have pages of notes and handouts that I'm afraid will get lost in the shuffle so I want to post a quick review of what I did with notes about things that particularly interested me.

I was disappointed right out of the gate that I could not get in the door to attend session A.09 "Rethinking Transfer, Renewing Pedagogy" but I will follow up with those folks.

In my need to quickly choose a new session I simply picked the one that interested me the most that also happened to be nearby and selected A.06 "Protocol, Power, and Possibility: What the Literacies and Rhetorics of Organization Can Teach Us About Teaching Writing".

I was interested in Annette Vee's discusion of "Counter-Coding: Procedural Writing as Resistance among 'Hacker' Communities" in particular some of the things she had to say about writing resistance and power.

Richard Parent's "Hacking the Classroom: Teaching and Learning (as) Playfulness" was also really interesting to me in regard to pedagogy and teaching.

I next planned to attend B.33 "The Remix in the Classroom: Innovations and Implications of Multimodal Composing" but instead got side-tracked by meeting up with some of my fellow TTU TCR Ph.D. students (Sue Henson and Janie Santoy) and then my fellow panelists (Fred Kemp and Ronda Wery).

Then I was off to C.33 "Rethinking and Renewing Academic Literacy: Issues of Transfer" which was a great session just full of information that I can use for my scholarly work and teaching. Just love when that happens. Kathleen Rowlands presented some interesting work to aid in transfer from high school to college that should be interesting in my writing project work. Irene Clark's talk about genre awareness was very noteworthy. Chris Thaiss discussed transfer and presented many intriguing ideas.

With my mind whirling from all the information I'd received so far and knowing I had two more events to go I decided to take a break with friend, colleague and fellow TTU TCR Ph.D. student Lora Arduser.

Refreshed and renewed I was off to E.25 "Using Quantitative Analysis to Extend the Gains from Authentic Assessment of Writing" and was very impressed with the presenters and the audience (got some great tips for stats support). Keith Rhodes told us we must learn to do our own numbers because numbers have power and Carol Rutz gave great insight into the impact of faculty development on student writing that I found particularly interesting for my writing project work.

Then my final event of the day was the Special Interest Group TSIG.10 "The Subject is Writing: First-Year Composition as an Introduction to Writing Studies" which was chaired by David Slomp and Kathleen Blake Yancey and of course brought us Elizabeth Wardle. Great contacts and ideas. Still fascinated by this project.

There were more events that night but by this point my brain was past capacity and my body was exhausted so I enjoyed a quiet dinner with Lora Arduser and Lisa Meloncon before collapsing.

Personal Agency

I have spent much time of late thinking about personal agency. It appears to be one of the common threads intersecting different projects for different areas of my professional life.

According to social cognitive theory, we are driven not just by inner forces nor controlled by the environment and social forces but also have the power, the personal agency, to choose our actions. This power to originate actions for specific purposes is the key feature of personal agency, according to Albert Bandura. Bandura is one of the most eminent psychologists of our time and the most cited one living -- and he is the father of social cognitive theory.

Bandura tells us personal agency is when we deliberately choose an action, monitor the results and adjust accordingly. This agentic capability means we influence events around us and contribute to the shape of our lives. There is variation in our individual levels of personal agency and this has a direct impact on our ability to exert influence on our lives. Low level agents think about their actions in terms of details and the methods necessary -- essentially focusing at a low level on the actions to be performed. In contrast, high level agents are able to look at the big picture and determine what the actions mean beyond the immediate result and what effect it will have. No surprise then that high level agency is more impactful.

We develop personal agency across many action domains by experimentation, observation, and adaption of these experiences. This development process begins in infancy and continues throughout our lives but clearly for some people it does not progress beyond low level agency. Personal agency can be promoted if others provide scaffolding for the agent, essentially offering a series of experiences that gradually increase in challenge, and/or provide support. These types of experiences are natural progressions for many life experiences in school, sports, and life skills, for example.

So what differentiates those high level agents from the low level agents? Was there a failure in their early support system? Did they need more or different support than they received? Either or both may be a cause, but Bandura tells us that there is a great deal of research that supports the fact that experiences where we have a lack of control can undermine our level of personal agency.

Fascinating stuff, eh? But it is more than theory. This theory is well supported by decades of research and personal agency impacts real-life issues such as our academic success, professional achievement, and social engagement. As a writing teacher I am especially interested in social cognitive theory and the issue of personal agency. Certainly both have implications for the teaching of writing. I think increasing our (my?) understanding of how personal agency is developed and fostered could be key to helping my students move from struggling to skilled writers. Certainly the implications go beyond first-year writing classes when we study the differences between low and high level agents.

Extensive research has been done on the writing processes of struggling writers and I can quickly see the parallels between those processes and Bandura's description of low level agents. Understanding why those struggling writers have remained low level agents is just as important as understanding the actions we can initiate to help them make the move to high level agency.

The pedagogical choices we make have strong implications for effective changes in our students from low to high level agency. We know the lack of control undermines personal agency. We know giving the opportunity to choose actions, monitor results, and make adjustments accordingly contributes to personal agency. Furthermore, we know the progression from low to high level agent requires scaffolding and support as well as guidance and feedback.

I'm already thinking about how this will change my own practice as a teacher. It certainly makes clearer to me some of the problems with transfer. Once you have reached high level agency then it is easy to transfer skills from one writing context to another. You are skilled at reaching into your bag of tricks, selecting the most appropriate tools for the task at hand, monitoring the success of those tools, and then making adjustments as necessary. The problem, I think, is that low level agents (the majority of my students I suspect) not only have a more limited set of tricks and tools but are much less successful at monitoring and adjusting as necessary and do not put all the available tricks and tools to appropriate use.

I definitely see a connection here between helping increase personal agency and effecting transfer -- and Bandura has helped me understand more clearly how agency can be fostered. The question is to what extent.

The Forgotten "R"

Preparing for your doctoral qualifying exam is more than a bit like scrapbooking. I think this might be true anyway since my scrapbooks are all hideously in need of updating. Doctoral studies have a way of doing that to you. I have spent a great deal of time lately sifting and sorting through books, articles, and notes -- and taken many walks down memory lane in the process. This "scrapbooking" process has also allowed me to take a step back and look at all this academic clutter to see it as a whole and to see patterns I had either missed the first time around or forgotten about while in the midst of gathering new information. Some of those discoveries will provide fodder (hopefully) for my qualifying exam and my dissertation, but one discovery is much more foundational -- my identity as a rhetorician.

I once embraced and celebrated this identity but somewhere during the process of my coursework I was seduced by the idea of technical communication. Further complicating matters was my marriage to composition as a general education writing teacher. My professional identity has always been connected to writing (as a professional writer and editor as well as published novelist before becoming a teacher of writing). This identity became even more intertwined when I took on the role of a National Writing Project site director. The National Writing Project focuses on improving the teaching of writing and one of the main methods for achieving this goal is to help teachers become writers themselves. I love this work but do not want to be defined by it either.

All these titles and roles became perplexing to me. Just what was my primary identity? What was my primary role? While the siren song of technical communication was alluring and interesting and full of wonderful challenges I knew that was not the right fit for me -- too much of my work was tied up in the teaching of writing. Maybe someday I would be able to devote myself entirely to that work, and I certainly had many projects I wanted to explore, but not in my current professional position. Certainly composition fit much of work but that description was too confining, too restricting, it chaffed and had to be discarded. I contemplated the term writing studies long and hard as that seemed to encompass all that I was while also offering the ability to embrace all I wanted to be as well. And yet...some nagging notion remained that something still was not right.

Fortunately for me, my weekend reading included Wayne C. Booth's The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication. This was fortunate because it reminded me that I was a rhetorician -- and that the study of rhetoric covers quite comfortably all the areas of communication that interest me so much as a professional, as a teacher, and as a researcher. Rhetoric includes technical communication, composition, and writing. I didn't need to shop for a new identity -- I just needed to be reminded of one I had tucked into the back of my closet and forgotten. Amazingly, while I have grown and changed since I packed that identity away it still fits well and looks marvelous on me, if I do say so myself.

Booth defines rhetoric as all forms of communication. He shares a number of other popular definitions of rhetoric. A few of my favorites include:

Lloyd Bitzer, 1968 -- "Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action."

Jacques Derrida, 1990 -- "We should not neglect rhetoric's importance, as if it were simply a formal superstructure or technique exterior to the essential activity. Rhetoric is something decisive in society...[T]here are no politics, there is no society, without rhetoric, without the force of rhetoric."

Andrea Lunsford, 1995 -- "Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of [all] human communication."

Marc Fumaroli, 1999 -- "Rhetoric appears as the connective tissue peculiar to civil society and to its proper finalities, happiness and politic peace hic et nunc."

If a rhetorician is a student of communication, as Booth tells us, then I am indeed a rhetorician. I am not just a communicator or teacher of communication -- but a student of communication. I believe those studies will help me become a better communicator and teacher of communication, but those are not the only reasons I study. I study because I find communication fascinating in all its awe-inspiring power.

Booth reminds us that for millenia the study of rhetoric was considered essential. He is concerned, frightened even, by the way we have bastardized rhetorical education today. I agree that the neglect of rhetorical education "threatens our lives" and in fact our whole world. Yes, rhetrickery has given rhetoric a bad name to most of the world -- and perhaps that may have been one of the reasons I avoided defining myself as a rhetorician -- but I believe that rhetoric has the power to change the world.

Certainly as a teacher I believe rhetoric has the power to change lives. Reading and writing well are key to our personal success in both education and professional life. No one disputes that fact but what has gone so horribly wrong with our education system today -- and hence society -- is that we divorce those "skills" from what makes them so meaningful. In order to read and write well we must learn to read and listen critically so we can then communicate effectively in response.

Booth says that the quality of our lives -- our very survival -- depends on the quality of rhetoric and I think that is certainly a field worthy of dedicating my life to studying and teaching. Now if you will excuse me...I need to go update my web site to make it clear that: Deanna Mascle is a rhetorician.