My blogging persona

I am writing my 100th blog post at the same time that many elementary school students are marking their 100^th day of school. For many of those students the 100^th day brings with it an assignment to collect/display/share 100 items of some sort (buttons, paper clips, etc). I can still remember my son agonizing over what he should collect. He wanted it to be something unique, but it also needed to be readily available and portable. Now I can’t even remember what he chose, but I suspect it was something we found in the kitchen. However, my recent consternation about what to do with my 100^th blog post combined with recent Facebook posts by parents and teachers of primary students celebrating the 100^th day of school reminded me of that dilemma and helped me put my own struggle into perspective. Yes, this is an exciting milestone, but there will be many more blog posts to come.

But what can I, or should I, use this occasion to discuss? I started two different posts (about alternate academic career tracks and my annual review) and considered a host of teaching-related posts (my recent experiments with badges and Google+ communities, for example) but in the end decided that these posts can wait for a less momentous occasion.

Then I contemplated whether this might be the best time to wrap up this blog – as a Blogger blog that is. I have a professional web site and have been considering for months the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining a separate blog and web site as well as the issue of Blogger vs. Wordpress. But I’m pretty sure I’m making the switch to a Wordpress blog on my own web site (the control and aesthetic issues I’m having with Blogger are simply beginning to outweigh the advantages of Blogger) so there goes that topic which many others have ably discussed such as this post on The Painted Hive and Build Your Own Blog.

Then I mulled over the idea of discussing my history and development as a blogger. This blog is three years old so I have been able to maintain a fairly consistent presence, but the fact that it took that long to arrive at the magical “100” is a clear indication of my inability to post weekly and doesn’t tell us much about me as a blogger. My tags are a little more telling, but also somewhat problematic as I haven’t always been consistent (or smart) about their use. I’m kind of interested in my Top 5 Posts (as indicated by readership) but that also says more about my readers than about me. In the end, I concluded that a picture was worth more than words and simply plugged my blog into a Wordle. This simple graphic summarizes what my blog is all about.

My description of my blog is:

This blog reflects my interest in writing pedagogy, agency and efficacy, and teaching with technology -- as a rhetorician and researcher as well as writer, teacher of writers, and teacher of writing teachers.

The Wordle clearly highlights the topics that I write about although some trends were a little surprise to me. Obviously as a teacher and National Writing Project site director issues surrounding students, classes, and education are of keen interest and I clearly write about them a lot. However, I tend to write from a more personal place about my own experiences and experiments in my classroom. As a social media proponent and online teacher/learner it is also not surprising to see that idea highlighted.  Similarly, as I am interested in the idea of community as a teacher, administrator, and researcher I was not surprised to see that featured prominently. But I was rather surprised to see that writing was not among the most prominent topics I write about. Perhaps I need to consider that as I plan future blog posts. I think using Wordle as a reflective and analytical tool can help a blogger consider the past and plan for the future. It was certainly a worthwhile exercise for me.

Finally, after reading Pat Thomson’s post about blogging identity I decided that this might be the perfect time to explore my own blogging identity. Like Thomson (and most other humans), I have multiple private and professional identities and have written about this identity problem before. However, I tend to keep this blog focused on my various professional identities (although I have upon occasion discussed more personal topics that connected with these professional interests). I do not do a good job separating the personal from the private when it comes to social media, but that is another post for another day. Unlike Thomson, I did not delete my rant about education, but then as someone who works (and writes and researches about that work) with teachers I think my concerns about my son’s education touch on (at least peripherally) what I write about in the normal course of blogging.

I really like two ideas that Thomson shares in her post. I, too, blog in an effort to “de-privatize” my own thoughts and struggles with teaching, learning, and researching. Yes, I sometimes worry that I overshare, but as someone who advocates reflection for her own students how can I not practice what I preach? I truly believe in the importance of reflection to learning and growth and this blog plays a tremendous role in my own growth and learning. Interconnected with this is the simple fact that I am a teacher and a National Writing Project site director. As such it is my job, my duty, my calling to make visible my struggles, failures, and successes in hopes that these experiences will provide lessons for others as well as my entrée into conversations about these issues. That is the power of blogging and social media – that I can connect/communicate and learn/share with someone like PatThomson who is not even on my continent.

Also, blogging is a powerful tool for creating that sense of “there” that Thomson discusses in her post. Face-to-face and real-time connections can be powerful and have a long-term impact, but they are also transitory. I have a terrible memory, especially when it comes to verbal interactions, but blogging can live on and remains accessible. It can provide a “just in time” spark or response -- at least I hope mine does.

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.

I have found balance and you can too

Those who spend time with me enough to know how extremely uncoordinated I am are probably laughing out loud, but it is true. I have found balance – or at least more balance than I may have ever had before in my adult life – and it is awesome. I am still not physically coordinated and I am often extremely busy but I have worked very hard this semester to achieve some balance in my life and I am pretty happy with what I have accomplished. Believe me, if I can do it then there is hope for you as well. This is my hope that you will make finding balance one of your resolutions for the new year.

This time last year my job was killing me. I was bone-tired and stressed to the limits of human endurance. Then in May my body sent me an urgent message to change or else! In May and June I wrote about the need to find more balance and my initial struggles with it (see Rising From the Ashes and Have You Got Balance). Six months later I can report that I am doing great physically and emotionally. I must say that the life changes I enacted this summer were the best decisions I ever made. Of course it is one thing to make changes during the summer, but another to keep them once the school year gets underway. The simple fact that I can report that I am happy and healthy now tells me that I have kept on my path and that is good news.

Drawing lines

Perhaps the most important part of this new life plan was changing the way that I work. In the past my flexible work schedule meant in reality that I was working seven days a week, morning, noon, and night.  Now I rarely work in the evening and while I still do some weekend work I try to restrict it to a few hours. It isn’t always easy but I accomplish this by following two strict rules:

·         You can’t and shouldn’t do everything

·         Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

That first rule is a tough one. It is so often easier (or so we think) to simply do something ourselves rather than to let someone else do it. Worse, it is often easier to do something ourselves than to find and convince someone else to take on a task (and then to provide the support they need to do it without micromanaging). However, I have delegated and divided a number of tasks that have made my life easier. Other jobs I eliminated altogether by reasoning that if no one else was interested in taking on that program then it was time to let it go. Quite simply it was about not doing anything just because I had always done it. I reevaluate regularly before putting a job on my list. Is this something that needs to be done? Really? If so then am I really the best, the only, person to do it?

I have always been the Queen of the To Do List, but I have learned to readjust my thinking there as well. I still use them to plan and manage my time, but now I make sure to spend time not just writing down the millions of things I need to do but also sifting and sorting. If this is a job that I need to do then I ask myself when it needs to be done. Does it need to be done today? What happens it if doesn’t get done until next week? Next month? Similarly, the tasks that don’t get done are not simply moved from one day to the next without asking the question – why didn’t this get done? It is about prioritizing every day and every week. The first week of classes means that course planning and management are top priorities just as last week was mostly about grading. However, there are other weeks when program planning or report writing might be the priority and my students drop to second place. Not everything can or should be top priority all the time. A hard lesson but I think I have it now!

Putting Me First

Changing my life has meant making a lot of hard decisions, and even more difficult, sticking with them. Now my priority list includes doing things for myself. Every week I make time to write because this is something I need and want to do. I make time to exercise regularly not because I want to (still waiting for that promised energy boost) but because it is important for my health and I have found I can get some good thinking time in on the elliptical so that is a plus. I make time to spend with my friends (although I still need to do better with this) because I need to laugh and vent and celebrate life. These are things I need to do for my mind, body, and soul. Carving time out of a busy schedule and putting off my real work to attend to my writing, my health, and my relationships is not selfish. OK, maybe it is, but being selfish is OK and even necessary when it comes to a balanced life. After all, if I don’t look out for me then who will?

Another difficult decision, especially after the fact that my job nearly killed me, was taking myself off the market this fall. I knew that I could not afford to devote the time and energy to an academic job search plus I knew from past experience how time-consuming, stressful, and soul-destroying such a search can be. I wanted to devote my time and energy to maintaining my new-found balance as well as the development of new projects and possibilities. I knew I was sacrificing opportunities and I still torture myself by reading the job ads and wondering “what if” but as I end the semester tired but not empty I know that I made the right decision. I am looking forward to the work currently on my list and I am satisfied with the work I completed this fall. My current job is not perfect. I am underpaid and under-recognized and under-appreciated. But I am doing important work that makes a difference. I am teaching, I am supporting practicing teachers on my campus as well as in my region, I am mentoring pre-service teachers and new teachers, and I have the opportunity to influence educational policy on my campus. That’s a pretty good gig so I’m not dwelling on the “what ifs” too much. Instead, I am focusing on celebrating and focusing on the positives.

My life and career path choices are not for everyone, but now I can look back over the past semester and know that I made the right ones for me. I am excited about the changes that 2013 can bring and happy that 2012 is wrapping up much better than I could have forseen back in May. If there is one gift that I would give to you (well after world peace) it would be for you to find more balance in your life. Happiness will follow I promise. Now ask yourself: What can you do to find more balance and happiness in your life?

Writers as Reflective Practitioners

This week our Faculty Learning Community focused on the Morehead Writing Project met and we talked about our top priority for our writing classrooms and because many of us are also engaged in mentoring instructors and tutors we also talked about our primary goal for those writing instructors and tutors. It was a lively and interesting conversation, but what really struck me is that ultimately all our answers could be boiled down to one simple response: reflective practice.

The concept of reflective practice is to engage in continuous learning. Engaging in reflective practice requires an inherent belief that we are never done learning and growing. Reflective practice requires that we learn from experience rather than teaching or knowledge transfer.

The teacher as reflective practitioner is an important part of our work with the National Writing Project. We encourage the teachers we work with to continually reflect on what is happening in their classrooms to think about what is working and what is not as well as why. It is that reflection upon the why that is key to this practice of growth and development.

In recent years I have incorporated reflective practice into my work with writers as well as teachers. Writers learn and grow by writing but also by reflecting on their past experience, both challenges and successes. What were their goals? What did they do to achieve those goals? What worked? What did not? Understanding the answers to these questions can help writers adapt their practice to future situations and better position them to make better choices.

My goal is always to make my students into writers, but more important, to make them into self-regulating writers. Reflective practice is essential to this transformation into self-regulating writer. With reflection, with a recognition and practice of continually reflecting on the lessons offered by each experience, writers can continue to learn and grow long after they leave the writing classroom and hopefully throughout the rest of their lives. That is my goal for my students and I am continually refining my pedagogical strategies to achieve this goal.

This blog is my own struggle to be a reflective practitioner. I hope that others benefit from my posts, but ultimately I know I am the primary beneficiary as I record my achievements, defeats, struggles, and progress. Do you engage in reflective practice? Do your students?

Are you spending enough time thinking about writing?

My students don’t spend enough time thinking about writing – and probably yours don’t either. I understand why. After all, they have lots of other things on their mind. And to be honest, I sometimes don’t think about writing as much as I should and this is my field of interest, my passion, and the driving force behind my paycheck.

As a writer who spends a lot of time with other writers, I also know that too much thinking about writing can be a bad thing – a dangerous thing. It often leads to the two primary dangers facing writers (well the two leading dangers after avoiding the siren call of Words With Friends) -- spending so much time thinking about what to write or how to write it you actually forget to write. Either rabbit hole can lead to madness and put an immediate end to productivity.

 The truth is that for most of our students too much thinking is not a problem. I want to blame our current education system for this lack of thinking. After all, our obsession with assessment and interminable pushing to teach to the test has created a monstrous education system which offers very little time for simple thinking and reflection. Even worse, there are only penalties and no rewards for encouraging thought and inquiry in the typical K-12 setting. But that is another blog post. I must confess that even though I grew up in a kinder, gentler era of education where there was time and energy devoted to reading, writing, and creativity, and my teachers were not worried about how test scores would impact their job, I did not spend a lot of time thinking about the art and craft of writing. And I KNEW that I wanted to be a writer, so I can only imagine that my classmates spent even less time on it.

I believe that this is a problem, this lack of thinking about writing, we should worry about as writing teachers. Many of my peers want to spend a great deal of time obsessing about the two dangers I mentioned above – the what and the how of writing. In fact, that is what my students obsess about the most as well (hmmm, perhaps there is a relationship there). We spend meetings debating whether to assign a persuasive essay or an analytical essay and, of course, students’ punctuation choices often provoke hilarity, but is that where we should be spending our time and our students’ time?

I don’t want to dismiss the importance of grammatical knowledge or genre awareness, but I believe we will not solve the challenges of either without helping our student writers develop a deeper awareness of writing. Writing is not WHAT we write and it is much more than following formatting, grammar, and spelling rules. We need to help our students think like writers before they can become writers. This concern is one of the primary motivations behind the “writing about writing” movement in composition studies. In WAW-based classes, students read theory and research about writing studies, think and discuss their reading, and then write about these ideas as well as study writing on their own.

While I have moved my own teaching away from a WAW-focus, I still focus a great deal of class time and energy on reflection and discussion about writing because I believe that writers do obsess about what and how as well as why. Writers write but they also think about writing -- and, in particular, they think about their writing. I want my students to become writers and I believe an essential part of that transformation must involve learning to think like a writer which means we must think about writing and how writers think and behave. I do this by leading weekly class discussions on these issues and requiring students spend reflective time each week on these issues as well. Not only do I hope to use these tools to transform my students into writers, but this process also helps me spend more time thinking about writing. Win-Win. Do you spend enough time thinking about writing? Do you spend enough time encouraging your students to think about writing?

Staying Put (off the tenure track), For Now

I just made a really big decision. A momentous decision that could potentially destroy my future (if you follow recent cyber discussions regarding the expiration date on new Ph.Ds) – I am not going on the job market this Fall.

I have decided to stay put – for now – at my current institution even though I do not have tenure or even the promise of it dangling from a stick. I have made this decision for a number of personal and professional reasons. I know (from the reactions of my friends) that not everyone will support my decision and to be honest I have had second and third thoughts myself. As a champion second-guesser (I gave up my amateur status in grade school), I am sure that I will continue to be plagued by doubts – especially over the next month or so when job postings continue to pop up. It is easy to be seduced by the dream of greener pastures, especially when you are an underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked adjunct (my colleague has blogged extensively about our work situation as well so you can judge the good, the bad, and the ugly of our institutional home for yourself). I admit, when you look at my current job title and pay and weigh those against my credentials (11 years teaching full-time at college level, Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech, publications, administrative and grant experience with National Writing Project) as well as the fact that I am teaching upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes that are not in my contract (I was hired and continue to be hired to teach composition), you have to admit it is crazy to stay.

And yet…this fall I started a new program that I am enjoying immensely. It is so much fun and so rewarding and has such tremendous potential that I don’t want to leave it yet. I want to see how its future unfolds. I need to give it more than a year to grow. I want to let it leaf out and blossom before I stop tending it. In addition, I have the opportunity to move out of my current position into something that offers better pay and a better title. But the catch is that this new position does not include tenure any more than my current one does. This is worrisome for many reasons. First, of course, is that my position is vulnerable. I am subject to the vagaries of budgets and administrative whims, but then this is nothing new for me. After all, I have been a full-time adjunct for 11 years. But another major worry, especially since the whole Ph.D. expiration firestorm, is that such a move will damage my potential to move onto the tenure track in the future. I have decided to take the risk for personal as well as professional reasons.

Professionally, as I noted above, I have the opportunity to create something with my Writing Studio program. In addition, the new opportunity will involve continuing this work as well as reinventing a job and working with some new (but really terrific) people. This is exciting stuff. This is the stuff of which dreams are made. Why should I trade in these exciting new opportunities to audition for a job (with the odds against me even landing it) with duties and opportunities decided by others? Plus, instead of spending hours crafting my job materials and digital presence not to mention researching institutions, programs, etc., I can instead focus on developing new programs and publishing about those programs and the work they accomplish. I refuse to believe that work will not reap benefits for me professionally but maybe I am just naïve.

Personally, my family has put our lives on hold for years and we have been living in that limbo land that academic families know so well. We constantly frame decisions (from vacations to home renovations) around the academic job market. Do we expect to move this year or next? Should we make that long-term investment in our house when we may not be here much longer? Can we plan that vacation for next summer when we might be in the middle of a move? Quite frankly, we all deserve a break from that stress and upheaval. And, perhaps most important of all, after supporting me while I earned my Ph.D. as well as through last year’s fruitless job search, my family deserves a happier and (relatively) stress-free me for a while. Heck, we all deserve it!

For the next year or so I intend to focus on sustainable parenting, sustainable spousehood, and sustainable personhood. Wish me luck and don’t judge me too harshly.

Writing Studio & Breaking Boundaries

I am creating a writing studio as part of the work of my National Writing Project site at Morehead State University and I am very excited about this work and its potential for impacting both the teaching and learning of writing at MSU on many levels.

Why a writing studio and not a writing center or writing lab? Studios have a long tradition as a place for artists or musicians to work. A studio is a place of creation and collaboration and synergy. I want to create a program that fosters the kind of discussion and energy and growth you might see in a studio.

A writing studio focuses on the writer and not the writing by providing a cognitive apprenticeship in a community of practice (see Lerner’s The Idea of a Writing Laboratory) where learning takes place through guided practice. The guidance takes the form of group discussion focused on cognitive and metacognitive issues rather than physical skills and process. The idea is that through observation, coaching, and independent practice, students develop as successful learners and acquire the reflective and self-regulating tools required to be a successful writer.

In Teaching/Writing in Thirdspaces, Grego and Thompson describe a writing studio as a reflective space where writers communicate about generating and developing ideas as well as refine approaches, processes, and attitudes about writing. Greg and Thompson point out this is generative learning that builds understanding through work and experience. Sessions are focused on the production of student work and the processes student engage in to produce it.

Too often the teaching of writing is a closed system that focuses on errors and students ignorance of rules and conventions, but a studio allows us to explore together the rhetorical situation. As Greg and Thompson note: studio presents a different way of “being” with student writers and this different way of being excited me as a teacher and as a teacher of teachers. While this type of cooperative inquiry is reminiscent of Elbow’s work and the way that I teach writing myself, it takes the writing workshop and peer review approaches used by many (including myself) to another level that I believe can plan in important role in the development of metarhetorical awareness. I am interested in the idea of focusing discussion not just on student writing but instead using it as the rhetorical context.

As I study and research in preparation for embarking on this project in August, I am excited by the potential for MSU and the Morehead Writing Project as well as how this work will impact me as a teacher of writing. However, I am still struggling with the implications of this work for me as a technical communicator and taking the writing studio model far beyond the basic writing and composition classrooms that are its traditional home. Grego and Thompson describe the writing studio as a place to explore and negotiate the institutional spaces/places that influence our lives and our writing and as a rhetorician this is something we should continue to address as communications professionals. I expect I will be writing a lot more about this in the weeks to come but I would really appreciate others’ thoughts on the implications of writing studio for technical communication students and professionals.

Teaching Drafting or Drafting Teaching

This is always the point in the semester when I curse my decision to teach writing – and especially to teach the writing process. I don’t so much teach the writing process as a lesson, but as an experience and that is the problem. For all of our lofty classroom conversations about ideas, audience, and structure and all the brainstorming, journaling and reflection we do, there always comes that moment of truth when students submit a draft of their paper or project to the class workshop.  And now, I am forced, against my will, to give them advice that hopefully will make their next draft better. It is a lot of work. It is time consuming. It is life draining. What is especially depressing is that for all the hours I spend passing along this advice only a fraction of the advice will be taken and often that fraction will consist almost exclusively of surface errors and easy fixes (“reword this sentence” will be acted on while “rethink your organization” will be ignored).

Why are students so resistant to drafting?

Of course, not all of them are. This is also the point in the semester when I receive a lot of feedback about my successes and failures as a teacher in the form of both anonymous class evaluations and through students’ final reflections about what they have learned and how they have grown. In both of these, students’ reactions to this process of learning to draft and revise tend to the extreme, if opposite, ends of the spectrum.

Some students continue to resist and protest against “meaningless work” and “writing the same paper over and over” while others celebrate breaking the habit of “writing the night before an assignment is due” and “learning to be a writer.” I am thrilled to read that some students “finally understand what it means to be a writer” and are confident that they are “on their way.” But then there are the others…

They do not want to think about their writing and do not want to invest anything (certainly not much time let alone blood, sweat, or tears) in their writing. They have been taught a formula to write during their K-12 education and do not understand why I can’t give them a simple formula for college writing as well. Or worse, they have mastered that K-12 formula which has served them well on standardized tests (which is, after all, why so much K-12 writing focuses on this formula) and so when I question that formula or fail to grade a formulaic essay with anything less than an “A” then it is because I am a #@$%&.

I love drafting. Learning about drafting changed my life (and not just my writing life – it made me a writer which made my professional life possible). Even now, warning nerd sighting ahead, just the simple act of reading the definitions for draft supplied by Merriam-Webster makes me smile. The first definition “the act of drawing a net” is actually a wonderful description of the way I begin writing. My first drafts almost always involve casting a wide net as I long ago mastered the art of the “Shitty First Draft” advocated by Anne Lamott. I could actually write a whole blog post just about the definitions of draft and maybe I will on another day, but the point is that I am an enthusiastic drafter and sell it with evangelic zeal as well as build it into the structure of all my classes, but not all my students are buying.

I think some of the problem is that until you have really seen what a difference it makes in your writing then drafting just seems like a lot of unnecessary work – and even more work if you are involved in a workshop or feedback loop of some kind. This is when I try to explain to my students that drafting may appear to be more work, but it really isn’t because drafting is actually a lot more efficient and productive work. In racing, cycling and motorsports, drafting or slipstreaming is well-known to reduce the expenditure of energy and I believe there is a similar effect involved in writing drafts. Unfortunately, no photographers have captured cool visuals to demonstrate this effect.

Paula Krebs writes in “Next Time, Fail Better” that humanities students need to learn how to learn from failure, but I believe this is something we can all learn to do better. How can I teach my students to think about failure in a more positive way? How can I teach my students to learn from their mistakes? How can I teach them to understand that some failure is expected along the way? How can I teach them that there is not only no such thing as the perfect first draft but typically the final draft is far from perfect as well. I don’t know yet, but I have some ideas I want to try. As Krebs also writes, teaching is all about learning from failure. Every semester is a fresh draft of classes and lessons we have taught before as well as some shitty first drafts. I know that I am far from that finished, polished product (or teacher) I dream of becoming. But the good news is that my next draft is due in only a few weeks.

Reflection on Reflection

As I blogged about reflection in September:

“I believe strongly in the power of reflection to help writers learn and grow, but there is one problem with reflection as a tool for change – humans are lazy and thinking is hard.”

However, I persevere with the uphill struggle to make my students reflective writers. This semester I modified my approach to reflection. In the past I have required journals and used Twitter but this semester I expanded the process.

It begins with a Prompt that I post on the class blog. This is more than the quick one- or two-sentence prompt which I used in the past and actually approaches more of a mini-lecture of sorts. My intent is to provide a lot of fodder for reflection. For my Writing I students that has meant exploring topics such as writing, literacy, and education. My Professional Writing students have explored professional writing and rhetoric, their professional and personal goals, grant writing, and grant reporting.

I then ask students to journal about the prompt topic. These are not graded and I’m looking for nothing more than a brain dump of sorts. Students are then asked to discuss the prompt topic and the questions it raises in a Blackboard forum. Finally, I ask them to share their thoughts via Twitter. I have been collecting their Tweets on these topics using Storify and I find that I really like having those snapshots of their discussions.

For example, that first week my Writing 1 students reflected on what it means to be a writer. I know I can’t convince all my freshmen writers that they are indeed writers, but every semester hope springs anew. They then moved on to discuss literacy and education as well as their importance.

My Professional Writing students really enjoyed learning more about and discussing rhetoric and professional writing during that first week. I think it was a great place to begin our semester’s work. In preparation for choosing their topics for their semester projects and helping me create a meaningful course, they then discussed their life goals.

While I am sure that many of my students are not enjoying this process as much as I am, I hope that ultimately they take away some important lessons from this reflection.

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?

The Importance of the Right Teacher

Hello, as your writing teacher for this semester I want you to understand a little about why I teach the way that I teach. Not every student responds to my teaching style and I want you to understand what you are getting yourself into while there is still time to take another class.

I am a big believer that people learn from doing and trying and pursuing their own investigations. I can’t teach you (very much) – but I can help you learn (a great deal). Teaching does not equal learning.

I have spent my professional life writing but I still remember a time when I thought the ability to write well was a gift that some people possessed – and that I did not. I know better now but I still secretly (and sometimes out loud) suspect that everyone else writes better than I do. What saves me from quitting is the knowledge that I know that many people who are better writers – and make their living from writing – feel those same doubts. Maybe that makes me a lesser person but it comforts me nonetheless.

I have learned that the best way to become a better writer is to write, get some feedback (including my own), think about what I’ve written and that feedback, then write some more. I have learned this the hard way in newsrooms and slaving away at magazine articles and novels and I am still grateful to the many writing groups who helped me improve my craft.

Each of these beliefs shapes the kind of teacher that I am and the way that I teach. What does this mean for you?

Believing that people learn by doing means that while I will deliberately present you with learning challenges in an effort to drive your learning experience, I will not give you an instruction manual, recipe, or formula. Rarely is there one magical perfect way to do something so why would I make you learn that way? I’d much rather you work out the best way for you. This is difficult for many students – especially those who want a recipe for getting an A. Another important aspect of this belief is that I rarely answer a question right off the bat. I’ll meet you halfway, but I expect you to give as well as receive. This means that I don’t want to hear that you are confused. I want to hear what you do understand and at what point you got confused as well as what you think/guess. I will never penalize you for thinking, but I do get frustrated when you don’t think and sometimes when I’m tired and cranky that frustration shows.

I never believed I could be a writer. I totally get the fear of writing that many of you possess and the bone-deep knowledge that you will never ever be a writer because writing is easy for other people. Let me clue you in. Writing is hard – for everyone. There are days when I wish I could be back hauling kegs of beer and boxes of chicken parts because that work would be easier and grease burns less painful than banging my head on my desk. Yes, there are days when my writing goes well but that is not because I have a gift or talent (or secret formula), but because I have a lot of experience and practice. I know how to prime the pump to get the words flowing and I know a number of tricks to help me when the flow stops. There will be a number of writing assignments that don’t result in a grade or have a word count – just an expectation – because I am teaching you some of those tricks so when the time comes to draft a paper it won’t be as painful as it has been in the past. This is not meaningless make-work but it might feel like it at the time.

Finally, I’m going to ask you to engage in a level of thinking about your writing that you have likely never engaged in before. This is not simply giving the writing process a wink and a nod. This is not going through the motions of peer review. This is honest reflection about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what you need to do to become a better writer. The key here is not what you need to do to earn an A or whatever goal you have set for yourself, but what will make you a better writer. Grades come and go but improving yourself is forever and that is my goal.

Ultimately, you have to decide if you want to really learn how to be a better writer and start working on that goal or if you would rather take a safer and more straight-forward writing class.

How well did my semester plan work?

As Robert Burns noted: “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley” or the more popularly known “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry.” While my class plans rarely (I hope) lead to grief and pain or even joy, this quote is apt for my teaching experience. Every teacher knows that the “best laid” lesson plans rarely work out exactly as planned but as WC Fields wisely noted: “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Perhaps it is the second part of that quote that most applies to my blog post: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

If I want to learn and grow as a teacher then I must evaluate and reflect on the successes and failures of my past classes – and perhaps most important I must learn from them so I can avoid making the same “damn fool” mistakes. I try to keep this in mind every semester as I embark on the 3x3semester evaluation suggested by Profhacker.

First, three things that went well: focus on community, reading groups, and emphasizing reflection. This semester I focused on developing class community and teaching my students about why community is important (as students and as writers). I deliberately used Twitter as a tool to build community in my class as well as to teach students about community. I think this worked well and I’m finally realizing the potential of using Twitter as a teaching tool. I also created reading discussion groups to further support community and to solve some of the problems I’ve been having with my reading assignment. These were a definite improvement over letting students go solo and forming them around student interests solved some of the problems I experienced with past reading groups. Finally, I placed even more emphasis on reflection than before. I continued with literacy narratives as before but I added journals, reflection discussions, and Twitter notes to provide further opportunity for reflection throughout the semester. I had used all these in the past but was much more deliberate about connecting them this semester and I was pleased with how that worked out.

Now, three things that didn’t work so well: reading groups, writing workshop, and rubrics. Organizing the reading groups by interest worked really well and I think helped students connect with each other and the material in more meaningful ways. However, I am still doing too much of the heavy lifting here to organize them. I need to get out of their way and let them do the work. I definitely need to micromanage less next semester. Same is true for writing workshop. I need to orchestrate the process but be careful about stepping in too soon or they will never learn to do it without the training wheels. Finally, I need to redo/rework/reconsider my use of rubrics. I don’t feel they are adequately representing evaluation.

Finally, I plan to restructure both my reading group and writing workshop assignments as well as redo my rubrics. This last will be the most challenging because I’m thinking about making it a collaborative exercise with input from my students. I’m not prepared to totally relinquish my control over this but I think making it a collaborative exercise could be a good learning/teaching tool which will fit in well with my intended focus for the spring semester. I’m teaching Writing I for the first time in a while and I intend to focus on not only how we become (more) literate but why it is important. Our reading and writing will focus on that topic which still falls within my writing-about-writing interest of the past but will allow me to work with my increasing interest in reflection and community as well as the citizenship aspect my program assessment requires.

You can lead a student to her journal but you can’t make her reflect – or can you

I believe strongly in the power of reflection to help writers learn and grow, but there is one problem with reflection as a tool for change – humans are lazy and thinking is hard. We don’t always choose the path of least resistance, but most of the time we want to see clear rewards linked to that greater challenge. That means it is up to me – the writing teacher – to make my students understand that the time and energy they spend seriously reflecting on their writing will be rewarded. Reflection in my writing classroom incorporates four tools or sets of tasks: journals, tweets, class discussion, and literacy narratives.

At various points over the past decade I have used journals in my writing classes, but it was not until I threw myself into the “Writing About Writing” movement that I found journals really worked for me in terms of seeing students learn and grow from their use. In the past, journals tended to be cluttered with minutia about students and frequently referred to writing in only the most superficial ways. However, more recently I have taken to requiring fewer journal entries (perhaps 10 for an entire semester) but giving fairly specific prompts that ask students to think about their past, present and future writing habits and experiences.

Journals are only the first step of the process. I then ask them to distill this longer journal entry into a Tweet which is sent to our class Twitter feed. I have two reasons for this. First, I want them to delve deep beneath the surface for the journal entry, but I also want them to pull out the one important message that can be found in that reflection. Perhaps more important, I want them to see how that important message fits into the larger world and the experiences of other writers. Using the class Twitter feed connects their thoughts with their classmates but using Twitter hashtags connect their thoughts with writers from around the globe. I am so proud of some of their observations that I retweet them in my personal stream.

We then take those ideas and conversational threads to our class discussion board where we can expand and comment more cohesively on what we started in Twitter. I have found staging the discussion after the journal entries and Tweets are posted provides more fodder for a good discussion. However, what I find most rewarding is that this conversation becomes about the students and their questions and observations. I am very excited that there are days when I can simply be a participant and not a leader because the students play an active role and have something to say so they do not need prodding and steering.

Finally, I use literacy narrative to channel this conversation back to the individual writer. I assign a literacy narrative in two parts – one part at the beginning of the semester and one at the end. Part one is focused more on the writer’s past and what has formed them as the literate person they are today as well as exploring their views on the definition of writer and whether or not they consider themselves one as well as the issue of the overall importance of communication skills in the modern world. Part two draws together the lessons learned and challenges faced over the course of the semester. Each major assignment includes a cycle of journal, Tweet, and discussion which in turn feeds the literacy narrative. I also ask students to look back at their early thoughts and opinions about writing to see what has changed for them.

I have found this recursive reflection has inspired my students to think more deeply about their writing and reach more thoughtful conclusions than before. Or perhaps I should say – more of my students are doing so. There have always been a number of students every semester who have responded to my call for reflection, but there are usually a large number of students who resist thinking deeply (at least on record). However, adding in the public reflection on Twitter has meant that students realize they are not alone with their struggles and challenges which frequently tends to open discussion about these challenges and thinking about these struggles in ways students refused to do before. Also, the class discussions mix in enough thoughtful discussion to inspire some students to delve deeper than they originally intended. Like Yancey, O’Neill, Leaker and Ostman, and others I believe that these types of metacognitive activities make students better writers and are part of the writing process of successful writers. My dissertation results further confirmed this belief for me. In my study of adult writers I found that the writers who set goals and were involved in purposeful introspection about their writing became more confident writers.

Metareflection

My number one goal for the students in my writing classes is to help them grow into more reflective writers. While I recognize that I cannot teach them every lesson they will need in the coming years of writing in college and beyond, I hope that helping them become more reflective about their writing will in turn result in more self-regulation and greater self-confidence.

Achieving self-regulation and self-efficacy are my ultimate goals, but I have come to believe over 10-plus years of studying, theorizing and practicing the teaching of writing that reflection is the key to achieving the goals of self-regulation and self-efficacy in writers.

Albert Bandura defines self-efficacy beliefs as a person’s belief in their capability to produce the desired effect through deliberate action. Decades of research in diverse fields has shown that self-efficacy is a more consistent predictor of behavioral outcomes than other self-beliefs. In particular, research suggests that beliefs about writing processes and competence are instrumental to the writer’s ultimate success as a writer (Note: the work of Frank Pajares and his associates has greatly influenced mine). Self-efficacy beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy with positive self-efficacy beliefs leading to positive outcomes and negative self-efficacy beliefs leading to negative outcomes. This is not because of the power of positive (or negative) thinking, but simply that our thoughts and beliefs influence our behavior. Our self-efficacy beliefs influence our chosen course of action, perseverance and resiliency when experiencing difficulty, and reaction to stress and depression. If we possess low self-efficacy then we avoid the challenges that could help us develop new skills or hone existing skills and we give up much easier when facing difficulties. If we possess high self-efficacy then we accept (even seek out) new challenges and persevere through difficulty by seeking new skills and tools to solve problems.

Clearly (in my opinion) there is a link between self-efficacy and self-regulation, but how does reflection link to self-efficacy and self-regulation? First, regular written reflection provides two important sources of self-efficacy – mastery experience and vicarious experience. Experience writing is a key part of developing writing self-efficacy. Obviously reflection cannot be the only writing a student conducts but it is certainly valuable writing experience. However, the real value of reflection in terms of writing self-efficacy is reflection that involves vicarious experiences such as making observations about the practices and habits as well as successes and failures of other writers then learning to make similar observations about their own writing. If done well then reflection can serve not only as an important source of writing self-efficacy but also lead to greater self-regulation and better writing.

Another important way that reflection impacts self-efficacy and self-regulation is helping students begin to engage with their own writing on a deeper level and to take responsibility for their own growth and development as writers. Once you begin thinking about your writing not as a one-size-fits-all proposition but as influenced by the rhetorical context then you are truly on the path to become a writer. Reflective writers think about their own writing and the choices they have made and can make as well as the consequences of those choices. Once engaged in reflection then writers can continue their growth and development long after they leave my classroom.

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.