Interspecies Love

This entry is about as personal as an entry can get. My dog, Ali, died today. He had cancer. I loved him more than anything. I have marveled at inter-species love. Actually, I marvel at love. I would have climbed up on the cross for Ali. I can't sleep tonight, because all I can do is think of kissing him good-bye and telling him I loved him.

DeCentering Writing Studies

I have finished taking notes on Laura Micciche’s Doing Emotion. Her book was well worth my reading. I appreciated most of what she wrote. And in those places where I had to acknowledge different universes, she brought up points for discussion.

Her important point to me involves the materiality of emotion: that we see emotion and we read emotion in texts—again, understanding texts as only superficially static. When we read emotions in texts, we are obviously reading ourselves, our histories, out cultures, our relationships with others, our friends we have loved, those who have died, those who have faded from our lives but left in our minds their traces.

Micciche makes a convincing argument to the necessity of paying attention to the materiality of emotion through language. Her larger point contests the debilitating dichotomy between emotion and reason—as if they could ever be separated by a theoretical centrifuge.

I believe with Micciche that when students are emotionally invested in whatever they write, they will write better than when defending some kind of canned topic. Not only will they write better, they will learn more about writing by having been engaged in the writing act.

Although Micciche links Marx’s theory of alienated labor to her overly-labored argument positioning composition and writing program administration as subjugated and feminized, I might turn it against what I have previously called performative, fake, or school writing—when we ask students to write essays demonstrating their competence or knowledge in order to achieve an external reward—a grade (see Daniel Pink’s TED talk on extrinsic vs intrinsic rewards). Reframed, we can see this kind of writing as alienated labor, labor that is “external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself . . . mortifies his body and ruins his mind.” This frame of school-writing might help to explain the marked difference between the kind of writing we get when we ask for honest or bogus information.

I appreciate the general thrust of Micciche’s argument, but I have to wonder about the space between what she and I see or whether one or both of us are blind. I wrote in a previous post that I have never “felt” the subjugation of writing studies or writing program administration—and I have often wondered about the disenfranchised claims—which Micciche extensively documents. I don’t have space to disentangle our differences here. I have always felt respected within the academic environment—and I think many of my WPA friends  have felt the same. I think some of this difference might be located in social class relationships—I don’t know. I do know that as a Writing Program Administrator, as a Professor, I have occupied an incredibly privileged social position. And I know that as a WPA, one of my dominant projects is to abdicate disenfranchised academic labor.  There is absolutely no logic that supports requiring writing courses taught by part-time teachers (other than the logic of profit).

Micciche argues extensively that Writing Studies suffers from its link to materialism, caring, affect. I think as a field we may have overly disenfranchised ourselves. I have seen a long history of rhetoric and composition scholars (note the way in which we have linked composition to “rhetoric”) attempting to argue for the centrality of our field. To me, these arguments have seemed silly. I think it’s equally important for citizens to be able to name in distant order the planets in our solar system as to be able to define ethos, logos, and pathos. I think as scholars we need to pay some attention to how our arguments make ourselves the center of the intellectual universe.  I love to write. If I can pass that on, that seems good enough. I’m not certain that this love should be required.

Writing Program Administration and Labor

I should be doing other work, but I have continued to struggle through Micciche's Doing Emotion this morning. The reading struggle has changed as I have moved through the chapters. In the early chapters, I resisted her theoretical language. I felt as if she were reproducing high-fives in the field. Micciche notes elsewhere Peter Herman's complaint that scholars in the field have reduced themselves in the tenure game to re-saying currently popular saids. I doubt that this trend is new. It might simply be an unannounced tradition of scholarship, mimicking a cultural phenomenon of resaying what's au courant. And who can blame? We all want to be known (see my previous post on numbers).

Here's how my reading struggle has changed. I strenuously resisted the  theoretical language in her first chapters, although I value, in my current emotional struggle with my dog's cancer, much of what she claims. We might even be "on the same page" (please forgive me). In her later chapters, the overly nominalized, abstract phrasing merged into straight language. But her message shifted from theorizing the ontology of emotion to a kind of rant (the kind to which I am prone). I think she has inherited this rant. I am materializing it here because I think the rant disables effective writing program administration and productive theorizing and scholarship in our field (loosely, the field of Writing Studies).

The first one involves the derogation of writing program administration. I have been a WPA in three institutions, beginning in 1990. I admit I am male--and my gender distorts my perception, but I have never felt marginalized in my work. In the three universities in which I have worked, I have always felt respected, my work and responsibilities certainly equal to a literary scholar's responsibility to acquaint students with Milton. Our responsibility is to help students with their writing, to make writing, like reading, a part of their personal, professional, and civic lives. I can't think of a more important responsibility.

As Writing Program Administrators, we are embedded within a historical labeling of our work as grunt as opposed to the etherealized labor of our literary brothers and sisters, but this imbrication doesn't mean we have to buy it. We can engage in the conversation, not be submerged by it. I have always been proud of my role in helping students make writing a part of their lives. I couldn't have wanted anything else. I also know many colleagues who have felt this sense of mission: of our desire to bring the magic of writing into our students lives. Most readers of this blog will know the names--the people who have thought of writing as pleasure, discovery, communication. NOT argument.

We have been embedded within an historically institutionalized structure that has profited from the "Johnny Can't Write" mythology. We require first-year writing and institutionalize adjunct labor as teaching faculty, paying low wages and no benefits. The hypocrisy is hardly obscure. I estimate that at my present institution, charging upwards of $50,000 a year per student, that we make about $40,000 a year per course by requiring this First-Year Writing courses. We try to imagine that our writing program is something no well-educated student could do without, but a little bit of self-referentially critique might seriously undermine that claim (that we spend hours teaching them about logos, ethos, and pathos and the logical fallacies? Please).

Let me get to the quick: WPAs don't need to apologize for the work they are doing (unless they are fetishizing argument). We can be doing good work. We certainly don't need to be whining about our own positions (or at least those of us who are tenured--actually, I'm in a non-tenured position right now). Our real problem is labor practices. We can certainly unite behind one clear objective somewhat based on logic: if what we are teaching is important, we need to have full-time teachers teaching what we pretend is important. Let's call this a mission. And let's stop complaining about our own positions (the thrust of Micchiche's later chapters); Either we require first-year writing courses and then engage in responsible hiring practices; or let's forget it.

I didn't get to the second rant. 

On the Possibility of Losing a Dog

I have to admit: I have become addicted to numbers. I write somewhat regularly on this blog because I like seeing the numbers of people who read it. In many ways, this numerical feedback is more important to me than feedback I get from having articles or books published. I know that this admission undercuts my almost unrelenting attack on the grading phenomenon--that my addiction to the number of readers is only a minimally disguised addiction to grades.

I could reflect and even undercut that admission, but I don't want to go there this morning--I want to go to a different place, the more serious reward for writing, the reward of having explained what was only half-thought in my head. I had a bad night last night--I found out that my dog very likely has cancer (he's being tested further today to determine what kind). So during the many times I was awake, I thought of all I wanted to write on this blog--one of my ways of not thinking about what I don't want to think about. If I wrote down everything I thought, you would still be reading this tomorrow.

I'm going to try to stay with two topics: "embodied" writing and maybe get back to grading student writing. I've been struggling through Laura Micciche's Doing Emotion lately. Much of what she writes seems important to me--particularly in these days when I'm dealing with Ali's cancer.

There was quite a bit in her book that I would challenge as a model of effective writing instruction (a bit too much time on having her students perform rather than write and respond to each other), but I think the gist of her treatment is both subtle and important. Writing, reading, and emotion--they are linked actions with the illusion of stasis--it is perhaps that (textual) illusion that allows one to "grade" or freeze a text. Micciche took a few chapters to make her point and I'm having a difficult time reducing it to my own meaning--but it is what I feel. This feeling, this emotion of writing is what draws me forward, draws the words out of me. In his recent article on James Britton, Russel Durst  describes Britton et al.'s belief that expressivity (there, I did it) is the matrix of all writing. Writing springs from the urge to "say," which is perhaps the obverse side of being "said" (Freire would say, being a speaking subject rather than a said object).

I have used writing to write my way out of my wife's early death. I use writing to write my way out of bad situations and into ways of imagining new ones. Writing for me is a way of becoming. A little later, it might turn into numbers. Ok: I like the numbers. But really, I like writing what I have half/thought/felt. Micchiche has something right, although I think in order to get published, she overly intellectualizes a simple truth about writing: writing and feeling are inextricably linked (even in the pretense of the writer not-feeling) and dynamic. I could write here about what I feel about the possibility of Ali dying as other dogs and people have died, but something blocks me--I think, too much emotion.

Almost Circumventing the Grading Factory

Readers of this blog might know that I work a lot with assessment, a not unsurprising interest, given that Charles Cooper was my dissertation director at the University of California, San Diego. I have also been using portfolios as an alternative grading practice virtually throughout my careers as a high school and post-secondary writing teacher. Since a good many of my rants on this blog challenge the efficacy of using grades as motivators and sorting tools (and that our job is to sort), I thought I would describe how I use portfolios to determine grades rather than averaging the grades assigned to essays, tests, and other assignments. 

I have had conversations/discussions/arguments with writing teachers who point out that by assigning any grade, regardless of my grade distribution (unless I assign everyone an A [or F]), I am still a toady of the capitalist enterprise that trains students to worship dollars through the agency of grades, an accusation to which I yield. Yes, I still assign grades. Yes, I am still a toady. Still, I work hard to help my students with their writing--and that's not only my job, it's my reason for being.

I use portfolios in an admittedly odd way. I have paid attention to Peter Elbow, Pat Belanoff, Kathy Yancey, Ed White (a co-author with Norbert Elliot of what we hope will soon become a famous book :), plug: Very Like a Whale); nevertheless, I have my own way of using portfolios--note that I use them for classroom assessment, not program assessment--the subject of our book. 

I assign grades on the basis of participation--which includes attendance (50%), mid-term portfolio (20%), and final portfolio (30%). I also tell students that if they want to know what their grades are at any time, they can see me in my office and we'll go over their work (and attendance) and discuss their grades. I'm also quite comfortable with being known as an easy grader--but I do expect them to always be in class and do all the work--and I would like to see them take some pride in what they write. It should perhaps go without saying that because I don't put grades on students' essays and other work, that doesn't mean I don't read and respond to their work--just as I like to have them read and respond to each other's work. I of course do. This in fact is something I enjoy doing (for reasons I have hammered in many of my blog posts).  

Some of my colleagues referred to above have asked how students know how well they've written if I don't grade the essays (but only respond to them). I'll just leave this remark to stand (or fall) on its own. 

Soooo. At the risk of looking like a fool, I have included below my instructions for a final portfolio. The students use an electronic portfolio (iWebfolio) to submit their work. It may look as if I'm asking the students to do a lot of work, but they have already submitted a mid-term portfolio, on which they build. Each section below corresponds to a category in iWebfolio. The e-portfolios are very easy for me to review and respond to (in fact, I enjoy doing it because by reading what my students write, I learn quite a bit about what I/we did right and what I/we did wrong). It takes me about 30 minutes to read and respond to each e-portfolio. 

WPAs interested in program assessment will see that if I have all of the teachers in our program include in their students e-portfolios at least two categories (Myself as a Writer and Goals of the Course) that we can structure a robust program assessment in which a positive attitude toward writing is an important objective. 

I actually give the instructions below in a wiki that resembles the portfolio I want them to construct. But for the purposes of this blog, I have reproduced the instructions as a page. I hope you find this interesting.

======================

Final Portfolio Instructions
English 102
Winter Quarter 2015
Drexel University

===============================================

Introduction: Imagine that you are me and that at some point, some well-intentioned administrator might wonder about my grading practices. I would like to be able to give her for each student a fair example of the student's work and the student's reflection on what he or she has so far learned in the course, given our objectives. So imagine that your portfolio is that evidence of the grade that I would like to argue for in response to this well-intentioned administrator.

Introduction

In your Introduction, you should introduce your portfolio. Imagine an administrator other than me is going to read it (which in some cases, will be true).  This would be a good place to tell her (my dean) just a little bit about you, something about your major, your hopes for the kind of career that college might help you prepare for, and some statement about how you have created this portfolio to demonstrate the kind of work you have done and what you have so far learned about writing in this class.

Keep those goals in mind as you explain what you have done and learned in this class. To organize your response, I have created some categories with specific instructions.  Please look at the pages to the right, beginning with "Attendance."

Attendance

Just include some note about your attendance both for the face-to-face and online sessions. You'll probably be able to amend what you wrote in your mid-quarter evaluation. Most of you have been here every day and participated in all online sessions. I am going to add my own perspective: success often depends on being there. In this course, I emphasized community: we show up, you show up.

Yourself as a Writer

What did you think of yourself as a writer when you came into the class?  What do you think of yourself as a writer now--and your relationship to writing? I know that the move from our largely personal writing (like our inventory of our writing experiences) to the 4^th academic essay on education and identity formation may have introduced some difficulties in your relationship with writing. You might want to include in this discussion some reflection on the kinds of writing you/we like to do and the kinds we sometimes have to perform in our academic and professional environments.

Class Journals

Just give me a little advice on class journals. They are the way I keep in touch with you.

Compendium

After you have followed the directions for collecting all that you have written, come back up to the top of this page and tell your readers what you think about the writing you have done in here.

I would like to have this reflection be at the top of the compendium :).

First collect your initial post to one of the writing tasks, and underneath that, all the posts you made in response to what others had written. 

Note: Here’s the easy way to collect your response on any forum:

Go to the Forum and click on the top box on the left (Thread Actions/Date)
That should put a check mark on all threads.
Click on “Collect” (to the right of “Thread Actions”)
Then Sort by “Author’s Last Name.” All your responses will be grouped.

Repeat that for each of the writing tasks we did.

It should look something like this:

Post for:  Inventory of Writing Experiences

Responses to others: 

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

......(that means and so on)

Post for:  Subjective School Experiences

Responses to others: 

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

...
Post for:  Responses to "Correctness"

Responses to others: 

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 ....
Post for:  Responses to Anyon

Responses to others: 

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 ....
Post for:  Responses to Tate

Responses to others:

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 ....

Post for:  Inventory of Research Experiences
No Responses

Post for: Third Essay on Educational Experiences

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 ....

Post for: Writing our 3rd essay on Education and Identity Formation

No responses

Post for: Reading and Being Read—3^rd Essay

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 ....

Post for Next Essay Topic: Outline

No responses

Post for 4^th Essay

Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 ....

Post for: Writing the 4^th Essay (We didn’t have time for responses here, but a few of you responded to each other).

 Response 1

Response 2

Response 3

Response 4

 .... 

Ok: I think I pretty much have all the major work we did in here. Email me if there’s something I missed.

Notes You Have Taken

In this section, paste any notes you have taken from others and that you have gleaned from your research on the Internet--important notes about the relationship between our educational experiences and who we are, what we think of ourselves, our relationship to learning, and perhaps to our society. I will be interested in which excerpts you thought were important.

Analysis of Writing

Please post a paragraph or two of

1. What you wrote in response to Subjective School Experiences
2. 4^th Essay

Then give me about 30 minutes in which you think and write about the similarities and differences here regarding you as a writer (as you are revealed in these different kinds of writing tasks).  You might consider differences/similarities in your voice, your attitude toward the writing task, your attitudes toward who your readers might be, whether it’s fake or real writing. I’m very interested in your analysis here of who you are as a writer and how you met these different writing tasks.

Favorite Thing You Have Written in Here

In this section, just post the favorite thing you have written in our class--This could be one of the essays, a response you have written to other, to one of our readings, an inventory--anything.  And tell us why you picked this one.

Goals of the Course

1. To investigate research—and the theory of research
2. To improve our clarity and fluency—fluency in the sense of writing easily and the flow of writing
3. To improve style, grammar, and punctuation
4. To improve our integration and evaluation of information
5. To explore the links between rhetorical situation and when claims need to be supported by evidence, and warrants
6. To explore the connection between writing and audience
7. To encourage a positive attitude toward writing

I realize that we have explored some of these goals more deeply than others (and some explorations have been tacit, some overt). But tell me what you may have learned about each of these goals--and how well we succeeded as a class in exploring them.

Note: by "rhetorical situation," we generally mean the writing situation: the demand for writing (why is this thing being written in the first place?), the writer's relationship to the subject, the reader's relationship to the subject, the writer's relationship to the reader(s), the reader(s) relationship to the writer--things like that.

Regarding 5: The relationship between claims and evidence are probably obvious.  I know we haven't covered "warrants." They refer to the logic that ties evidence to claims--why is this evidence for the claim? You might claim that the sun goes around the earth (claim). As evidence, you could cite that's what I see everyday.  Your warrant would be, because I see a phenomenon, that's what it is.  (You are of course leaving out knowledge of limited perspective, the position from which you "see" something, relegating you to the category of "flatlander.")

Similarly, as I have noted: You could claim that the United States is the best country to live in.  Your evidence is that everyone you know says that. Your warrant is that if everyone you know says something, then it is true--relegating you again to the category of flatlander.