Stacey's College Writing II Course Management Blog

 
Just in case you come here first--we will NOT have class on Friday, January 14. For future announcements, I'll be using the following URL: http://springsemester.blogspot.com/

Please be safe during this nasty cold snap. See you Wednesday.

Stacey


posted by S at 11:05 PM

 
Ok, I decided to use a different weblog to post off. Go here and I'll continue to use it for the rest of the semester.

Thanks!



posted by S at 11:36 AM

 
Success vs. Survival

I have so many pages of notes and things I know I should include, that I’m not sure where to begin. I know, what a horrible way to start out, but it’s all part of the process for me. This entire year has been one overwhelming moment after another, particularly this semester. Most semesters leave me with a feeling of success and pride in knowing I did my best and achieved what I set out to do. As I sit here now, I hesitate to say I “survived” at best.

Rebecca Blood says one should start blogging by defining a purpose. In her book, she suggests the following four broad purposes for maintaining a weblog (Weblog Handbook, 60-64):

* Self-Expression
* Keeping in Touch
* Information Sharing
* Reputation Building

Taking those purposes into consideration, I came up with my project for this course. Planning, Acting, and Reflecting would fall under the first purpose, self-expression, as I intended to build course management tool for the College Writing II course I was teaching this semester. Last semester I made sure I stayed on top of things by doing class plans a few weeks ahead of time. It helped tremendously in the success of my classroom and I felt having it be a requirement of this weblog would hold me accountable in some way to continue that habit.

In the Beginning

In my project proposal I stated that at the beginning of every week I would post my plans for all three class periods. I then would post after class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday discussing how my plans went—assessing and reflecting, on some level. How did the students respond? What kind of discussions did we have? What might I do the same or differently next time? Finally, I had planned to do a longer summary reflection based on entries from the entire week.

I was very disciplined starting out. I followed through with the posting 4-5 times a week, however, almost immediately dropped the idea of posting a summary reflection on Fridays in addition to the post-class entries. My entries were getting so long and detailed that by the time I was due to post the end of the week summary, I had nothing left to say. In hindsight, had a done this project in a wiki, I could see where that might be a good idea, merely for audience’ sake. If I had a section of weekly summary reflections, that would save the reader from having to read the other entries from the week.

It was pretty much after the students completed the research paper (mid-term and spring break) that I decided to quit posting my entire weekly plans on Monday. For several reasons:

* Students had problems getting the book, thereby delaying my initial literature lesson plans.
* I had no idea how long certain activities and stories would take to do or read, skewing my idea of what we could/not accomplish in a given class period.
* I sometimes didn’t know what my plans would be for the entire week on Monday, because of how unfamiliar and uncomfortable I was with what I was doing. We were reading Opening Texts for Pedagogy through this semester, which was sort of my saving grace as each week went on.
* Most of all, I felt like I was repeating myself! I would post the entry Monday morning before all classes and then felt I should give a brief summary of the plans each class day again, before I posted the actual entry. It all felt so redundant and like all I was doing with my life was blogging.

Negatives

This project was extremely time consuming. I reserved the time we would have met for blogs and wikis class to start organizing my thoughts and plans before class and doing a rough sketch post to my blog. I then used the office hour following class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to do my complete entries. I was concerned that what I wrote would seem off the cuff, random, and unplanned. I wanted my entries to reflect just how much time I was putting into this.

In my midterm reflection, I talk in more detail about this process:

I can sort it through in my head while I decide what to post to the blog and more importantly HOW to post it. Dialogue? Straight out journaling? Stories? Sometimes it feels like I'm writing a story or re-creating certain moments, more than I am "journaling."
99% of the time it takes longer than my office hour to compose, post, and edit my posts. I put a lot of effort trying to find the perfect words to describe people, things, and events. I then read over it before post&publish. Then comes the first of many times where I go to the link and read it online. This is where I test my links and check my formatting, often having to go back and put in a few paragraph breaks for reader ease and fix typos, misspellings, etc.
At any given time, if I'm bored, I go to my personal and project blogs and read them, from the beginning to the end. I try to find patterns or connections between posts, thinking about what I might do differently, what I'll do again...

Given the fact that I put so much time and effort into this project, I was afraid of input from others, even though I wanted it so desperately! I waited until just before my project presentation to add the comment option to the weblog. What was the point in that? I used the excuse of being technically challenged and having no time to get help to keep me from having it earlier in the semester. I also was trying to convince myself to follow Blood’s advice of:

If you are going to keep a weblog, it must be for the joy of writing alone. You will never have enough readers,
an if that matters, you will always be disappointed. Weblog audiences grow very slowly, but the
readers you attract come deliberately. Do what you can to deserve their attention, and accept
that your audience may always be very small. Through your efforts you can hope to gain a few
readers and the respect of your peers. Do your best because you love it, appreciate the readers
who visit, and don’t allow your statistics to ruin your fun.

Sitting here now, I don’t think I was as concerned with audience necessarily as I was just wanting encouragement or positive feedback, someone to tell me that even though I was extremely insecure and uncomfortable this semester, that I was doing a "good job." I feel sort of like avoiding the entire idea of audience puts me entirely in the camp of Peter “writing with my eyes closed” Elbow (not that that’s a bad thing!).

Positives

My project definitely helped keep me on top of my teaching this semester. I’m also a little afraid to admit that knowing Dr. Morgan and Dr. Christensen were regular readers of my weblog made me try even harder in my class and on the blog. Yes, I’m a true people-pleaser at heart. It’s my downfall.

I felt very organized by having to take the time to reflect and assess my class after each session, rather than simply, “Yes, nobody died, let’s move on!”

It was great to keep a record to refer back to next year and in years to come actually. I would like to print up some of the entries to keep for myself to look back on in 5 or 10 or 20 years! This was my first year as a teacher, ever! I actually did this! I never thought I would see myself through this last 9 months when we started in August. Who says miracles don’t happen?

Throughout this project, I saw great visions of graduate assistants, not only from BSU, but other schools as well, exchanging ideas and experiences, a support system of sorts—something I really feel I needed more of this semester (I guess I’ve said that already, haven’t I?).

It was entertaining and gratifying to look back on my entries (which I did all the time) and chuckle at certain people or moments and even to see class days that were successful! This was key toward the end when I was completely “out of gas.” It helped me to hang in there and stay surfacely (yes, I made that word up) motivated.

I worried often that my blog was boring. As I stated in my Response to Blood assignment:

When the semester shifted to the project blog, my time and energy for the personal blog greatly deteriorated, causing the entries to be weekly, at most. I did my best to take my audience along with me to the project, but they have told me it is “…boring as hell….” I’m disappointed that this meager audience has now left me.

I've since received several positive comments that it was not boring and that perhaps it was maybe even entertaining and educational for those considering teaching as a career! Whew.

Questions Were Raised

On a more technical note, I had convinced myself that an effective blog entry should be peppered with links that would get your reader curious enough to not only read your entry from start to finish, but to follow the link you include in your text. I struggled with how to do this appropriately, given the material of my project. I wanted my links to be resourceful and necessary, rather than just for “fun.” Though I'm sure few are aware, embedding links into your text is a definite rhetorical move. It sets your reader up to move about wherever you may guide them. It changes the meaning of your entries, further explaining some things, giving background to those who may not know you personally. In an attempt to understand this more and perhaps reconcile my own motives, I went searching.

Mark Bernstein references this topic in his blog on his May 29, 2002 entry in a response to a discussion on the distinction between link-driven and content-driven weblogs. He links to an ongoing discussion at jill/txt and makes an entry stating:

In the end, I think this distinction becomes a chicken-egg argument. When used well, links are content, and content naturally generates links. (Observe, for example, how Dave Winer finds ways to add links to everything he writes about, even when writing about whatever he's thinking about over his morning coffee)

The extreme cases (pure links/pure essays) exist but are uninteresting. The trick is to use links effectively, both in their immediate rhetorical role and also in their long-term, social role in nurturing emergent structure among weblogs.

It's obviously important to find a balance when linking. However, I can't help but yet again feel pinned between Bernstein and Blood here in the fact that Blood says to write for yourself. Bernstein more or less says I need to be interesting, constructing rhetorical and social situations by creating effective links. If I knew I had an audience, I suspect I would spend more time creating effective links, for the audience is the only reason to add links. Do I need the links to make things interesting, therefore gaining an audience as a result? Yet again, the chicken-egg argument surfaces.

These are all things I will keep in mind for future blogging. I'm interested to see how the act of blogging changes for me out of an academic setting. I'm excited to be writing about things I truly want to write about, with no concern for grade or obligation. This is where the true test of my blogging abilities will be had.

Will I succeed or survive? Only time will tell.


posted by S at 1:35 PM

 
Most likely intentionally, I just now added the comment option. I think I've been scared to know what people think of what I'm doing in my class. ahhhhhh!

Since I'm presenting on this project tomorrow, does this mean I can quit posting to this darn thing?????

I'm so tired of this blog.

posted by S at 6:28 PM

 
Quitting while I'm ahead!
posted by S at 5:31 PM

 
trying linking AGAINNNNN
posted by S at 5:27 PM

 
trying this comment stuff
posted by S at 4:57 PM

 
Several students were gone today...typical Spring Monday. Actually, just typical Monday!

I wanted to do some imitation activities in class today. The students have papers due Wednesday, so I thought it would be nice to get some critical energy flowing.

An activity from the book Opening Texts: Using Writing to Teach Literature by Kathleen Dudden Andrasick on imitation used as a way to look critically at literature was my model for today's work in class.

With the following poems, students were directed to imitate the pieces, considering things such as audience, intent, style, word choice, etc.

Carl Sandburg Chicago
William Carlos Williams This is Just to Say

William's poem was to be done individually, writing another poem apologizing for something they have done but really aren't sorry for. Sandburg's poem could be done individually or in a group, on a city they know well.

This took almost the entire class period. We had 5 minutes for very brief discussion, with the students bringing to my attention that it wasn't a good idea to have the Sandburg poem be one of the group ones because most people in the group couldn't decide on a city they all knew well. I should've thought about that beforehand, but totally spaced it out. Noted for next year.

Because we ran out of time, I asked the students to bring the work we did today on Wednesday so we could hear and discuss them. Paper also due Wednesday.



posted by S at 11:57 AM

 
Blahhhhh, ok, I just got home from a weekend full of travels all over God's creation for various family events. Where is the time going? I don't really care, I'm just so glad it's going quickly right now. I want this semester to be OOOOOOVERRRRRR. I need to collect myself and reflect on many many things that have taken backseat lately.

Friday's class:

I wanted to discuss how the theme of nature/environment uses a lot of imagery to achieve its purposes--whatever they may be. Beyond just imagery, all of the senses. We randomly went through the book to try to find proof of this. It didn't take long before we found images of nature left and right, but the students picked up on how nature is used as metaphors for so many different things. Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken has some nature imagery, but isn't about nature at all.

We then went outside and I had them choose one of the 5 senses to write about. What do you smell? see? hear? etc. right now, as you sit here. Focusing on just the one sense for 15 minutes, not stopping. After the time was up, I grouped everyone by what sense they wrote about. All the hearing people got together. All of the smellers, etc. They were then to read their writing and look for similarities and differences, within the same sense. After everyone did that, we came together as a class and each group had a spokesperson tell the group what kinds of things they did and didn't find similar, how it affected their writing to be outside vs. inside, how the assigned prompt affected their writing.

It was nice to take the focus off of critically looking at "literature" to do some fun writing, engaging a different line of thinking for a little while.
I also gave the students a little "quiz" today.

Question #1 was me asking for input/ideas for what the students would be interested in doing for something "fun" for our final class period.
Question #2 was a bit of a trick question:
It is a story about a girl. While at the funeral of her own mother, she met this guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much the dream guy she was searching for that she fell in love with him right then and there but never asked for his name or number and afterward could not find anyone who knew who he was. A few days later the girl killed her own sister.

Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?

Over the weekend they are to be cranking out those papers that are due Wednesday.

posted by S at 6:09 PM

 
This has been the craziest week all semester. I've had training in the evenings this afternoon/evening this week for another job, leaving me little time for accomplishing much more than the essentials of life.

Wednesday's Class:

In class we read the following poems for the nature/environment theme:
Alone in the Woods by Stevie Smith
A Child Said "What is the Grass?" by Walt Whitman
Frogless by Margaret Atwood

We had some general discussion about the poems and how they relate to our current theme. I gave them a larger paper assignment due in one week. From the assignment sheet:

Assignment 2
Due Wednesday
Of the 3 poems we are reading in class today, write a 2-4 page paper choosing one of the assignments below:

Smith poem: What do you think Smith is trying to communicate here? Take a walk alone in the woods and tell me what you feel. Do you agree with Smith? Why or why not? How would you respond to Smith…or to nature based on this poem?

Atwood poem: What do you think Atwood is trying to communicate here? How does she use images to persuade in this particular piece? At the end she says, “Travel anywhere in the year, five years, and you’ll end up here.” Where is “here?” Do you agree with what she is saying? Why or why not? How would you respond to Atwood…or to nature based on this poem?

Whitman poem: Why do you think that character in the poem is unable to answer the child’s question? What do you think Whitman is trying to communicate here? Tell us, in more than a smartass sentence, how you would answer the child’s question, “What is the grass?”

As I read the assignment sheet to the class, for the assignment on the Whitman poem, I accidentally said, "What is grass?" I didn't realize I had left out the word "the" until there were some whispers and laughter coming from a few students in various corners of the room. At first I said, "What's so funny about that?" Then I realized who was laughing...*tick tock tick tock*....*ding ding*...Stacey gets it. Marijuana. Pot. Weed. GRASS. I guess maybe I subconciously was prepared for that, given my "...in more than a smartass sentence..." Cover your bases!


**need to get on the road...travel plans...will update over the weekend or sunday night.
posted by S at 11:15 AM