JC's End-Of-The-Semester Reflections: A Mini-Series (2nd episode)

A conversation I had with a friend quite a while ago, just as I was completing my undergraduate degree, has been looming around all semester. He told me that teachers have to be careful not to let whatever shtick they practice in the classroom get in the way of what they’re teaching. He’s an art professor that used to wear a kind of hard-ass but clearly caring persona. I’m not sure what identity he walks into the classroom with currently. I remember the flippant comment bothering me. I thought about what performances my own college teachers were conscious of when they stood in front of the classroom. Teaching, not unlike being a student, is about performing. The professor who helped me connect 'literature' to the real world was famous for long, strange tangents that made it difficult to get into one of his packed classes. I fell in love with the history of Western philosophy not because of Descartes’ dashing good looks or Heidegger’s singing voice, but because of a teacher who knew how to tell stories about these thinkers and seemed to be awe struck by what he was teaching (even though he’d taught the class every semester for several years). My forth grade teacher wore suits everyday except Friday. He was a veteran, commanded respect, and was seemingly stronger than my mythical grandfather. But he could launch into a fantastical story about surfing atop great white sharks or start dancing to a student’s mindless humming at any moment. His was a memorable shtick.

But did it get in the way of learning? I don’t know. I suppose I can’t remember what I learned in the forth grade, or if I’m positive those particular college teachers actually taught me anything. They inspired me, sure, but I think there’s a difference between inspiring and teaching. Most of us, of course, have all watched movies like
"Dead Poets Society," "Dangerous Minds," and "Freedom Writers." So we’re conditioned to think of the good teacher as someone able to connect to and inspire their students. They swoop in and open the eyes of the blind, fight the oppressing administrative bureaucracy, and lift their students out of complacency into self-reflective authenticity. I’ll admit I love these teacher-saves-all movies as much as the next sap, but the problem, I think, lies in the incessant celebration of the teaching persona over and above the students. That is, these movie-teachers simply do things to students. And in my short and relatively naïve experience, that’s generally not how meaningful learning takes place. A class that blew my mind and not only changed the direction of what I wanted to do inside academe, but the way I thought about the world was run by a woman with, well, no real teaching persona at all. Most the time, I didn’t even know what we were doing or what I was supposed to be learning. She was boring. It was called "Essay Writing," and she had us reading about 'performative speech acts' and social construction. It was weird and she just wasn’t good at telling me why any of it mattered. Slowly, however, I started to discover what felt like entirely new ideas. It was a class that had me pacing around my house at two or three in the morning, contemplating crazy implications in the reading and obsessing over every word in everything I wrote. I didn’t spend much time thinking about her, but I connected everything she taught in that class to my life.

Now I’m very much the kind of teacher that relies on a good persona. And while I like to imagine most of my students encounter some new ideas in our class, I worry that what they generally encounter is this persona I’ve reflexively created for the classroom. For example, I’ve just finished reading "analytical reflection" papers. Students reread all their work from the semester (I asked them to look at all their courses). Then they wrote about interesting developments, differences, improvements, insights, anything that stood out to them. They were fun. Most of my students built the essay around a particular passage of their own writing. They wanted their audience (which varied from next year’s incoming freshman to their future selves) to recognize what one word can do to a particular passage, and better, how to change the structure or rhetorical appeal in the work to generate different meaning. Many of them were unbelievable. (The first set I looked even made my eyes water a little. But in my defense, I read them after dinner and a few glasses of wine). Of course, what I started to realize is that quite of few of these students had learned how to appeal to the passions of my teaching persona. They were without question producing prose for a particular audience beyond me, and that’s great. But not so far underneath the surface of nearly every paper is a quiet expression of the same teaching persona I can’t help but wear when I get with my students. So, I have to spend this winter wondering if my friend was right—if a shtick can get in the way of discovery (learning).

JC's End-Of-The-Semester Reflections: A Mini-Series (1st Episode)

It would seem I am cursed to constantly relearn what it’s like to walk out of the classroom on the last day of class as an instructor rather than a student. As a student, the work is over—you’ve just completed the things that have not-so-politely been chewing about your head and shoulders. The monster of the final paper is dead—long live the end of a semester. I am, however, not remotely done; there are over sixty-five papers waiting to be graded on my desk, and a myriad of digital projects waiting to be downloaded and graded in my e-mail. So, like any sane person participating in academe as a student or otherwise, I’m stalling. And I know that stalling is a piss-poor idea because I know that another fifty or so paper ‘re-writes’ will be arriving before Friday this week. I’ve always had a policy that students could rewrite or recreate any project they feel could be better, and by that they take me to mean, any project they want a better grade on. Normally, a terribly small amount of folks take me up on that proposal. You remember being a student, it’s physically painful to reopen a project you’ve already turned in. But these Miami University kids are wild, yo! Well over half of them rewrite everything they don’t get an A on—bloody everything. It’s turned into a weird game that I don’t think they’ve figured out they’re playing. I write my comments, then get ready to record the grade (something I already despise doing), when I have to stop and have a little conversation with my pen:

“If you write the letter B, they’re only going to do it again. Why not just give them the A now and end it?” I ask.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” says pen. “No one’s looking and they never believe a word I say anyway.”

The subtle guilt trip always works, and I let the pen give the paper a B. It’ll be back.

But that’s not at all what I was interested in asking some of you. It’s true that I find myself simultaneously overwhelmed and lazy at the end of the semester, but it’s the holidays. Who doesn’t feel the pull of those two creative forces this time of year.

In an effort to feel like I’m not completely ignoring the stacks of student work all over my life, I’ve been doing some reflecting about a few issues I chose to ignore during the semester. One particular issue is bothering me because of a great project I found through Alex Reid’s blog (digital diggs) called the social media classroom. It rocks. Harold Rheingold, it’s creator, explains “that [the project] provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools.” There’s little students can’t do. Nearly every form of media that students may or may not use is interconnected and easily accessible to exploit as they explore what it means to compose their own texts, and more importantly create a voice, even an identity for what gets called ‘New Media.’ (I’ve found too many definitions of that to know what it might actually refer to). “New Media” has its problems of course. It’s no secret that the web and digital communication, “Web 2.0” stuff, is generally employed by market capitalism. I think students are more aware of this than ‘we’ often give them credit for. And I agree, to some extent, that digital communication may not be fulfilling its promise to bring us closer together and give more voices power. I think what troubles me presently with projects like this one, and classes like mine that are built around what can be accomplished with New Media is what they might do to students perceptions of things like blogs, wikis, digital video sharing, and the like. It seems to me, regardless of how interestingly professors and instructors employ New Media in the classroom (and some people are doing wildly cool things), it’s still the classroom. That is, what happens to blogs, even social networking sites, when English (or otherwise) teachers get a hold of them? As it stands, the web is a space slightly free of the institution the classroom belongs to, which puts students (and teachers) in a place without prescription. No one is sure of the rules in these spaces, and that generates a lack of assumed expectations or discomfort, which can lead to sincere learning (sometimes). But what happens to these spaces as they get rolled into academe? What happens to a student’s perception of digital media when a ‘clever’ assignment requires that student to create a Facebook page and write about the rhetorical choices they made in a effort to generate an online identity? I’m concerned.

I’m not only concerned about the digital projects I’ve got in mind for next semester’s class, I’m concerned about the two graphic novels we’re reading. My hope is to use them as examples of fragmentation and the affect of New Media on the ‘old.’ But I also love graphic novels and the last thing I want to do is turn them into “those books we read in that class.” I believe in bringing every piece of popular culture I can get my hands on into the classroom. It makes what we do relevant and real; it helps my students look past what I want. But I’m under no allusion that we (my students and I) can escape the fact that most everything we bring into the classroom will be a little tainted by to ooze of academe.

Salutations!

Hello out there, "Against Chalk" readership! Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm "mhb", which is certainly clunkier than the two-syllable JC, but it's what I have to work with here.

JC invited me to be a contributing blogger, and I was thrilled to join him in this little project. But those of you who don't know me might wonder what my qualifications are. They are as follows:

1) I know JC in the real world. When we're in the same room we talk a lot, about a great many things, for long periods of time.

2) I read this blog and I left an obscenely long comment a while ago.

That's about it.

I also, like JC, enjoy thinking about learning, both online and in "meatspace". I come from a slightly different perspective which makes our conversations with each other - and, I hope, the upcoming conversation with you the readers - pretty fun. I'm still a student myself, working my way through a master's degree program in education where I'm learning how to learn how people learn. That's not a typo.

Whereas JC teaches various populations of college students, my hope is to teach adults who are even more "non-traditional" than some of his non-traditional students - specifically, adults who have been in prison and haven't yet finished high school. More specifically, adults who think (or who have been convinced) that they aren't able to learn. To keep this introductory post brief I won't delve too much into how I developed that particular interest, but I love to blather on about it, so don't you worry, you'll read more on that soon.

I have also found myself surrounded by interesting people who are fascinated with online learning, alternative education, religion in the classroom, the school-to-prison pipeline, undiagnosed learning disabilities, teen fathers in high schools... a vast array of interesting questions that all have something to do with learning and teaching. I would love to drag some guest posters in from that group to contribute to the brewing discussion here, or at least get their permission to heavily quote them. All I have to do is get them to respond to my phone calls.

I understand that some of you readers are teachers or students of some sort or another. What sort of learning environments are you working in? What brought you to this blog? What learning stuff are you interested in? Let's break the ice, shall we?

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't thank JC for his invitation. It's very exciting for me to collaborate with one of the most curious, brilliant and fun people I have the pleasure to know.

Now, off to work on my first "real" post!