Reflection: Feminist Pedagogy

While I don't think my entire pedagogy will find basis in the feminist approach, I am a fan of the inclusiveness that feminist pedagogy strives for. The unique lens that each student brings to the classroom can be nothing but incredibly diverse, and having aspects of your pedagogy incorporate that diversity is important. Given my interest in incorporating creative writing into the composition classroom, I also think that allowing emotion to have some presence alongside facts and analysis can also play an important role in helping students adjust to academic writing and care about what they write.

The aspect that I don't favor is the seemingly heavy emphasis that feminist pedagogy seems to place on the political.While I wouldn't stop a student who wanted to use his or her voice in a political setting, and would in fact encourage that purpose of wielding, I wouldn't place any more emphasis on that purpose than on self-exploration or philosophizing. The important thing is that whatever the student is writing, whoever they are writing for, they are able to appropriately judge the genre and audience and compose their text accordingly.

Reading Response: Feminist Pedagogy

According to Laura R. Micciche, the following are values of feminist teachers she had encountered are:

• the personal and political
• theoretical, political, intellectual, and emotional understanding of intersectional identities
• systemic analyses of inequality aimed at uncovering the production of knowledge, meaning, power, and belief in particular contexts
• writing as a tool for self-revelation, critique, and transformation
• distributed agency through collaborative practices and alternative classroom arrangements
• content focused on women's experiences and contributions to knowledge-making
• teaching and mentoring as forms of professional activism

I would like to believe that it is less chauvinism on my part and more simple ignorance of the basis of feminism, but I certainly expected more about women in terms of values. I'll qualify this by saying that the term feminism is about women's rights and equality, but perhaps there is a difference between feminism and feminist pedagogy.

In fact, the above difference is certainly there. Feminist pedagogy seems to take into account not only the worthiness of women but all fringe identities that have trouble finding a voice. There is, too, a very big emphasis placed on the personal voice in both private and public spaces. More than anything, however, the primary word I find myself associating with feminist pedagogy is disruption; disrupting power structures, disrupting perpetuated stereotypes or assumptions, disrupting norms which are detrimental to fringe or voiceless groups. In this light, it is a necessary tool to incorporate into a pedagogy if for no other reason than because the students that we teach will not only come from dominant dispositions. If a structure for teaching can be setup that better incorporates ALL students as opposed to favoring one group over another, it is obvious that the inclusive structure be established.

Reflection: Who Owns Writing?

This article was full of witticism and quite fun to read. However, I was perplexed to hear about "the essay generator" (Norton, 1249) and the fact that is could be successful when a teacher uses a digital grader. In fact, I was shocked to even consider that a teach would use a digital grader for essays. I don't want to suggest that grading hundreds of essays is easy, but isn't intimacy (at least on some level) with the progression of student work vital to improving their composition? Isn't that why we are teaching composition, to help students improve the transcription of their voice to paper in any given genre? I cannot fathom a scenario where a digital grader is appropriate; it either voids the purpose of the teacher (judging human perception of a piece) or it is not optimal (it may pass judgment on grammar but correct spelling is hardly the point of writing essays). I suppose my primary takeaway from this essay is two-fold; intimacy with a students work may be exhausting but it is necessary for improvement, and asking the question "who owns writing" is not as important as helping a student improve what it is they are writing in the first place.

Reading Response: Who Owns Writing?

To clarify the question of ownership of writing as Douglas Hesse does, we are not considering the property rights of "textual acreages" but "the conditions under which writing is taught" (Norton, 1248). The reflexive response to this question is professors, for aren't they the ones who determine the structure and material of the course which teaches one to write? Not only the course which teaches one to write but the course which teaches one to read, and reading is an important part of learning to write, is formed under similar confines; the teacher decides the structure and material.

Hesse would suggest that "those who teach writing must affirm that we, in fact, own it" (1249). Prior to this statement, however, he does cede that the answer one has to the question might find ancestry in Wordsworth, Barthes, Althusser, or Rorty (though hopefully one is not merely parroting the opinions of another as though the endurance of a thinker's name somehow lends credence to his opinions, as students might be inclined to do...I digress.) If, as Hesse suggests, we must affirm that those who teach writing own writing (or must, at least, believe that we do), it is likely because students will look to us for evidence of control or mastery in writing, and in their osmosis of those sentiments might find confidence in their own. We might assert that we own the conditions of writing but a student must feel that they own the "textual acreage" they produce...and perhaps be proud of the land they till.

Or maybe we should go the route Wittgenstein suggests and not ask the question in the first place. Perhaps it is best to focus on improving production instead of fiddling over ownership.

Reflection: The Basic Writer

The consideration about BW that struck me the most was the idea that the title "remedial" could itself be disheartening to a student. It identifies the student as someone who is "bad" at something that the he or she should be "good" at by now. It has an inherent tone of disappointment, as if the rich history they have lived through has somehow failed them. For this reason, I imagine any class I teach with a "remedial" purpose must treat students like they have the ability to do what is asked of them and that my purpose is simply to show them they have that ability. What is learning but the exposure of a person to a thing, experience, idea, or theory? Is it possible that the only reason they are in a "remedial" course is simply lack of exposure? Is there any reason to believe that, after exposure and encouragement, they would continue to fail for some inherent reason? There is already an admission of grit and determination by the mere presence of a student in the course. They understand that the power structure has deemed them in need of "remediation" and they not only accept their deficiency but desire to improve. That itself speaks a lot about the students, and should be made clear to the students.

Reading Response: Basic Writing and Genre

Concerning the BW pedagogy, I marked four views:

1. Error-Centered
2. Academic Initiation
3. Critical Literacy
4. Spatial

My notes on them look something like the following:

1.1 - Grammatical conventions

1.2 - "From where one is going (meaning) to how one is getting there (code) [22]

2.1 - Inventing the university; attempting to speak as a member of a discourse community without having learned that community

2.2 - Facts, artifacts, and counter-facts

3.1 - Sociocultural power struggles between asymmetrical power relations

3.2 - BW classification is a product of cultural background

3.3 - Social contexts; "outsider" status is a strength

3.4 - Argument: Politics > Day-to-Day

4.1 - Where should learning take place and what is the impact of that location

4.1.1 - BW spaces marginalize BW from mainstream

4.2 - BW courses are given negative connotations by power structures

Concerning genre, I have always been aware of different forms of written communication but never considered how employing a particular form in the classroom might affect the view a student has on that form, or on the concept of "correct form". It is interesting to note that some forms are likely never used in an English classroom, forms that are commonplace in other communities (Criminal Justice incident reports or Engineering reports). It seems to me, then, that it is important to consider what commonalities exist between forms, or more precisely, what can I teach a student that will help them regardless of the genre they end up using most?

Reflection: Inventing the University

This reading brought to my attention the reality that students will come into the classroom expecting to learn "the right answer" or "the right way", but also that these things don't exist like they do (to some extent) in a curriculum like math. When considering the creation of my draft assignment prompt, and the scaffolding that will accompany that prompt, I want to be sure I'm taking every opportunity to identify the structure and purpose of the assignment while also making it clear that the structure I am using is not the only structure. There are many genres, many audiences, many discourses, etc., and the structure we are using will have advantages and drawbacks based on those factors. Identifying those advantages and drawbacks (critically analyzing the structure itself) will hopefully help students realize not just HOW something can be done but also WHY (or WHY NOT) it should be done that way.

Reading Response: Inventing the University

The concept of Inventing the University is described as when a student "has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community," and has to do so "as though he were easily and comfortably one with his audience, as though here were a member..."

All of this is to say, a student has to adopt the structure of a discourse community he has likely never been a part of and do so in a way that makes it seem like he was born there. This isn't a one-time event either; he must do it for several different communities in the first few years of higher education. The obvious question (to me) is whether or not that is a GOOD thing for the student to do. On the one hand, providing a starting point for entering into a discourse professionally gives students a foundation from which they can learn about the discourse and contribute (however minimally) in an effective way (or at least more effective than simply throwing them in with their high school tendencies). On the other hand, you have to wonder how controlling such a restriction can be on the voice of the student who is likely going to perceive a structure (or anything in college) as objectively correct (as opposed to "one way of doing things").

It seems to me that providing a base for students to begin their gradual transition into a member of an academic community is beneficial if the teacher makes a point of showing it as an option, not a rule. One way I think of showing this is by presenting several options for engaging the discourse content and highlighting what each option does correctly and what each option lacks. The downside to this is that students may become confused if they are holding onto notions of looking for "the right way to do things" while you are trying to present multiple "right ways of doing things."