Reflecting on Students' Voices: What Will They Remember?

Who doesn't love Maya Angelou? She inspires, putting into words what we might instinctively "get" but aren't skillful enough to express. Angelou reminds us of truths we might to avoid. 

One of those truths is that students in my classes often DO NOT feel the same passion for English as I do. They have a gut reaction quite the opposite of mine, coming to class dreading the topic. 

For many, the mere mention of "English" paralyzes, conjures memories of rigid rules, rote memorization, or unpleasant teachers. Many students associate English with distasteful, even painful, feelings - even if they have learned important skills, skill they often cannot name but have actually mastered.

So Angelou's quote about remembering feelings over what someone (teachers) said or did (instruction?) hits home. Shoot, I can't remember which of my teachers taught me what. But I can list whose classes made me feel good. 

This past semester, my co-teacher asked students to discuss in writing what they took away from our learning community. She teaches the Personal Development course linked to my English course. The reflection questions were pretty open, asking about "shining moments" and lessons learned that they expect to remember. I'm glad she had students write their reflections because their words verify the truth of Angelou's words.

Experiments in Making: The "Identity Is" Project

Readers might be curious about the "Bayan Professor" part of this blog's URL. Bayan is Tagalog, a Filipino dialect, for town or municipality. Bayan also connotes family, home - the beloved community. It's the name me and my teaching partner chose for our linked classes, the Bayan Learning Community.

My partner teaches the Personal Development component of our paired classes, the first-year college colloquium, the "how to be a college student" class. I'm the English professor. While Bayan does special outreach to Filipino and Filipino American students, Bayan Scholars don't have to be Filipino. They must, however, be willing to engage Filipino American themes to master Personal Development and English skills.

My co-teacher and I layout our learning objectives and, considering the shared themes, look for intersections, moments where we can leverage the overlaps. We want students to experience how different disciplines actually complement each other, how classes feed into the other. We're also committed to "making,", i.e., having students create as much as they consume. We want our students to see themselves as producers of knowledge, not merely passively taking in information. The "Identity Is" Project was our most ambitious unit this semester.

Anatomy Diagrams as Mentor Texts: Adventures in Procrastination!

Instead of grading finals, I've got Ruth Culham's The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing on my mind. I've joined a MOOC that assigns me weekly challenges that help me understand an experience Culham's text (see the first two challenge here and here). I am enjoying the process immensely, likely because at least if I'm going to procrastinate, at least I'm being productive.

This week's make-cycle challenge compelled us to become mentor text sleuths (shout out to Thinking Through My Lens for this word gift). We had to investigate the world around us for words, images, signage, basically anything that can be decoded, that could serve as a mentor text. Of course, I had to wait until I saw what other folks on the MOOC found; I would have floundered unless I got to stand on their shoulders.

I didn't actively scavenge, just lived my life, which includes playing around on social media. I follow several folks on Tumblr who post about #BlackLivesMatter and #ICan'tBreath, as well as a whole bunch of social justice bloggers. When one particular post came up on my dash, I knew I'd find my contribution to our MOOC. And I found further justification that playing on using social media serves professional purpose. The Tumblr post that inspire this make is the second image in the clip below. 

Reflecting on Problem-Solving: Six Word Memoirs

A couple days into a challenging project this semester, students  felt confused, unclear. They didn't want guidance or coaching.  They wanted me to tell them exactly what to do. Students wanted, no demanded,  an absolute, singular correct solution to the challenge. 

This push back didn't surprise me. The majority were first-year college students. And returning students also argued for a more mechanistic, formulaic prompt of the worksheet or five-paragraph format variety. More comfortable filling in the blanks or following a rote formula, students froze when given a task calling for higher order thinking.  

The Writing Thief: Stolen Quotes + Depth of Knowledge

I recently wrote a post about joining a MOOC sponsored by the San Diego Area Writing Project. We're reading Ruth Culham's The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing, and our second "making project" is to find a quote from her book that resonates with us. Using a digital tool of our choice, we areto bring that quote to life, expressing how Culham's words affect us. The clip above is my contribution. 

I used PowerPoint to recite Culham's words. I didn't list them in order or use the whole passages where the quotes appeared. I sampled them, selecting, repeating, splicing and sequencing her sentences into something a little bit more poetry. 

I wanted to create a meditative, playful effect, taking advantage the images Culham's words conjured for me. I chose the images Flickr's "free-to-use" website. This was my first time using Flicker, and I enjoyed hunting for evocative images. 

Story Telling Feedback: Student Voices

I've just finished listening to students' final oral presentations that I wrote about here and here. I promised in my review of this monologue project to get students' feedback about the process. As this was the first time experimenting with this monologue format, I wanted to to collect students' subjective experience of the process. 

Some of that was in a more formal self-evaluation, more cognitive, more about their writing process. I also wanted to know how writers felt about the process, what emotions attended their cognitive processes. I suspect writers would have been a bit apprehensive initially and they would experience a sense of accomplishment upon completing this whole-process project. For many, this was their first sustained whole-process composition. And for many others, it was among the first time they ever shared about themselves in public. 

Making, MOOCs, and The Writing Thief

Meet Henry Aronson by Slidely Slideshow

I've joined a MOOC, a "Massive Open Online Course, specifically the Connected Learning MOOC sponsored by the San Diego Writing Project. We're studying Ruth Culham's The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing, hence the name of our Google+ Community: The Writing Thief MOOC. 

As if I'm not busy enough. It's finals week. Grades are due next week Friday. And it's the holiday season. Maybe I'm avoiding work or perhaps (and?) personal issues. Whatever. This is how I have fun.