Since I’ve done every other blog post, I’m going to write some of the leftover stuff I haven’t posted yet, or never got a chance to post. The Peter Elbow drinking game – drink anytime he is referenced – we would all be dead by now The great shift in education over the past thirty […]
Prompts
Understanding Diverse Ideologies In and Out of the Classroom
I think oftentimes in writing classes, we’re very much concerned with responses to articles, books, and research without an emphasis on being a productive and empathetic citizen. That might sound a little broad, but one thing that I’ve learned how to navigate in my undergrad classes are social injustices that are woven through history and […]
Shifting Forms
If I am completely honest, I’m not sure exactly who I want to be as a teacher yet. It’s probably an unsatisfying answer, but it is the one that immediately rings true in my own mind. I feel as though I just haven’t had enough time in the classroom to get a grasp on the […]
The Other
In some ways, responding to this prompt seems like a conscious act of othering. What’s not being looked at? What needs to be visible? Is it something we have, or think about that we want others to see? Some way we are different that makes us into an other? Is it something that we identify […]
The End
I feel like saying writing studies as a whole is miss this is a complete lie, but I can’t help but feel nagged over and over again that I feel like the thing missing from this field, the thing that is not visible, is the people who exist within it. Writing center scholarship is taking […]
Invisible Impacts on Identity
We know that writing is intimately connected with issues of authority, identity, power, and confidence, and that if students are to become more sophisticated thinkers and writers, they should be both challenged and taken seriously. (Brueggemann et al., 379, emphasis mine) While I would have to question some of the ethics and ideologies concerned with […]
El Aleph
I would like to see as close to a full spectrum of diversity represented in writing studies as possible. I don’t understand why monofocal teaching methods are acceptable since it is clear that no one learns exactly the same as anyone else. I recognize this is a huge change to pedagogy as it currently exists, […]
Understanding the Process
What value, perspective or concern would you like to become visible in writing studies? This may sound strange but the value I would like to see become more visible/prized would be that of understanding of and by the white male. I think marginalized people sometimes simultaneously underestimate how deeply toxic masculinity runs through white-male culture […]
Reading is a fun thing we can do
Questions: Since I saw the syllabus in Comp Camp, I’ve been thinking about how I can add more reading into the curriculum. As we’ve gone along, I’ve refined my ideas significantly. At first, it was just a vague desire to assign/read/talk about useful and interesting writing. I wondered: where was the place for literature in […]
Power Imbalances, Again
When I first considered the term “adversarial,” I immediately thought about two equals at opposition to each other–your arch nemesis in a comic book, maybe or two knights from opposing camps. But in this context, there is an inherent power differential and so in the examples above, maybe it would be the origin story of […]
The Opponent
Perhaps it is all the theory, but I can’t help but look at this through an Hegelian lens — a modified Hegelian lens, perhaps. I think that the dialectic can be troublesome, and the synthesis promised in the process does not always account for every eventuality. That being said, I think that this adversarial relationship […]
Control Often Means Not Exerting It
I have been fortunate in my time as both student and instructor to never have an adversarial relationship with a teacher or student. When I think of truly adversarial relationships, I think back to substitute teachers I had between 7th and 9th grade. More often than not, my fellow students and I collectively made an […]
Knowing is half the battle
Being an adversary does not mean being an enemy. I rarely have an adversarial relationship with students that is long term and related to rigor, but I have taken classes where the teacher uses this conceit to great effect. I recall a Shakespeare professor from college who was a master of playing devil’s advocate during […]
Is Transaction Inherently Adversarial?
On the most basic level, the simple designation of “student” and “teacher” is inherently an adversarial distinction. Like any dichotomy where one side holds a significant amount of power over the other, especially in an institutional setting like a university, the basic conflict stems from necessary authority. That authority, the teacher, doesn’t have to be […]
The A-word
Growth requires stress. Even plants need certain stressors to produce to their fullest capacity. In many cases, the natural world delivers all the stress and adversity we need. Sometimes too much. But it is interesting to think of the role of a teacher as an agitator, an adversary. None of us want mean teachers who […]
Accountability: A Necessary Component for Both Students and Teachers in the Classroom
I don’t believe that the relationship between students and teachers is inherently negative, however the power dynamic between students and teachers cannot be denied. This power dynamic can lend itself to a somewhat adversarial relationship; students yielding to the demands of the teacher out of necessity can create natural feelings of contempt. In terms of […]
Imaginary Adversaries
I haven’t had many (or any?) adversarial interactions with students here or in other contexts (at least as far as I can tell) so it’s a little hard to define from the perspective of being the instructor. I guess a connotation of adversary is more or less competitor, so if I took that as a […]
Don’t Poke the Bear
The idea of being adversarial is a difficult one for me to parse. In thinking of Somnolent Samantha, I’m reminded of an earlier article I believe we read here where the instructor began thinking they knew what the students needed, then decided their students were all imbeciles, then decided some of them maybe are worthwhile, […]
Conflicting Productively in the Classroom
“Adversarial” is a loaded term that bears frequently negative connotations of combative and even hateful contact. However, adversaries can also be simply any individuals, groups, or ideas that meet in active conflict with each other—and conflict can be productive. Thinking of the adversarial in terms of conflict and specifically addressing that conflict in the classroom, […]
Please let me be your advocate…
I read this and was immediately rejecting of the idea of being an adversary, because I don’t want to be an adversary to my students… I also wouldn’t want to call myself their partner either. To me, I’d prefer to be their advocate. Somebody who has there back and will support them, but is more […]
Who Should Determine Course Curriculum?
When I ponder what it means for students and teachers to be adversarial, my mind immediately jumps to the topic of curriculum. Students and teachers can debate all day long over what topics, subjects, texts, etc, should and can be included in a course curriculum, but it is ultimately up to the professor to decide […]
Smogulous Smoke & Gluppity Glup: Toxic Behavior as a Classroom Pollutant
Thinking about toxicity within some sort of taxonomy seems to evoke a sort of parasite, or bacteria, or general pathogen that introduces a disease which then blooms outward from its singular point of entry or origin. More literally, this would be one instance of toxic behavior in a classroom that is sufficiently damaging so as […]
Self-doubt and cop-outs
It would take deep, intentional exploration to consider anything as “truly toxic” within my classroom. All in all, it is seemingly full of kindness, good intentions, respect. There have been individual incidents: a student asking another student how they would “rate” them, a student exclaiming that the class is stupid, a small group briefly talking […]
Reflections on Student Disengagement
When I think of toxic behavior, I think of behavior that is at best unhealthy and at worst abusive. In a classroom setting, this could look like comments that undermine the safety and dignity of people or of the classroom itself as a respectful learning environment. Fortunately, I have not had instances like this occur […]
What About the Toxic Teacher?
Today’s prompt is a little funny because as I read the first question, I was already thinking of dividing into two parts: toxic student behavior and toxic teacher behavior. Then I read the second question that prioritizes toxic student behavior with no mention of toxic teacher behavior and I had to laugh as I think […]
Environmental Toxins
So far, I can only think of this in theoretical terms, outside of one instance that I will highlight, as I haven’t gotten to fully see the types of toxic behaviors that current undergraduate college students bring to the classroom. I am very curious for my full session next quarter, and I imagine that some […]
Passive-Aggressive Stuff: Expectations & “What’s the Point?”s
I’ve been fortunate to have not encountered any truly toxic behavior in my classroom thus far, but I’m always alert to its potential of disrupting the classroom in a significant way. There’s certainly a taxonomy present if I’m thinking in these terms—what I would consider toxic would be outright abuse (which can take several forms, […]
New Language for a New Pedagogy
I really appreciated the look at gender and queerness in relation to plagiarism, and the way that Moore Howard at the end gives the reader separate language in the form of fraud, insufficient citation, and excessive repetition. I had almost thought we weren’t going to receive those tools when she said “I hate cheating” thinking […]
The taste of a poison paradise
I think my ecosystem is fairly healthy at this point in the term. The only toxic problems are a couple of partnerships that have more or less needed marriage counseling. In the past, I have seen toxic classrooms that stem from a total lack of respect between students and their teacher. My first year teaching […]
from distracting to destructive: toxic classroom behaviors
There’s an important distinction to make between what toxic behaviors might arise in an English 101 classroom and what toxic behaviors have, in fact, come up in my class. In theory, one might find really alarming behaviors that would take taxonomic precedence: issues of immediate physical or emotional danger, such as violent behavior or language […]