Prompts

Identity, Expression, & Worldview

In their very first letters that my students wrote to me, I noticed a surprising divide between experiences of political discourse in previous English classrooms. Some expressed discomfort in the inclusion of real time political events while discussing literature, and others claimed that that very inclusion is what served to make their discussions immediate and […]

Limited Glimpses

I would love to know more about and the scopes of these worldviews. I have had limited glimpses into my student’s worldviews. These have come from their literacy timelines and narratives and to some extent their research topics. In their literacy timelines, it was interesting to see what political events they mentioned during certain years. […]

Wild World

My students, from what I see, don’t have much of a coherent worldview. They’re more instinctively curious than I would expect – when they see or hear something different, like the man in Red Square proclaiming the world to be flat, they wonder why that person thinks that. I assume that person is seeking attention, […]

Circulation & Exchange

The authority associated with instructor-student relationships is the most immediate force present from the first day of class. Though the presentation of that authority varies depending on personal teaching style, there’s nevertheless a conscious representational difference that invisibly guides classroom etiquette. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part students sit down on […]

Ignorance and Wisdom

Sometimes I try to think about what I was like when I was a freshman in college. It’s possible that I came to my Freshman English equivalent with something of a bad affect. I remember being irritated by my classmates and the way everyone spoke out of what I thought of as self-aggrandizement. Vying each […]

intersections of our lives, my shifting identity, and what I decide to share

In Krista Ratcliffe’s Rhetorical Listening Theory: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, she discusses something called a “dysfunctional silence” which centers around the idea that a silence (of voices in different contexts) is no longer “merely the absence of speaking voice(s); it is also the absence of hearing ears” (85). “Silence” or the absence of voices is something […]

The Performance of Difference

Classroom 107 in the Humanities Building on Western Washington University’s campus is structurally composed to posit myself as someone different from my students. Room 107 is a cookie cutter copy of many other classrooms not only on WWU’s campus, but at universities and classrooms worldwide. It is binary. In through the door—if you have authority […]

Post 7: Differences

As much as we seek rapport with our students–rooted in empathy and mutual human understanding–we must also acknowledge the limits. We are different from our students, if only by virtue of our authority in the classroom. For this blog post, I want you to examine the role “difference” plays in your teaching. What makes you […]