I think, naturally, my mind is stuck on the article that I covered for the reflective bibliography entry that was due recently. The article was concerned with educational aims in particular, and the author, Chris W. Gallagher, centered the article around the pitfalls of assessing outcomes rather than consequences or potentiality. With this in mind, […]
Prompts
Provide the Occasion
The more I read about teaching, and the more time I spend in front of a class, the less I seem to know. I can’t really describe a core principle of my philosophy or point to any one thing that informs my style. I think I would rather my students learn to think like writers […]
A Change in Expectations can Make a Considerable Difference
It’s been a steep learning curve for me this past quarter. I initially came into the class determined to be a role model for my students, as someone they can look up to, or at the very least, a positive influence. Instead, I was greeted with a class of reluctant (and often rude) students, so […]
A Teacher Prepares
In An Actor Prepares, Konstantin Stanislavski describes actors as having to earn the right to the stage. Because of the structure of the theater and the expectations of the genre, the audience will automatically give actors a grace period – in other words, they assume the actor knows what they’re doing because they are on […]
We are a community of writers
I spent some reflective time thinking about what I wanted my classroom to “look like” when I was drafting my syllabus. A starting off point would be my “Class Climate” section of my ENG101 syllabus: “First and foremost we are a community of writers. Writing is a personal exercise by nature. In order for all […]
Participatory Hospitality and Brave/Safe Spaces in my thoughts about the classroom
What I hold at the core of my beliefs about my classroom and try to bring into my classroom is that it is a place that we create together—I’m kind of pulling from the ideas of a community of practice that I was so entrenched in at my old WC. Writing center scholar, Michele Eodice, […]
Fun, Passionate, and Practical Learning
One of my most prized teaching approaches and beliefs is the idea that learning can be fun. Obviously, this is a difficult, and sometimes seemingly impossible, but in actuality I really just mean that I prefer more activity-based lessons over lectures. I’ve always enjoyed classes that incorporate more engaging and hands-on activities, and I’ve noticed […]
Prompt 6: Core beliefs
Even if we can’t fully name them, we teachers tend to guide our actions–our sense of whether things are going well or poorly–based on some deeply held beliefs. What does it mean to learn? What should a classroom look like? Who should feel safe or vulnerable, and how? In our case, specifically to writing, how […]
Bodies, Histories/Identity, and Futures
I am conscious of being a short brown queer feminine-masculine person when in front of the class I teach. I am conscious of every moment of hesitation I have that my students witness and how they witness it in the context of my being a brown queer person in a position of authority. The manifested […]
we are not the gatekeepers to accommodation
I often feel conflicted when approaching questions of awareness of disabilities, diversity, barriers, etc. I want to avoid the tendency to center myself, to participate in “Oppression Olympics,” or assume my definition of disability is complete or correct while honoring the huge importance of these questions. In my classroom, my awareness of my body in […]
The Deliberate Act of Noticing
The initial student-teacher interactions that occur on the first or second week of class are distinct, I think, in their (my) lack of really registering individual corporealities. To clarify: I’m not saying I don’t take into account my students as being present in front of me, and therefore acknowledging and connecting with them. Rather, there’s […]
Words of the Body
When the question of bodies comes up, the first place I worry off to is the possibility of bodies being sexual, and how it would make me extremely uncomfortable to think about students in a sexual way or for them to think about me in that way. Aside from the push of heteronormative culture to […]
Navigating Transition: Moving from Traditional to Useful
The physicality and corporeality of the classroom had never really crossed my mind in the lead up to teaching. Teaching was a mental exercise, learning a cognitive activity. Now, however, it’s the primary conflict in my classroom experience. The mental exertion of lesson planning, activity leading, or lesson planning is certainly present in my life, […]
The coherence of bodies
It seems impossible to me to not be aware of my students as embodied beings. My experience of the world is so very much shaped by my shape. As my body moves through space, I feel the cold wind on my head after I’ve cut my hair, the rock in my shoe, the way people […]
Matchmaker, matchmaker…
When someone says “there are no disabled students in my class,” this is a map of fear, perhaps (access Vidali). But it is also voicing a desire. There is a fear of the presence of disability and a desire for its opposite: its eradication and exclusion. I have said this many times, and I could […]
Fueling my Students’ Vehicular Bodies
Before reading the McRuer essay, I didn’t put much thought into the metaphorical idea of my student’s (dis)able-bodies. From first meeting my students, I couldn’t tell from outside appearances if any of them were disabled, but I was aware that one of my students is registered with disability services, and really struggles with grammar […]
My Dad Doesn’t Get to Use the Front Door
I have lived my life hyper aware of the physical body, and its capabilities in the public world. At the age of nineteen, a motorcycle accident severed my father’s spinal cord. He is a paraplegic, and has used a wheelchair since the day of the accident. In my first sentence I am specific when I […]
My Deliberate Physicality and The Ways I Don’t Notice My Students
In the last semester of my undergrad, my public rhetorics class had an assignment where we had to do something public and then analyze the rhetorical moves we were making when doing something publicly (it was a little divergent from the definition of a public purposefully, just in case anyone is concerned about the definitely […]
Speculation on the Role of English 101 at Western
Reading Crowley and contemplating the context at Western of having English 101 be a required class makes me think that the traditional views of what English 101 is (focused on grammar, structure, general preparedness for the rest of college, i.e., a gatekeeping post) is very much at play here at Western. In other words, having […]
Prompt 5: Corporealities
I often find myself thinking about students as somewhat abstract–minds that are going to respond to what they’re presented with. This isn’t who or what my students are, of course. This is simply a projection, a way of seeing them as subjects of my plans, reactors to my action. They certainly aren’t living, breathing beings […]
On the Question of the Institution
It seems like the longer I look at this question, the question of what English 101 is to the academic institution and Western as a whole, the more fractured my response towards it becomes. I feel my own desires and ideas squaring off against the issues that Crowley raises, and, If I am honest, I […]
Prescribed Experience and the Institution
There’s something of English 101 that reminds me of the Greek prescription of military service. There was, in ancient Greek culture, common ground between all people that could be drawn upon in politics, religion, philosophy and theater because every citizen male was required to serve time in the military. In an age and culture that […]
Expectations
English 101 as I’m experiencing it now is dramatically different from my English 101 course as an undergrad, which was essentially a literature survey, more on how to think about reading than how to think about writing. I have been considering this shift in my own expectations as well as the expectations of my students. […]
Um… I think “Hell Night” is a bad thing
I suppose English 101 at Western is an introduction to college itself and to the skills that one needs to navigate four years in a university. The class, as the curriculum currently stands, doesn’t necessarily fit the definition that Crowley applies to historical conceptions of 101. I’m not sure how Crowley would react to our […]
Is English 101 useful?
English 101 is perceived primarily by students and faculty as a box to check like many other GURs and not much more. Some do harbor hopes that the course will be helpful to students and if students internalize this positive mindset, as with any other course, will help them to glean whatever is useful in […]
More Than a Recap of High School English
It’s important to note that the way the student body perceives English 101 is largely what determines, I feel, the role of the 101 community within Western. As is probably the case for most institutions, the designation of English 101 as a mandatory preliminary class more often than not sets the notion that this is […]
I’d rather talk about Crowley
English 101 at Western is an introduction to the expectations for writing in other courses, and it also provides accessibility to grad students seeking to attend Western who need financial assistance. The issue with English 101, as pointed out by Crowley, is that it is a required class, which gives students a valid sense of […]
Who is the classroom for, though?
I think this new question we’re being asked to contemplate is something I don’t necessarily have the bits and pieces to figure out. At the institution I did my undergrad at, there were constant conversations of the way that our version of ENG 101 enhanced the experiences of students and prepared them for work later […]
ENG 101- required or optional?
I think English 101 functions at Western as a sort of introductory course to college. As a mandatory course, students are introduced to the realism of college and “adulthood” writing, and especially for Fall Quarter, English 101 is a nice transitionary course for first-year college students, allowing them to ease into a new type of […]
Prompt 4: English 101 at Western
For this blog post, I want you to think about the class English 101 as a whole: as a program with 80 sections of a required class taught per year. What do you think English 101 is to Western as an institution? What is the English 101 program to the students and faculty as a […]